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Reflecting upon the deadly tsunamis that brought death to nations upon all shores of an ocean Dr Abdullah Robin discusses the fragility of life and asks if science can determine the origin of life with the same confidence that it can pinpoint the origin of a tsunami.
Of all the phenomena in the universe, life is arguably the most awe inspiring; certainly the most complex and supremely tenacious, and yet so fragile: so easily snuffed out; circumscribed by unbending physical laws of nature. However grand our designs we are all subject to the same laws that govern the rest of the universe. We can understand many of these laws and even manipulate them for our benefit, but we cannot change them.
The terrifying tsunami that recently ripped through the lives of people on opposite sides of the Indian Ocean is an example of the simple unrelenting predictability of these laws and the tenuous grip we really have upon this planet. The unprepared victims of this disaster were hit by a wave that propagated across an entire ocean at more than 500km per hour; whose height increased in known proportions as it passed from deep to shallow water, and whose speed could be precisely calculated for any given depth of water. The speed is simply a function of the product of two numbers, the acceleration due to gravity and the depth of water in metres, and so as it approached land it slowed down and here is the secret of its menace. While moving at close to the speed of sound in the open ocean, ships in its path would scarcely feel its passage beneath them: a few moments of surging as the ocean under them rose in height by no more than a few inches and then there would be calm and scarcely a preconception of what was racing its way toward distant targets. Death came as the tsunami, which is really a series of waves with exceptionally long wavelengths of hundreds of kilometres, entered shallower coastal waters; as the front of each wave slowed down more and more the rear of each wave was in deeper water, and hence still going fast: this caused the same volume of water to be pushed into a smaller space of ocean with nowhere to go but rearing up: up from a height of inches to a fearsome fifteen metres in places. We all know the rest.
The tsunami that did this was as much a victim of the inexorable laws of the universe as those who tragically lost their lives in its waters. In such moments life seems very fragile compared to the physical universe, but life is the greater wonder of complexity and design. Its complex systems that regulate growth, reproduction, awareness and movement are a wonder, and human beings with their unique cognitive abilities are a wonder amongst wonders.
These observations about life, breathtaking complexity and fragility, drive many to ask about its origin and purpose. The complexity of life being more often the basis for contemplation about origins while life's fragility, the suddenness with which life can end, being more often a basis for reflection on life's purpose.
Many people consider that the limitations affecting us all are irrefutable evidence for the existence of a creator who set these limits; Muslims especially hold firmly to this belief.
Another argument for the existence of a creator is the argument of design in nature: so complex is life, beyond anything that human technology can make, that it could not have arisen by chance. However, the view of design in nature has become an object of derision. Popular books such as Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker" have helped establish a new orthodoxy that derides Christian beliefs and leaves no room for a resurgence of Islamic beliefs in the world today. The neo Darwinian argument of Dawkins' book is that complex biological systems have evolved gradually in a series of small steps powered by chance genetic mutations directed by natural selection. Natural selection is the "Blind watchmaker": Dawkins' answer to the eighteenth century theologian William Paley who compared nature with the watch and by analogy concluded that if the watch must have had a designer external to it then nature which is greater by far must also have an external designer (God). In Paley's own words:
"every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation."
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