This is also quite a long one.  The first verse is “Alim. Lam. Mim”, which are basically 3 arabic letters.  This seems to be quite a common pattern for the first verse, however, nobody actually knows what they mean.

One of the first interesting parts of this is 3:7, which says that some parts of the scripture are clear revelations and that others are allegorical.  Sadly, it also says that nobody knows what the allegorical parts mean except Allah.

Next there’s a bit more about how Allah is severe in punishment and that disbelievers (like Pharoah’s folk) will be sent to hell (3:11).  There’s also a bit of a carrot, in gardens with rivers flowing underneath where they will have pure companions (3:15).  This is followed by a bit more about the evil people who turn away or disbelieve Allah and will therefore enjoy a painful doom (3:21).  This is a theme that is repeated quite a lot.

The story of Imran turns out to be the story of Mary and Jesus.   Apparently, Allah prefers Adam, Noah, the Family of Abraham and the Family of Imran above all his creatures (3:33).  I don’t even know who Imran is, except that is says they were all descendents of each other.  Apparently Imran’s wife when she was pregnant offered her child as an offering for Allah (3:35).  The child was a female called Mary and Allah promised to keep her safe.  Zachariah is appointed as Mary’s guardian.  One day he found that she already had some food, which apparently came from Allah (3:37).  Zachariah prayed and some angels came and told him that he’d have a son .  He asked how that was possible when he was an old man and his wife was barren (3:40).  The angel told him not to worry, Allah will figure it out. They told him not to speak for 3 days.

The angels then told Mary that Allah has preferred her over all the other woman, and tell her to be obedient and prostrate herself.   The angels then told Mary (3:45) that she would have s son “whose name is the Messiah, Jesus”.  She asked how that was possible when she was a virgin and was told that Allah will figure it out (3:47).  The angels also mention that Allah will teach Jesus “the Scripture and wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel” (3:48), which is interesting considering the gospels didn’t exist at this point (before Jesus was even born.  It says that Allah will make Jesus a messenger to the children of Israel and that he will tell them that he can make a clay bird and breathe into it to bring it alive as a sign from the lord.  I don’t remember seeing this anywhere in the Bible?   It also says that Jesus will confirm some of the Torah and will relax some of the rules from the Torah.

Allah promises to chastise heavily those who don’t believe in Jesus (3:56).  Allah created Jesus the same way he created Adam (from dust, apparently).  There follows a bunch of exhortations of people to believe in the scripture (after all, Abraham believed, why don’t you?), and finally we get back again to the painful doom that awaits those who disbelieve.  “Their doom will not be lightened, neither will they be reprieved” (3:88).  Then there is a little bit more asking how people can possibly disbelieve in Allah when he is all knowing etc.

On the day of judgement apparently the faces of the believers will be whitened and the faces of the disbelievers will be blackened.  Those with white faces will dwell with Allah forever, while the black faces will taste Allah’s punishment (3:106-7).

There are a few passages about not being friends with non-muslims.  For instance, 3:118 which says they will try to ruin you and 3:28, which says that muslims should not prefer non-muslim friends.

I gather that at some point, Muhammad must have had an issue with people fleeing from battle.  There are a large number of verses that seem designed to strengthen and encourage soldiers:

