29يَسأَلُهُ مَن فِي السَّماواتِ وَالأَرضِ ۚ كُلَّ يَومٍ هُوَ في شَأنٍAli UnalAll that are in the heavens and on the earth entreat Him (in their needs). Every (moment of every) day, He is in a new manifestation (with all His Attributes and Names as the Divine Being).1Following classical Newtonian physics, and under the spell of developments in science, physicists of the 19th century claimed that they could explain every phenomenon in the universe. E. Dubois Reymond, at a meeting held in memory of Leibniz, at the Prussian Academy, in 1880, was a bit more humble: “There have remained seven enigmas in the universe, three of which we have as yet been unable to solve: The essential nature of matter and force; the essence and origin of movement; and the nature of consciousness. Three of the remaining that we can solve, although with great difficulties, are the origin of life; the order in the universe and the apparent purpose for it; and the origin of thought and language. As for the seventh, we can say nothing about it. It is individual free will” (A. Adivar, Ilim ve Din [“Science and Religion”], 282). The sub-atomic world threw all scientists into confusion. This world and the “quantum cosmology” which it introduced, rather than being a heap or assemblage of concrete things, is made up of five elements: the mass of the electron in the field where an action occurs (M), the mass of the proton (m), the electrical charge which these two elements carry, the energy quanta (h) – the amount of the energy remaining during the occurrence of the action – and the unchanging speed of light (c). These five elements of the universe can be reduced even further to action or energy waves traveling through space in tiny packets or quanta. Since the quanta required for an action are peculiar to it and exist independently of the quanta required for the previous action, it becomes impossible to predict the exact state of the universe. If the universe is in T1 state now, it cannot be predicted that it will be the same at time T2. Paul Renteln, assistant professor of physics at California State University, writes: Modern physicists live in two different worlds. In one world we can predict the future position and momentum of a particle if we know its present position and momentum. This is the world of classical physics, including the physics described by Einstein’s theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity. In the second world it is impossible to predict the exact position and momentum of a particle. This is the probabilistic, subatomic world of quantum mechanics. General relativity and quantum mechanics are the two great pillars that form the foundation of 20th-century physics, and yet their precepts assume two different kinds of universe. (American Scientist, Nov.-Dec., 1991, p. 508) The real nature of this sub-atomic world and the events taking place in it make it impossible to construct a theory to describe them because they cannot be observed. One reason for their unobservability is that, as Renteln writes, in an attempt to propose a theory which he calls quantum gravity, to reconcile the two different worlds of classical and quantum physics, “the events take place at a scale far smaller than any realm yet explored by experimental physics. It is only when particles approach about 10-35 meters that their gravitational interactions have to be described in the same quantum-mechanical terms that we adopt to understand the other forces of nature. This distance is 1,024 times smaller than the diameter of an atom – which means that the characteristic scale of quantum gravity bears the same relation to the size of an atom as an atom bears to the size of the solar system. To probe such small distances would require a particle accelerator 1,015 times more powerful than the proposed Superconducting Supercollider.” Later research suggests that the electron is more of an energy field cloud that fluctuates around a nucleus. The nucleus itself seems to be composed of two smaller constituents – protons and neutrons. However, in the 1960s, physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig confirmed in experiments that protons and neutrons were made up of even more elementary particles, which Gell-Mann called “quarks.” Quarks cannot be seen, not just because they are too small, but also because they do not seem to be quite “all there.” Quarks are better described as swirls of dynamic energy, which means that solid matter is not, at its fundamental level, solid at all. Anything you hold in your hand and which seems solid, is really a quivering, shimmering, lacy lattice of energy, pulsating millions of times every second as billions of fundamental particles gyrate and spin in an eternal dance. At its most fundamental level, everything is energy held together by forces of incredible power. This is not all that makes us unable to predict even the nearest future of the universe. According to Werner Heisenberg’s theories, at the time when we can know either where a particle is or how fast it is traveling, we cannot know both. This is because the very act of measuring the particle alters its behavior. Measuring the particle’s speed changes its position, and measuring its position changes its speed. However, unpredictability in the sub-atomic world does not change anything in our everyday, predictable world. Everything works according to the basic laws of classical Newtonian physics (Groping in the Light, 1990, pp. 11–17). Why is this so, and how should our view of the world and events be? Scientists who believe in the existence of God and His creation of the universe suggest that creation was not a single event. That is, God did not create the universe as a single act and then leave it to operate according to the laws He established. Rather, creation is a continuous act (creatio continua). In other words, roughly like the movement of energy or electricity and its illuminating our world by means of bulbs, existence continuously comes from God, and returns to and perishes in Him. Through the manifestation of all His Names, God continuously creates, annihilates, and re-creates the universe. Some medieval Muslim scholarly saints, such as Muhyi’d-Dīn ibn al-’Arabī and Mawlānā Jalālu’d-Dīn ar-Rūmī, called these pairs of acts the continuous cycle of coming into existence and dying. Because of the incredible speed of this movement, the universe appears to be uniform and continuous. Ar-Rūmī likens this to the spinning of a staff on one end of which there is fixed a light. When spun at speed, the light on the end of the staff appears to be a circle of light. Modern researchers liken it to the projection of a film onto the screen. A film-strip is composed of numerous frames, but the film is projected onto the screen, appearing as an undivided, complete frame. So, the universe incessantly undergoes appearance and disappearance, or perishing and re-creation, but we have the impression that it continues to exist without any interruption. In consequence, all creatures incessantly need God throughout their entire life – when they come into existence and in order to continue to exist. So God Almighty constantly manifests Himself with All His Attributes and Names, which have their source in His Essential Qualities as God. All the creatures exist because He creates; they meet their needs because He is the All-Providing and the All-Munificent; and they continue to exist because He is Self-Subsisting and the All-Maintaining. (For another important meaning of this verse, see note 12 below.)