Epigraph:
Surah Qiyamah is a very short Surah. It starts off citing fingerprints to convince humanity about our accountability in Afterlife, and concludes by pointing out the amazing miracle of the mammalian placenta that the All Knowing God, who created this miracle is perfectly capable of recreating humans.
Our day to day thinking has an element of anesthesia
To fully admire placenta we have to look at all the 5000 mammalian species
In Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1892, Inspector Eduardo Alvarez made the first criminal fingerprint identification. He was able to identify Francisca Rojas, a woman who murdered her two sons and cut her own throat in an attempt to place blame on another. Her bloody print was left on a door post, proving her presence at the scene of the murder.
Sir Francis Galton published his book, “Finger Prints” in 1892, establishing the individuality and permanence of fingerprints. The book included the first published classification system for fingerprints. In 1893, Galton published the book “Decipherment of Blurred Finger Prints,” and in 1895 published the book “Fingerprint Directories.”
Galton’s interest in fingerprints included assistance for his research into Eugenics. Eugenics focused on manipulating heredity or breeding to produce better people and on eliminating those considered biologically inferior.
While Galton soon discovered fingerprints were of no help to his genetic research (fingerprints offered no firm clues to an individual’s intelligence or genetic history), his research supported what Herschel and Faulds already believed:
(1) Except for injury or disease, fingerprint ridge arrangements do not change over the course of an individual’s lifetime; and
(2) No two fingerprints are exactly the same.
According to Galton’s calculations, the odds of two individual fingerprints being the same were 1 in 64 billion.
“We created man from an essence of clay, then We placed him as a drop of fluid in a safe place, then We made that drop into a clinging form, and We made that form into a lump of flesh, and We made that lump into bones, and We clothed those bones with flesh, and later We made him into other forms ––glory be to God, the best of creators!––then you will die and then, on the Day of Resurrection, you will be raised up again.” (Al Quran 23:12-16)
Presented by Zia H Shah MD
The above short video will show you how a retrovirus, a virus from the family of HIV, became a central figure in the creation or evolution of placenta that now humans share with all the other 5000 species of mammals, some 200 million years ago.
Was it a fluke of evolution or was some Transcendent God guiding the process, from beyond time, space and matter?
The answer depends on the mind set of the observer. Those with an agnostic and atheist mind set will attribute it to blind chance followed by natural selection.
Those who believe in a God for so many other reasons in their lives will see the hidden hand of God in this miraculous creation that in the above quoted verses is described as ‘the clinging form.’ After alluding to placenta, Allah describes how a baby forms over the nine months in case of humans and tells us as we marvel over the details: “Glory be to God, the best of creators!”
What the atheists find easy to imagine to be a blind process and so many believers take for granted has another twist to the plot. Humans have so many different organs and tissues, for example: bones, kidneys, blood vessels, heart, liver, brain and of course uterus and placenta. Whereas the modern physicians with their technological industry can make artificial bones, kidneys, blood vessels, heart or possible substitutions for them but not liver, brain, uterus or placenta. At least not yet!
But a retrovirus figured it out?