• “When two parties of you almost fell away, and Allah was their protecting Friend” (3:122)
• “Allah had already given you the victory at Badr, when ye were contemptible. So observe your duty to Allah in order that ye may be thankful.” (3:123)
• Allah helped them out with three thousand angels (3:124), and then promises that if they persevere and get attacked, he’ll send five thousand (3:125)
• “Allah ordained this only as a message of good cheer for you, and that thereby your hearts might be at rest – Victory cometh only from Allah, the Mighty, the Wise” (3:126)
• “Faint not nor grieve, for ye will overcome them if ye are (indeed) believers” (3:139)
• “And with how many a prophet have there been a number of devoted men who fought (beside him). They quailed not for aught that befell them in the way of Allah, nor did they weaken, nor were they brought low. Allah loveth the steadfast” (3:146)
• In a battle, the tide went against the muslims and their courage failed them and they fled.  But that was Allah’s doing, he was just testing and then he forgave them (3:152)
• Some soldiers climbed the hill and ignored everyone while the messenger behind them was calling on them to fight.  They were thinking that it wasn’t their cause but Muhammad told them it was Allah’s cause.  They also were thinking that if their comrades hadn’t been part of the cause, they wouldn’t have been killed.  But Muhammad told them that even if they had been at home, they would have died anyway. (3:153-154,168)
• It was Satan who caused the the soldiers to flee, but Allah has now forgiven them (3:155)
• It’s not a big deal to die for Allah, since you’ll go to heaven (3:157-8,169, 195)
• You can’t lose if you believe in Allah: “If Allah is your helper none can overcome you” (3:160)
• Allah deliberately made them lose a battle so he could see who were the true believers from the hypocrites (the ones who refused to fight): “That which befell you, on the day when the two armies met, was by permission of Allah; that He might know the true believers.” (3:166-167)
• There is great reward for those who fight for Allah (3:172)
• Allah will burn those who don’t contribute money to his war effort (3:180-181)

There are a few other bits sprinkled throughout about the doom that awaits the disbelievers.  It will be an “awful doom” (3:176) and a “painful doom” (3:177) and a “shameful doom” (3:178).  Their “habitation will be hell, an ill abode” (3:197)

There is also a bit of criticism of those who were given the scripture before the muslims.  I assume this applies to Jews and Christians.  They did much wrong (3:186) and were supposed to take the Scriptures they were given and “expound it to mankind and not to hide it.  But they flung it behind their backs and bought thereby a little gain” (3:187)

At the end, we are again reminded that paradise is a place of “Gardens underneath which rivers flow, wherein they will be safe forever” (3:198) and then exhorted to “Endure, outdo all others in endurance, be ready and observe your duty to Allah, in order that ye may succeed” (3:200)

I’ve started listening to the Quran.  Quran means recitation and was originally transmitted orally until it was written down after the death of Muhammad, so it is apparently better to hear it than to read it.  Muslims believe that the Quran was dictated to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel and was then memorized and recited to others.    Of course, Muslims believe it can only be properly appreciated in Arabic, so listening to it in English is not really the same, but hopefully I can understand the general meaning.

The Quran is divided into 114 surahs (chapters) which vary wildly in length, from just 3 ayat (verses) to 286.  They also don’t appear to be in any kind of order, except maybe longest to shortest(? – too soon to tell).  Some of them were apparently received by Muhammad while he was in Mecca (610-622) and others after his migration to Medina (622-632) but they are not in chronological order.

The first surah (Al-Fatihah – The Opening) is pretty short – just 7 ayat (verses) and is basically just a prayer to Allah.

The second surah (Al-Baqarah – The Cow) is one of the longest in the Quran and contains quite a diverse range of topics.

There are many verses praising Allah and testifying how powerful, how great, how merciful and forgiving he is.  And there are an equal (if not greater) number warning of the awful, terrible, fiery doom and eternal torment that awaits his disbelievers.

There is a little bit of a repeat of some of the Old Testament stories, such as:

• Adam naming all the animals
• Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden (which was Satan’s doing)
• Moses leading the escape from the Pharoah in Egypt
• Wandering in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights
• Worshipping a golden calf while Moses’s back was turned
• Moses striking a rock to create a spring (or in this case 12 springs) for his people to drink

There are also some new stories. The one for which this chapter is apparently named concerns Moses instructing his people to sacrifice a cow.  They thought he was joking at first, but when he insisted he wasn’t, they were very concerned to make sure they got the details right, asking for specifics about the age and colour of the cow.  They eventually got it right and sacrificed an acceptable yellow cow (“although they almost did not”).

This is where Allah explains that Muslims must pray towards the Kaaba in Mecca rather than Jerusalem as they did previously, saying that those who recognise the truth of the Quran will have no problem doing this.

