RAMADAN 2007 The 22nd Day

Then to be one of those who believe and urge each other to patience and urge each other to mercifulness. (Surat al-Balad: 17)

	Allah is the Forbearer and loves forbearance in all matters.' (Bukhari and Muslim)

CONQUERING GREED AND JEALOUSY

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HARUN YAHYA

Allah informs us in the following verse that human soul is swayed by greed as follows:

... people are prone to selfish greed. If you do good and do your duty, Allah is aware of what you do. (Surat an-Nisa: 128)

Thus, as with other evils, we are all prone to struggle internally with feelings of jealousy and greed. One should strive to purify himself of them. Otherwise, he will never be able to duly practice the morality of the Qur'an and to fully gain Allah's consent. Similarly, in another verse of the Qur'an, it is indicated that people disagreed among each other and strayed from the straight path because of the "envy" they felt against each other, in spite of having received the Book guiding them to the straight path:

Mankind was a single community. Then Allah sent out prophets bringing good news and giving warning, and with them He sent down the Book with truth to decide between people regarding their differences. Only those who were given it differed about it, after the Clear Signs had come to them, envying one another. Then, by His permission, Allah guided those who believed to the truth of that about which they had differed. Allah guides whoever He wills to a straight path. (Surat al-Baqara: 213)

This instance related in the Qur'an is of a great importance for aiding people to understand the extent of harm jealousy can cause. Although being aware of and seeing the right path, one could take the wrong turn, merely as a result of jealousy. Feelings of jealousy and greed prevent one from thinking rationally and of properly evaluating events. When confronted with certain situations, one overcome by such feelings could in no way react according to the values of the Qur'an. He could not speak of what pertains to Allah, or act in a sincere and genuine manner. Under such circumstances, he would not be ruled by his mind and conscience, but rather by his lower-soul, taking on the role as the devil's advocate. His lower-self directs him towards the morality of evil.

In order to be purified of these vices, one should, first and foremost, understand that feelings of jealousy and greed are contrary to religion. These feelings emerge from worldly values. People become jealous of the material or moral virtues of others, and therefore vie against them. Whereas, the true believers are those who refrain from becoming excessively attached to worldly possessions. Essentially, they long only for the hereafter. A true believer knows for certain that worldly benefits are granted by Allah, and will again be taken back by Him when the time comes. Although he may derive benefits from them in a way that pleases Allah, he never becomes passionately devoted to them. He does not become consumed with ambition for more. He gives thanks to Allah for what He bestowed upon him, and knows how to be content with what he has. And, as stated in the subsequent verse, if Allah for some reason bestows more of His blessings upon another, he knows that this is for a purpose:

The Keys of the heavens and earth belong to Him. He expands the provision of anyone He wills or restricts it. He has knowledge of all things. (Surat ash-Shura: 12)

Each person is being tested through the blessings that Allah either makes ample and straightens for him. Hence, it is impossible for one to become greedy or jealous of the worldly blessings of another if he comprehends that this worldly life is an ephemeral place created merely to test people. For instance, being jealous of another because he is rich, handsome or endowed with authority is not in accord with the morality of the Qur'an. One, who lives by the high level of morality of the Qur'an, knows clearly that Allah will bestow great blessings upon him in the hereafter. Thus, he lives with the peace of mind of that awareness of this truth brings. However, those who fail to understand fate, the real nature of this worldly life, the fact that Allah is the Creator of all things and to put their faith in Him, get carried away by feelings of jealousy and greed. Any true believer well aware of that truth, refrains from committing such wrongdoing.

Even if it is for traits reflecting the sublime morality of the Qur'an, a true believer carefully avoids becoming jealous. Instead, he will desire to adopt the fine morality of that fellow Muslim. His wish to "keep-up" never leads to greediness. In compliance with the verse of the Qur'an that states, "race each other to the good," he strives with sincere effort to become among the beloved servants of Allah, and to practice the morality of the Qur'an in the most ideal manner. Nevertheless, this competition is not based upon feelings of jealousy or rivalry. This is a competition aimed at approaching closer to Allah rather than human beings. Similarly, such a person also wishes for other believers to be among Allah's most beloved servants, just like he does for himself. Not only does he pray for this sincerely, but also strives for it.

