Evil Manifest

I was quite young when I was first introduced to the Islamic concept of the Antichrist (Arabic الدّجّال for the Deceiver/Impostor) and until last night I knew relatively nothing about him except that I was to flee when and if I ever caught sight of him. In order to know more I watched a video of a speech given by Canadian Islamic scholar Dr. Bilal Philips on the subject of the Antichrist.

Philips began his speech first by comparing the different versions of the Antichrist. He found the reference in the Christian scrolls to be to be vague and obscure. He continued to dig deeper into history by examining the Jewish scrolls (namely the Book of Daniel) and ridiculed the description found therein. Finally, he moved on to the Islamic concept after an initial bout of praise for the complexity in the narrations by the Prophet’s companions.

According to Philips, the Antichrist is a sun-tanned Caucasian male, with a muscular physique, stooped back, curly hair, green eyes (of which one is blind), protruding forehead and a most prominent feature, the Arabic letters ف , ك and ر which would be deciphered by all devout Moslems, regardless of their literacy, as the mark of the Disbeliever.

Then Philips began describing his earthly manifestation prior to the Day of Resurrection. Three years before the Antichrist is set to appear, God shall command the skies to withhold a third of its rain and the Earth a third of its produce. The second year two-thirds and everything on the third year. Then only would the Antichrist appear before man, bearing powers only a god could possess. He shall carry mountains of bread and meat, along with rivers from both Heaven and Hell, he shall be able to raise the dead, cure the sick and fling those who oppose him into the pits of Hell for all to see. (These contesters enter the real Heaven as Martyrs). Most important of all, he shall claim to be God. This ultimate trial of faith will save the faithful who reject him and bring out the infidels and the hypocrites who align with him. The latter will suffer eternal damnation.

I listened intently but all the while I was disturbed by an irritable conflict with the circumstances with which the Antichrist appears. Philips mentioned that he will be preceded by the Mahdi who will wage a global war against the infidels (a sort of crusade). Based on the narrations, I assume that after this war humanity’s stance on Earth would already be weakened. Then comes the drought and the famine brought about by Divine Intervention. We can all imagine what kind of a scenario this would create… think poverty struck regions of Africa, only a million times worse than that if agriculture is eradicated altogether. After taking this into consideration, how could any man (or woman for that matter) refuse the salvation offered by the Antichrist? How could anyone who is on the fringe of death refuse a morsel of food, even if it comes from this unholy impersonator, aided in his deception of mankind by God Himself? If a man were to be responsible for such acts of deception, would he not be deemed unfathomably cruel? Nobel winning physicist Steven Weinberg once said in an interview by a BBC documentary “The Atheism Tapes” by Jonathan Miller:

“Maybe at the very bottom of it... I really don't like God. You know, it's silly to say I don't like God because I don't believe in God, but in the same sense that I don't like Iago, or the Reverend Slope or any of the other villains of literature, the god of traditional Judaism and Christianity and Islam seems to me a terrible character. He's [a God] who obsessed the degree to which people worship him and anxious to punish with the most awful torments those who don't worship him in the right way. Now I realise that many people don't believe in that any more who call themselves Muslims or Jews or Christians, but that is the traditional God and he's a terrible character. I don't like him”

Sadly, I must agree with Weinberg. His observations are accurate albeit exaggerated. However, I REFUSE to believe that those traits are inherent to God’s true nature. They are in stark contrast to the Divine Characters that I do believe in... that God is The Most Beneficent, The Peace and Blessing, The Merciful, The Ever Providing, The Loving and The Truth and The Compassionate. After a lot of contemplation I reached only one conclusion. We have distorted our collective perception of God to further our own trifle agendas.

May God forgive us all for the atrocities we have committed and continue to commit in His Name.