Allah’s omniscient nature is frequently emphasised: “Allah is not unaware of what you do”.  And he is particularly concerned with whether people believe.  People who only believe part of the scripture are consigned to the same “most grievous doom” as the rest of us disbelievers.

There are of course a few good points.  Paying the poor-due is mentioned quite a few times.  Giving money to orphans is encouraged a couple of times.  There is something about setting slaves free.

And there are some practical matters:

• It’s fine to have sex with your wives in the evenings during Ramadan
• Fight unbelievers wherever you find them, but you should let them start it.  Fight them as they fight you, but if they stop persecuting you, you can stop fighting them
• Instructions are given on making a pilgrimage to Mecca
• Alcohol and gambling are discouraged, and Allah says you should only spend superfluous money on these things.
• Muslims can’t marry disbelievers: a Muslim slave is better than non believing free woman even if you love her
• Don’t have sex with women while they have their period, but other wise, feel free to have sex with them whenever you want (they are your tilth to cultivate)
• Divorced women have to wait three months to make sure they aren’t pregnant
• Women have similar rights to those of men in kindness, but men are a degree above them
• Mothers should breastfeed for 2 years, unless she doesn’t want to.  They can use a wet-nurse as long as they pay her properly
• If you die, your wife must wait for 4 months and 10 days and then it’s no sin on you if she marries someone else
• There is no compulsion in religion (although if you disbelieve in Allah you will be cast into the fire)
• If you borrow money, have a scribe write down the terms of the contact and have it witnessed.  The witnesses should be two men, but if two men aren’t available, you can use a man and two women, so that if one woman forgets the other might remember.

This is part of a series about the book “The Creation of the Universe” by Adnan Oktar. View Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

Chapter 8: The specially created elements of life

This chapter is really just more of the same kind of fine tuning arguments.  The two things Oktar is marvelling at are Carbon and Oxygen.  If carbon wasn’t capable for forming 4 covalent bonds, organic chemistry as we know it wouldn’t be possible.  If oxygen was either more or less reactive than it is, it wouldn’t participate in chemical reactions the same way it does now.   Again, those are not reasons to think that carbon and oxygen were designed for us. 

Conclusion

The first part of the conclusion is really just a restatement of the fine tuning argument that has pervaded the book.  Everything in the universe is such that the universe can support life, therefore it must have been created by Allah.  The Big Bang happened therefore Allah must have created the universe.   Neither of these conclusions follow from the premises.

The second part of the conclusion is actually about things that were not even addressed in the book!  He states that life is so overwhelmingly unlikely that it could not have happened by chance and quotes some calculation from someone called Shapiro who calculated the odds at almost zero.   

The rest of the chapter is just a few quotes from the Quran which say that Allah created everything: “Your Lord is Allah, who created the heavens and the earth in six days and then established himself firmly on the throne.”  Hardly compelling.

This is part of a series about the book “The Creation of the Universe” by Adnan Oktar. View Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7.

Chapter 7: The signs of creation in water

This chapter waxes lyrical about the amazing properties of water asserting that it was created specifically to be one of the building blocks of life.  He does this by arguing that not only is water unique, it is inconsistent with out liquids in its behaviour and therefore must have been divinely created.

Firstly, he covers thermal properties: ice floating on water, water having a high heat conductivity and high heat capacity but ice having a low heat capacity.

Oktar asks why water expands as it cools below 4 degrees and states that nobody has ever been able to answer this question, which is absolutely untrue.  Water freezing is a well understood phenomenon.  Water (H₂O) is a bent polar molecule, meaning that the two hydrogen atoms have a slight positive charge and the oxygen atom has a slight negative charge.  When water freezes, the hydrogen atoms don’t want to sit next to each other (like charges repel).  The shape of the molecule means the most stable structure is a tetrahedral lattice where the hydrogen atoms are next to oxygen atoms in the next molecule.  This creates a crystalline structure that is less dense than liquid water.   Oktar consistently confuses mass and density here, saying that the water gets heavier and lighter as it melts and freezes.  The mass doesn’t change, but the density does.  The rigid crystalline structure means more space between the molecules than when water is fluid, making it less dense.   Liquid water has molecules that are closer together and thus are denser.