True believers that jealousy and rivalry have no place in the morality of Paradise. Just as rivalry has no place in Paradise, pious deeds aiming to gain Paradise could never be tainted with jealousy or rivalry. True believers are friends, guardians and brothers of each other, both in the life of this world and in the hereafter. Each serves the same purpose. The more they support each other, the more they will be pleasing to Allah. For this reason, what befits a true believer is to help and be proud of the other, rather than being jealous of his noble qualities and competing with him. In all situations, this is what best reflects sincerity. The Prophet (saas) told of the need for this unity, mutual affection and comraderie among true believers as follows:

"You will observe that the believers are like the parts of the body in relation to each other in matters of kindness, love and affection. When one part of the body is afflicted, the entire body feels it; there is loss of sleep and a fever develops." 1

1. Hadith of Al-Bukhari and Muslim on the Authority of Nu'man Ibn Bashir

MOLECULES: THE SOURCE OF FLAVOR AND BEAUTY

HARUN YAHYA

Many substances look different and have different features although they include the same atoms. What do you think makes objects around you different? What makes them different in terms of their color, shape, smell and taste, and what makes them soft or hard? The reason for all of these distinctive differences is that their atoms constitute different chemical bonds to form molecules.

Following atoms, which are the first step on the way to substance, molecules are the second step. Molecules are the smallest units which determine the chemical features of a substance. Some of these small structures consist of one or more atoms, but some of them consist of thousands of atom groups. The diversity we see around us arises because molecules come together in different ways. We can see this by giving examples from our senses of taste and smell.

Indeed, concepts like "taste" and "smell" are nothing more than perceptions created in our sense organs by different molecules. The smells of foods, drinks, and various fruits and flowers all consist of volatile molecules, an example of which we see in the small picture on the right. Atoms form living and non-living substances and also give matter its taste and beauty. How does this ever happen?

Volatile molecules like vanilla and tulip scents penetrate the receptors of tiny hairs in the region of the nose called the epithelium and interact with these receptors. This interaction is perceived as scent in our brain. Similarly, there are four different types of chemical receptors at the front part of the human tongue. These correspond to the salty, sweet, sour and bitter tastes. The molecules that come to the receptors of all our sense organs are perceived as chemical signals by our brain.

Today, it is understood how taste and smell are perceived and how they are made. Yet, scientists cannot reach a consensus on why some substances smell more while some others smell less, or why some of them smell bad while some others smell pleasant.

The existence of taste and smell is not a fundamental need for human beings. However, hundreds of kinds of delicious fruits and vegetables, with their enticing scents, and thousands of kinds of flowers with different colors, shapes and smells, all come out of the soil. All of them add a distinctive beauty to our world as products of a magnificent art.

From this point of view, color and smell, like all other blessings, are two of those beauties that Allah, the Most Gracious and Glorious, bestows on people without measure. The absence of these two senses only would be enough to make man's life tasteless. In return for all these blessings given to him, what befalls on a man is certainly to try to be a servant of Allah, Who encompasses him with His knowledge.

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THE HUMAN FOSSIL RECORD IS AGAINST EVOLUTION

HARUN YAHYA

3.6-million-year-old human footprints found in Laetoli, Tanzania.

We need to turn to the fossil record to find an answer to the question of when man appeared on Earth. This record shows that man goes back millions of years. These discoveries consist of skeletons and skulls, and the remains of people who lived at various times. One of the oldest traces of man are the "footprints" found by the famous palaentologist Mary Leakey in 1977 in Tanzania's Laetoli region.

