Page 39 - Devotion Among Animals Revealing the Work of God
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Awareness in Animals
considerately and constructively toward other animals in their com-
munity. One example for this can be observed when food becomes
scarce. In such a situation, one might assume that the stronger indi-
viduals would eliminate the others and seek to keep the limited re-
sources for themselves. But things don't happen the way evolution-
ists would expect. In his book, the renowned evolutionist Peter
Kropotkin gives examples of such behavior: In situations where food
resources dry up, he states, ants begin to draw from their food stores.
Birds migrate in flocks. And in a stream where the number of
beavers becomes unsustainable, the younger ones migrate north,
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and the older ones south. As these facts demonstrate, no merciless
struggle for food or shelter is going on. To the contrary, it can be ob-
served that even in the hardest of times, there is solidarity and co-
operation in nature, as if each animal were trying to help ease the
conditions for the others.
We must not disregard one important point: None of these ani-
mals possesses the intelligence or awareness to make such decisions or
to create such a protocol. How is it, then, that they can set a common
goal to which they all adhere—and that their chosen aim can be the
most effective of all?
No doubt it is God, the Lord of all the universe, Who created these
creatures, inspires them to the most befitting behavior, and guards
them at all times. God reveals His protection over all His creation as
follows:
There is no creature on the Earth which is not dependent
upon God for its provision. He knows where it lives and
where it dies. They are all in a Clear Book. (Qur'an, 11: 6)
In the face of these realities, the evolutionists' claim that nature is
a battlefield, that the selfish ones that fight in their own self-interest
come out on top, is unsustainable. The famous evolutionist John
Maynard Smith asks his fellow evolutionists the following question:
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