This property is not unique to water.   Silicon expands when it freezes, as does Bismuth, Antimony and Gallium and pretty much any other polar molecule such as ammonia, hydrogen fluoride or sucrose.  And interestingly, this is actually not a very desirable property for life – if the water in our cells freezes, our cells burst and are destroyed.  If Allah had made it so that it didn’t expand like this, we would have been able to withstand much colder temperatures and live in polar regions or high mountains without so many problems.

Water does have pretty good heat capacity, and moderately good heat conductance, but an all powerful creator of everything in the universe would certainly have been able to come up with better systems for cooling the body than sweating water.  There are many other liquids and solids with better heat conductance.

Next, he makes a very big deal of water’s low viscosity: “Indeed, if we discount a few substances such as ether and liquid hydrogen, water appears to have a viscosity less than anything except gases.”   Why yes, if you ignore all the liquids with viscosity lower than water, you will find that water has the lowest viscosity of all.  The few substances also include liquid nitrogen, acetone, benzene, methanol and ethyl alcohol.  He next notes that if water suddenly became more viscous, our heart wouldn’t be able to pump it properly.  Obviously, since our circulatory system evolved to work with blood that was largely made of water.

He says several times that water was obviously perfectly designed for our bodies.  I do wonder how Oktar things this whole creation thing worked.  Allah apparently created us (out of either clay (15:26), a drop of fluid (16:4), dust (30:20) or a blood clot (96:1-2) depending which chapter you believe) with this circulatory system and then sat back and thought, hmm, I better design something to go inside all these arteries, veins and capillaries.  I better make it not too viscous, and since it will be oozing out the sweat glands, I better make sure it has high heat conductance.   Except that water already existed, because he apparently made all living things out of water (24:45), including us (25:54).

This is part of a series about the book “The Creation of the Universe” by Adnan Oktar. View Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

Chapter 6: The signs of creation in light

The basic premise of this chapter is that the sun was designed to emit just that part of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes are sensitive to and that supports life on earth.  Oktar’s argument goes like this: 

1. Our eyes are only sensitive to 1/10²⁵ of the electromagnetic spectrum. 
   (Aside: technically the electromagnetic spectrum is pretty much infinite, but that figure is close enough.  A logarithmic scale is almost always used for the spectrum though, and on that scale, we can see about 1.5% of it.)
2. The sun outputs only about 2/10²⁵ of the electromagnetic spectrum.
3. Amazingly, the sun outputs the same part of the spectrum that we can see.  The odds of this happening by chance are very small, so obviously the sun was designed for us.

Frankly, this argument is just stupid.  The sun radiates in most of the spectrum, but the vast majority is in visible light and near infrared.  We see visible light (obviously), which is around half of what the sun outputs.  But, our atmosphere actually blocks a lot of the rest of the suns radiation, including some of the infrared.  So the majority of the light that reaches us is visible light.  It is no surprise that our bodies evolved to see using just that part of the spectrum that reaches the surface of the earth.  That is exactly what we would expect of creatures that evolved on this planet.

Frankly, I would be significantly more convinced that Allah created us if it turned out we could see in x-ray.  If Allah created us, he could have made us to see in any part of the spectrum.  So why did Allah decide to randomly choose that tiny sliver of the spectrum for our eyes to be sensitive to? Surely he could have made us see the whole spectrum, or any part of it?   I don’t think religion can give an answer to that question.

To me this chapter very clearly demonstrates how exactly backwards Oktar and other creationists have everything.   Imagine an intelligent puddle of water.  Looking around, it marvels at how well the ground under it exactly fits the contours of the water – everywhere the puddle is deep, the ground recedes to make room, everywhere the puddle is shallow, the ground is higher to support it.  Indeed, there are no gaps anywhere between the puddle and the ground underneath it.  This can’t be a coincidence – surely the ground has to have been sculpted and shaped specifically to house the puddle.  The ground must have been designed for the puddle. 

