Muslim creationism part 6

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.