The Fact of Evolution

I had just woken up from my early mid-evening beauty sleep and since I didn't have anything better to do but to watch the 5 episodes of Dexter I had downloaded all throughout last week, I thought I would engage dad (the only unsuspecting victim in the nearby proximity) in a little father-son debate. The subject being Evolution, I asked him what he thought it is. Just turning 50, Dad never studied the kind of science kids today are subjected to and I was pleasantly surprised to hear him reply "some kind of change brought about by nature?".

I explained to him that Evolution is the process by which organisms (every living thing) changes, for the better or worse, in an attempt to cope with its changing Environment. I took him to the Savannahs of Africa, where a lioness (This species have a strange social hierarchy. The more agile females does most of the hunting while the alpha male defends the pride's territories. A task coupled with his brute strength, for which he demands the Lion's Share) uses her fur color of orange to blend in with the surrounding grass (camouflage). I asked him what would happen if the lions' environment changed to a different color and he promptly replied that the lion's much more agile prey, the gazelle or the antelope would take off before she got close enough to pounce or pursue it. As a result, the lions would go hungry and eventually fade away from the face of the Earth (Extinction). But this doesn't happen, not always. Something triggers a series of changes in the species which allows them to cope with their surrounding changes, to adapt. In a fictional ecology, the lion's coat simply changes color, once again affording the mighty beast of its stealth, on which it is entirely dependant on for the very sake of survival. Dad contemplated all this for a while, and agreed that its a very likely possibility. I further explained to him that the adaptive measures the species took were built-in by nature and that they didn't necessarily have to be good or progressive. Then I explained the reason why I personally supported the theory. Morphological evidence (fossil records of creatures detailing descent from the Cambrian period more than 500-million years ago) and molecular evidence (DNA comparisons of organic life showing similarity). I also explained that most eukaryotic organisms take hundreds of thousands of years to develop a single feature, while simpler creatures such as viruses evolve rapidly, as shown by HIVs resistance to medication. (The reason why we haven't found a cure).

Evolution explains that all life on earth descended from a common ancestral being (common descent) and this is where the theory's non-conformity with religious ideologies begin. They are chiefly two sources of controversy. Some people think that Evolution limit the actions of an omnipotent God on His creation. Professor Frink when asked about his professional views on the matter, responds:

"Of course not [agreeing that God exists]. It just says that God is an impotent nothing from nowhere with less power than the Under Secretary of Agriculture, who has very little power in our system".

Dad was quick to point this out too. I told him that I did not believe that the lack of a divine intervention on each and everything that He created suggests that either He is non-existent or having power less than the under secretary Frink mentioned. Why does people find it so hard to believe God is unable, even with his omnipotence, to create a cosmos that is self-sustaining? Create life that can change with its surrounding environment? I told dad that is one of the most important reasons why I believe in His existence. The second reason why creationists dispel evolution is where it places us humans, as animals, sharing common ancestry with all other animals. Dad contested this for a while, but I told him that he was just speaking out of his human pride instilled by religion. Just because we walk upright and build weapons of mass destruction does not mean we are God's gift to the cosmos, and nor does it mean our creation is anything special. We have evolved too, probably from a less intelligent creature, and we have vestigial remains to prove it; the vermiform appendix and wisdom teeth to name some. To put it in the words of Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould:

"Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."

Still undefeated dad quoted the Koran (sorry, I like this anglicization better than the apostrophe-ridden conventional spelling) attesting God's creation of Adam from dust. I simply suggested that scholars may have misinterpreted the verse (Quite possible the way I see it, after all the book was written by the Almighty Himself. We can't expect it to be anything shallow). All life on earth has been characterised as carbon-lifeforms, which suggests that not just humans, but all life on earth was created using Carbon (a major constituent of soil, which makes up dust). Well, needless to say, dad swallowed this up and now believes Evolution is valid, that is until something else comes along and disproves it.

Note: I just read that evolution does not necessarily have to be progressive. Natural selection may favour less complex features if this adaptation increases the chance of survival; devolution.