We can clearly recognise the puddle’s mistake – we know that the shape of the puddle was determined by the shape of the ground and not vice-versa.  The puddle simply fills whatever niche is available.  The same happened with us.  We were shaped by the fact of evolving on this planet.  The reason why we see in the particular 1.5% of the spectrum that we do is that that is the part of the spectrum that our nearest star happens to emit and that our atmosphere lets through to the ground.   We are able to see using the majority of the electromagnetic spectrum that we experience – nothing unlikely about that.

This is part of a series about the book “The Creation of the Universe” by Adnan Oktar. View Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

Chapter 5: The blue planet

The chapter starts by describing the conditions on each planet in turn, from Pluto to Mercury and noting that they are all too cold, too hot and lacking in oxygen for us to live on.  Earth on the other hand, has the right temperature and amount of oxygen for us to live.  There are two possible reasons for this: either we evolved to live under these conditions or the planet was designed specifically to suit us.  Oktar explicitly rules out evolution as impossible and thus concludes that Earth had to be designed for us, and that the designer must have been Allah.

His rejection of evolution is a bit bizarre.  He clearly has no idea what evolution actually is.  He defines evolution as Lamarkian adaption – the idea that changes in an animal during it’s lifetime could be passed on to its children, and rightly claims that there is no evidence for this.    He also gives the lack of life on other planets as further evidence against evolution, since he seems to think that evolution implies that life can adapt to any conditions whatsoever (“little green creatures living on Pluto who … breathe helium instead of oxygen and who drink sulfuric acid instead of water”). 

Oktar explicitly rejects the idea of any kind of life except carbon based.  I think he’s overreaching to say that all scientists reject the possibility of any non-carbon based life anywhere in the universe but I will agree that carbon’s chemical properties and relative abundance do seem to make it by far the most likely building block for life.  And given that we are carbon and water based life forms, it comes as no surprise that the temperature range on earth is compatible with the temperature range in which organic compounds and liquid water exist.

The next few sections again try to make it seem amazing that we (creatures that are made of liquid water) existing on a planet that largely has temperatures in which water is liquid.  His argument is that everything about the earth is absolutely perfectly suited for us to live there: distance from the sun, size, orbital inclination, rotation period, magnetic field, air pressure, amount of oxygen, surface gravity etc.  

What he doesn’t explain is, if it was designed just for humans by the most powerful and wise being in the universe, why is it so inhospitable to life?  2/3 of the ocean is covered by salt water, which we can’t live in or on.  The poles are too cold, the deserts are too hot and have too little water and the mountains have too little oxygen.  Looking across the planet as a whole, there is actually only relatively small areas near sea level, particularly around coastlines, near fresh water, away from volcanoes, in temperate and tropical zones in which we can live.    If this planet was designed specifically for us, why is so much of it so unfriendly to us?

This is part of a series about the book “The Creation of the Universe” by Adnan Oktar. View Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Chapter 4: The order in the skies

More fine tuning argument.  If space was much more spread out, supernova dust may have been too diffuse to re-form into third generation solar systems like ours.  And we wouldn’t be here to notice.  If space was less spread out then apparently Earth’s orbit would be distorted by nearby stars.  And we wouldn’t be here to notice.   We are here, so evidently neither of those two situations happened in our universe.

The next section on entropy is rather confusing.  Thermodynamic Entropy is a very specific construct about the behaviour of heat over time in a closed system.  It is often muddied with vague notions of order and disorder, and confused with Information Entropy (which is defined in terms of disorder or unpredictability).  Here Oktar is talking about an abandoned car rusting, and a cave filling with mud and somehow from that jumps to the conclusion that the universe must have been created by an intelligent agency. 

More fine tuning argument.  If gravity weren’t balanced by the centrifugal force in our solar system, our planet might have flown off into space or collapsed into the sun.    Both fates undoubtedly happened to some parts of our solar system (and still will happen to some in the future, especially comets that aren’t in stable orbits).  Shockingly though, we happen to be on a part of the solar system that didn’t either fry or freeze billions of years ago.

