(Original article: Mystic Living Today, July 2023)
Nassir H. Sabah
“Does God exist?” is a question that has been asked an untold number of times over the years. On the one hand, a vehement denial was the answer. On the other hand, were affirmative answers based on blind faith or on theological, philosophical, or other indirect arguments. What will be presented here is a direct, objective argument based on the following reasoning:
- The Quran cannot possibly be of human origin; it must be of superhuman origin.
- The Quran could have been revealed by God – the creator of the universe and the guide and sustainer of everything in it – or by extra-terrestrial aliens, or by some other unknown, superhuman agency.
- The Quran states that it was revealed by God, and there have been no rebuttals, counterclaims, or contrary evidence since the Quran was revealed more than 1400 years ago.
- The Quran was therefore revealed by God, who must exist.
The critical postulate in this argument is the superhuman origin of the Quran. For non-Muslims, the Quran is to be regarded as a stand-alone text that should be judged on its own merits with an open mind and without prejudice or bias. In earlier times, the objective evidence for the superhuman origin of the Quran was based mainly on its unquestionable literary and linguistic inimitability, which has withstood the test of time. In the 1950s, some Quranic scholars began to interpret verses of the Quran in terms of current scientific knowledge as proof of its divine origin. Maurice Bucaille, a renowned French physician, published in 1976 his book La Bible, le Coran et la Science. In the section entitled “The Quran and Modern Science”, Bucaille states, in English translation:
“The ideas in this study are developed from a purely scientific point of view. They lead to the conclusion that it is inconceivable for a human being living in the seventh century A.D. to have made statements in the Quran on a great variety of subjects that do not belong to his period and for them to be in keeping with what was to be known only centuries later. For me, there can be no human explanation to the Quran.”
Since then, the movement to interpret the relevant Quranic verses in terms of current scientific knowledge has gained considerable momentum.
In the early 1980s, the original, authentic, and hence the only officially recognized Arabic Quranic text all over the world, was digitized and subjected to search programs. An intricate web of numerical relations was discovered, only the tip of which has been uncovered so far, involving letters, verses, and chapters of the Quran, and which could not possibly be all coincidental or of human origin. These numerical relations do not depend on any linguistic or philosophical interpretations, just simple arithmetic, and consistent rules of counting Arabic letters and words.
It’s these two aspects that convince people like me that the Quran cannot possibly be of human origin. The first one, the aspect related to physical phenomena, can be divided into two categories: (i) unequivocal references, and (ii) uncanny, cryptic references that describe, amazingly befittingly, a wide range of physical phenomena discovered or explained only in modern times. Three examples of the first type are references to:
- Internal oceans waves: “Or like darkness in a deep sea, covered by waves with waves above them and clouds above them…” (Quran 24:40); the occurrence of internal ocean waves between stratified layers in deep waters was confirmed less than 100 years ago.
- Fire tornados: “… and a whirlwind with a fire therein burning it (a garden) …” (Quran 2:266); fire tornados were first observed in Australia in 2003 and later in Florida in 2020.
- Rose-like planetary nebulas: “When the sky splits, so it becomes a rose, varicolored like ointments.” (Quran 55:37); rose-like nebulas such as the Cat’s Eye Nebula and the Rosette Nebula have been photographed by NASA.
Examples of the second type of references to physical phenomena are references to pulsars, black holes, expanding universe, cosmic web, recycling of the Earth’s crust, seamounts, their beautiful ecosystems and their earthquake dampening effects, roots of mountains, motion of the Earth, milk production, and many more. Details of these can be found in the book, Spiritually Rekindled: The Quest for Serenity and Self-Fulfillment, and on the website: https://nassirsabah.com. These references also contain examples of the miraculous numerical relations referred to earlier and discussed next.
To give some idea of these miraculous numerical relations, just two examples will be mentioned:
- Consider some multiples of the number 7, a number that has mystical symbolism in practically all ancient cultures and religions since at least Babylonian times. The Quran has 114 chapters and 6236 numbered verses. If these numbers are laid side by side, with the smaller unit (verse) on the right and the larger unit (chapter) on the left, bearing in mind that Arabic is written and read from right to left, the resulting number 1146236 is a multiple of 7. If the order of the numerals is reversed, the number 6326411 is also a multiple of 7. If the individual numerals in the numbers 114 and 6236 are added, the sum is 23, the number of years over which the Quran was revealed. If this number is laid side by side with the number 23 replacing the number of chapters, the result 236236 is a multiple of 7. If the order of the numerals is reversed, the number 632632 is also a multiple of 7. If the number 23 is laid side by side with the number of chapters replacing the number of verses, the resulting number 23114 is a multiple of 7. If the order of the numerals is reversed, the number 41132 is also a multiple of 7. The number of digits of the first number formed (1146236) is 7, the number of digits of the second number formed (236236) is 6, and the number of digits of the third number formed (23114) is 5. If these are written in the order of the number of digits of the first number on the right, the resulting number 567 is a multiple of 7. If the number of the first chapter, (1), is written to the right of the number of the last chapter, (114), the resulting number 1141 is a multiple of 7. The 4 numerals of 1141 also add to 7. All coincidences?
- The reference in the Quran to the development of the human embryo is in verse 13 and the first part of verse 14, Chapter 23 (The Believers). In Arabic, this passage consists of 23 words and uses 23 letters of the Arabic alphabet of 28 letters. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Coincidence? Then consider the mention of bees in the Quran, which occurs only in verse 68, Chapter 16 (The Bees). In Arabic, the verse consists of 16 words and uses 16 letters of the Arabic alphabet. The first part of the verse up to and including the word bees consists of a total of 16 letters. The number of verses in Chapter 16 is 128, a multiple of 16, and the number of words is 2080, a multiple of 16. The number of words from the beginning of the chapter until the word bees is encountered is 992, a multiple of 16, and the number of words including the word bees and till the end of the chapter is 1088, a multiple of 16 (68×16), where 68 is the verse number where bees are mentioned. Female bees (workers) have 16 pairs of chromosomes, whereas male bees (drones) have 16 unpaired chromosomes. All coincidences?
If each individual numerical relation has a probability between 0 and 1 of occurring by chance, the probability of occurrence by chance of all the very large number of these relations discovered so far in the Quran is of the order of the product of the individual probabilities and is vanishingly small.
One last amazing set of verses relates to Abu Lahab, a paternal uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, who, together with his wife, were such fierce opponents of Islam from the very beginning that a special, short chapter of the Quran was revealed condemning them and assigning them to Hell in the Hereafter. But many early fierce opponents of Islam later converted and became very pious and prominent Muslims. Had Abu Lahab converted out of his own free will to become a pious Muslim – and there was a lapse of ten years between the revelation of the condemning chapter and his death – he would have caused a glaring contradiction in the Quran, for how could a pious Muslim suffer in Hell? No mortal could have been absolutely certain that Abu Lahab would never convert and therefore cause this contradiction. Only an omniscient God could have been certain.
In the light of such evidence, how can the existence of God be denied?!
