Windows to the Universe

We created the Human in the best design. (Quran 95:4)

Have you ever thought about your eyes—those twin beacons that contain the images of all the universe? They catch the light that comes from the sun and convert it into electricity and thus distinguish it from darkness, thereby allowing us to enjoy the way the world is painted. From the moment of birth, our eyeballs are constantly moving up and down and right and left. The eye is really an extension of the brain. As soon as you see something, the miracle of translating light into electricity—the language of the brain—takes place in cells of the brain. The eye can be likened to a computer, only ten thousand times more sophisticated and intricate than the most sophisticated computer now in existence. Its perfection is unsurpassable. Who can design such a perfect organ? Praise God.

Then God said, “Let there be light,” and Light appeared. And God was pleased with it, and divided light from the darkness. (Genesis 1:3-5)

Vision begins with light and our eyes are designed to catch light. Each

waking second, the eyes send about one million pieces of fresh information to the brain. These fragments of light converge in the mind as images of stunning subtlety.  The eyes can sense about 10 million different shades of color.

Do you not realize that God sends down from the sky water, whereby we produce fruits of various colors? Even the mountains have different colors; the peaks are white, or red, or some other color. And the ravens are black. (Quran 35:27)

Sight is man’s richest sense. While other animals strongly depend on the senses of hearing and smell, mankind puts its trust in sight. We see the blue sky, the orange sun, green grass, the white snow and thousands of different shades of foods and flowers. However, color is anything but. It is the finest illusion. Color arises instead in the mind, a sensation triggered by the complex exchange between light and object, eye and brain. In other words, light is formed of radiant energy which the eye senses and converts

into sight. Depending on its wave length, we see it as a million different colors. For example, raindrops separate rays of light into different wavelengths that make up the colors of a rainbow, the sign of God’s covenant with Noah and the earth:

“This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you: I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.” (Genesis 9:12-13)

Someone once said, “The eyes are the windows of the world.” We know so much about the earth and other planets because we learn by observing them and then reading about them.

…Zarathushtra with his own eye by looking at nature and through his mind by puzzling out its significance, comprehended Mazda [the Zoroastrian name for God].
(The Hymns of Zoroaster)