Obviously, therefore, Oktar concludes that Allah set it all up like this just for us.

This is part of a series about the book “The Creation of the Universe” by Adnan Oktar. View Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Chapter 3: The rhythm of the atoms

This chapter is about carbon and oxygen.  It starts with a basic review of the structure of the atom, and then goes on to explain how carbon is formed.  All of this is basically accurate.  Every element in the periodic table apart from hydrogen and helium were formed from smaller nuclei in the heart of the sun. 

Oktar explains in detail the process of producing carbon, trying to make it seem like a very unlikely process.  Carbon formation happens in giant and supergiant stars (horizontal branch stars) that derive their energy from helium fusion – it requires higher temperatures than main sequence stars like our sun can generate.    The process of carbon formation is call the triple alpha process as it requires three alpha particles (helium nuclei).  The immense temperatures and pressures in these stars allow two helium nuclei to fuse into an unstable isotope of Beryllium.  This unstable isotope normally decays quickly, but if the temperature and pressure of the star is high enough, the rate at which it forms can match the rate at which it decays, meaning there is always some around for the next stage.  The next stage happens when it comes in contact with another helium nucleus and they fuse to form a carbon nucleus.   Eventually, these carbon-containing stars will explode as a supernova, and out of the remnants gravity will form solar systems like ours, rich in heavier elements.  Rather than being a very rare and unusual event as Oktar tries to portray, it has happened so much that oxygen and carbon are the third and fourth most common elements in our galaxy.

The next few sections make the rather obvious observations that these nuclear reactions would happen differently if the strong nuclear force had a different strength.  Well, yes, obviously.  He is just trying to try another variant of the fine tuning argument from the previous chapter.     He continues in this vein by asserting that “logically” protons should have a greater charge than electrons because they have a greater mass.  He gives no reason to suggest why we should expect that charge and mass be related but just hammers on the obvious fact that that chemistry would be very different if the charge on the electron were different.

And then he concludes that obviously Allah did it because the Quran says that “He built the heaven, he raised its vault high and made it level” (79:27).

This is part of a series about the book “The Creation of the Universe” by Adnan Oktar. View Part 1 and Part 2.

Chapter 2: The equilibrium in the explosion

This sounds like the title of an episode of Bones, but is actually just a long variation on the fine tuning argument (as, in fact are many later chapters).   The argument is essentially that if things during the big bang were just a tiny bit different, we would not exist, and therefore things must have been deliberately and consciously arranged so that they would eventually produce a universe in which we could exist.   The answer to that is the anthropic principle (which Oktar quotes in the introduction but evidently doesn’t fully understand).  If the universe had been a tiny bit different during the big bang, then we wouldn’t be here to wonder about it.   So not only should we not be surprised that things happened in such a way that our universe is capable of supporting life, we should expect it.

He presents the following arguments:

• If the speed of expansion was slower or faster, the universe might have already re-collapsed, or might be more spread out than it is now. 
• If the strengths of the 4 fundamental forces were different, chemistry as we know it might not be possible

Both of these assume that these things are all independent variables and can be varied within an infinite range.  Looked at it that way, it does seems amazing that they all happen to have values which are compatible with life.  However, there is no basis for assuming either independence or that they can take on an infinite range of values.  For instance, we know electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force are actually just two manifestations of the same force (Electroweak). Thus, these are intimately related and cannot vary freely.  Although we don’t yet know all the details, it is entirely possible the the other forces are equally constrained.

Oktar next looks at the probability of the universe having the values we see.  He cites some calculations Roger Penrose did on this in 1989 and quotes it as 10¹⁰¹²³.  This is pretty big odds and so he just concludes that it is impossible to happen by chance.  In fact, he says that in mathematics, odds of 1 in 10⁵⁰ means “zero probability” (this is actually not true) so the even lower probability given by Penrose are completely impossible.   There are two problems with using Roger Penrose’s probability in this way.  The first is that again Roger Penrose assumed all these values were infinitely free to vary independently of each other, which almost certainly is not the case.   And secondly, trying to estimate the probabilities of things that have already happened like this isn’t valid.   The odds that Roger Penrose calculates are the odds of us being able to predict in advance what all the parameters of the universe are assuming they are free to vary infinitely and independently, not the odds of the universe actually having these properties.