These remains caused a great furore in the world of science. Research indicated that these footprints were in a 3.6-million-year-old layer. Russell Tuttle, who saw the footprints, wrote:

A small barefoot Homo sapiens could have made them... In all discernible morphological features, the feet of the individuals that made the trails are indistinguishable from those of modern humans. 1

Impartial examinations of the footprints revealed their real owners. In reality, these footprints consisted of 20 fossilized footprints of a 10-year-old modern human and 27 footprints of an even younger one. These footprints sparked an important debate among evolutionists. That was because for them to accept that these were human footprints would mean that the imaginary progression they had drawn up from ape to man could no longer be maintained.

Another of the oldest remains to do with man was the ruins of a stone hut found in the Olduvai Gorge region by Louis Leakey in the 1970s. The remains of the hut were found in a layer 1.7 million years old. It is known that structures of this kind, of which similar examples are still used in Africa in the present day, could only be built by Homo sapiens, in other words modern man. The significance of the remains is that they reveal that man lived at the same time as the so-called ape-like creatures that evolutionists portray as his ancestors.

A 2.3 million-year-old modern human jaw found in the Hadar region of Ethiopia was very important from the point of view of showing that modern man had existed on the Earth much longer that evolutionists expected. 2

One of the oldest and most perfect human fossils is KNM-WT 1500, also known as the "Turkana Child" skeleton. The 1.6 million-year-old fossil is described by the evolutionist Donald Johanson in these terms:

He was tall and thin, in body shape and limb proportions resembling present-day equatorial Africans. Despite his youth, the boy's limb nearly matched the mean measurements for white North American adult males. 3

The remains of a 1.7-million-year-old stone hut

It is confirmed that the fossil was that of a 12-year-old boy, who would have been 1.83 metres tall in adolescence. The American paleoanthropologist Alan Walker said that he doubted that "the average pathologist could tell the difference between the fossil skeleton and that of a modern human." Concerning the skull, Walker wrote that he laughed when he saw it because "it looked so much like a Neanderthal." 4

One of the human fossils that has attracted the most attention was one found in Spain in 1995. The fossil in question was uncovered in a cave called Gran Dolina in the Atapuerca region of Spain by three Spanish paleoanthropologists from the University of Madrid. The fossil revealed the face of an 11-year-old boy who looked entirely like modern man. Yet, it had been 800,000 years since the child died. This fossil even shook the convictions of Juan Luis Arsuaga Ferreras, who lead the Gran Dolina excavation. Ferreras said:

We expected something big, something large, something inflated-you know, something primitive… Our expectation of an 800,000-year-old boy was something like Turkana Boy. And what we found was a totally modern face.... To me this is most spectacular-these are the kinds of things that shake you. Finding something totally unexpected like that. Not finding fossils; finding fossils is unexpected too, and it's okay. But the most spectacular thing is finding something you thought belonged to the present, in the past. It's like finding something like-like a tape recorder in Gran Dolina. That would be very surprising. We don't expect cassettes and tape recorders in the Lower Pleistocene. Finding a modern face 800,000 years ago-it's the same thing. We were very surprised when we saw it. 5

As we have seen, fossil discoveries give the lie to the claim of "the evolution of man." This claim is presented by some media organizations as if it were a proven fact, whereas all that actually exist are fictitious theories. In fact, evolutionist scientists accept this, and admit that the claim of "the evolution of man" lacks any scientific evidence.

For instance, by saying, "We appear suddenly in the fossil record" the evolutionist paleontologists C. A. Villie, E. P. Solomon and P. W. Davis admit that man emerged all of a sudden, in other words with no evolutionary ancestor. 6

EVOLUTIONISTS' VOLTE-FACE REGARDING THE NEANDERTHALS 1975 PORTRAYAL OF NEANDERTHALS - Geheimnisse der Urzeit, Deutsche Übersetzung, 1975 (left) 2000 PORTRAYAL OF NEANDERTHALS - National Geographic, July 2000 (right) Since the beginning of the twentieth century, evolutionists have been portraying the Neanderthals, a vanished human race, as semi-ape creatures. The above portrayal of Neanderthals was used as evolutionist propaganda for decades. However, since the 1980s this myth has begun to collapse. Both fossil studies and traces of Neanderthal culture have shown that these people were not semi-apes. For example, this 26,000-year-old needle proved that Neanderthals were civilised humans who possessed the ability to sew. As a result of this, evolutionist publications such as National Geographic had to start portraying them as civilised, as in the picture below.