To give you an example of the difference, imagine I have a pack of cards. I shuffle and deal one card at random.  It is the Queen of hearts.  The odds of me selecting that card were 1 in 52.  I deal another – the six of spades.  The odds of me selecting that card were 1 in 51, and the odds of me selecting the two in that sequence were 1 in 2652 (52 * 51).  I deal a third card – the nine of clubs.  The odds of me picking it were 1 in 50, and the odds of this particular two card sequence were 1 in 132,600 (2652 * 50).  If I deal another two cards to make a poker hand, the odds of me having dealt that particular hand are approximately 1 in 311 million.   If I continue to deal out another three cards, I’m up to odds of about 1 in 1.3 quadrillion (1.3 x 10¹⁵).  If I deal another 5 cards to make a hand for Bridge (13 cards), the odds of me getting those particular 13 cards are 1 in 3.9 x 10²¹.  If I keep dealing cards, at the point I have dealt 33 cards, I have reached odds of 1 in 6.6 x 10⁵⁰. Adnan Oktar says this is something that has zero probability and thus can never happen by chance.  And yet I just did it in less than one minute with a pack of cards.  If you finish dealing out the deck, the odds that you dealt them in that particular order are 1 in 8 x 10⁶⁷. 

There are many other physical processes like this.  If you hit a golf ball, it will land on a particular blade of grass.  The odds that you could have predicted in advance which blade of grass are extremely low, but it hand to land somewhere.  Likewise, if you pick up a grain of sand from a beach, it would be impossible to predict in advance which of the billions of grains it might be that you chose – and yet, you picked one up.  So it is with the universe.  We may not have been able to predict in advance what the values would be for all the properties of the universe, yet it inevitable had to have some set of values.    And the anthropic principle explains why those properties had to be values that are compatible for life – if they weren’t we wouldn’t be here to wonder about it!

This is part of a series about the book “The Creation of the Universe” by Adnan Oktar.  View Part 1.

Chapter 1: The creation of the universe from nothingness

This chapter is essentially about the Big Bang.  Oktar describes the redshift discovered by Edwin Hubble and the Cosmic Background Radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson and concludes (along with almost all scientists) that those observations are explained better by the big bang theory than Hoyle’s steady state theory.   

He rules out the possibility of oscillations on the grounds that some entropy would be lost with each oscillation and therefore the oscillations would eventually stop.  I’m not sure this is true, but if it is, doesn’t mean that we aren’t in an oscillating universe.  He also rules out the idea of the universe being a quantum fluctuation (and therefore not needing a creator) because if so, it would be arising from a quantum vacuum, which is not “nothing”.   I don’t see why this is a problem – we have no reason to assume the universe came from nothing.  It could have come from something.  In fact, Oktar is arguing that it came from God (surely God counts as a something?), and in absence of any evidence, we can equally hypothesize that it might have come from a quantum vacuum.   So this argument is just ridiculous.

Of course, having established that the big bang happened and having assumed (with no evidence) that before the big bang there was nothing, he rhetorically asks who created it and concludes it must be Allah.  His only evidence of this is to quote a few chapters of the Quran, particularly one which says that the heavens and earth were once “sewn” together and were “unstitched”.    He uses these terms to try and say that the arabic word for sewn together implies a cosmic egg and that unstitching implies tearing apart or destroying as in an explosion.   Most translations of the Quran have nothing about this and basically just say that the heavens and earth were together and God parted them (21:30). 

This is about as scientifically accurate as the Maori creation myth which says that the earth mother Papatuanuku and the sky father Ranginui were together in a close embrace until their children (particularly Tane, god of the forest) forced them apart.