Every new fossil discovery places evolutionists in an even worse quandary, even if certain frivolous newspapers do print headlines such as "Missing link discovered." The fossil skull discovered in 2001 and named Kenyanthropus platyops is the latest example of this. The evolutionist paleontologist Daniel E. Lieberman from Washington University's Department of Anthropology had this to say about Kenyanthropus platyops in an article in the leading scientific journal, Nature:

The evolutionary history of humans is complex and unresolved. It now looks set to be thrown into further confusion by the discovery of another species and genus, dated to 3.5 million years ago… The nature of Kenyanthropus platyops raises all kinds of questions, about human evolution in general and the behaviour of this species in particular. Why, for example, does it have the unusual combination of small cheek teeth and a big flat face with an anteriorly positioned arch of the cheekbone? All other known hominin species with big faces and similarly positioned cheekbones have big teeth. I suspect the chief role of K. platyops in the next few years will be to act as a sort of party spoiler, highlighting the confusion that confronts research into evolutionary relationships among hominins. 7

In its December 1997 edition, Discover, one of the most popular evolutionist magazines, placed an 800,000-year-old human face on its cover, alongside a headline taken from evolutionists' surprised statement, "Is this the face of our past?"

The latest evidence to shatter the evolutionary theory's claim about the origin of man is the new fossil Sahelanthropus tchadensis unearthed in the Central African country of Chad in the summer of 2002.

Daniel Lieberman of Harvard University said that "This [discovery] will have the impact of a small nuclear bomb." 8

The reason for this is that although the fossil in question is 7 million years old, it has a more "human-like" structure (according to the criteria evolutionists have hitherto used) than the 5 million-year-old Australopithecus ape species that is alleged to be "mankind's oldest ancestor." This shows that the evolutionary links established between extinct ape species based on the highly subjective and prejudiced criterion of "human similarity" are totally imaginary.

As we have seen, the increasing number of discoveries is producing results opposed to the theory of evolution, not in favour of it. If such an evolutionary process had happened in the past, there should be many traces of it, and each new discovery should further strengthen the theory. In fact, in The Origin of Species, Darwin claimed that science would develop in just that direction. In his view, the only problem facing his theory in the fossil record was a lack of fossil discoveries. He hoped that future research would unearth countless fossils to support his theory. However, subsequent scientific discoveries have actually proved Darwin's dreams to be totally unfounded.

The discoveries regarding man, of which we have seen a few examples here, reveal very important truths. In particular, they have once again demonstrated what a great product of fantasy the evolutionists' claim that man's ancestor was an ape-like creature is. For this reason, it is out of the question that these ape species could be man's ancestors.

In conclusion, the fossil record shows us that man came into existence millions of years ago in just the same form as he is now, and that he has come down to the present with absolutely no evolutionary development. If they claim to be genuinely scientific and honest, evolutionists should throw their imaginary progression from ape to man into the bin at this point. The fact that they do not give up this spurious family tree shows that evolution is not a theory that is defended in the name of science, but rather a dogma they are struggling 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. Ian Anderson, "Who made the Laetoli footprints?" New Scientist, vol. 98, 12 May 1983, p. 373.
2. D. Johanson, Blake Edgar, From Lucy to Language, p.169
3. D. Johanson, Blake Edgar, From Lucy to Language, p.173
4. Boyce Rensberger, Washington Post, 19 October 1984, p. A11.
5. "Is This The Face of Our Past," Discover, December 1997, pp. 97-100
6. Villee, Solomon and Davis, Biology, Saunders College Publishing,1985, p. 1053
7. Daniel E. Lieberman, "Another face in our family tree," Nature, March 22, 2001
8. D.L. Parsell, "Skull Fossil From Chad Forces Rethinking of Human Origins," National Geographic News, July 10, 2002

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