| HOW MANY EARTHS ARE THERE? |
| If you open
the Quran to the first surah, you will notice it begins as follows: "In
the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord
of the Worlds." Worlds? Not just one? Yes . . . worlds! There is the physical
world, the spiritual world, the world of bacteria, and so forth. That,
obviously, is one sense in which we can understand 'worlds'.
Another verse of the Quran, however,
makes it clear that there are many earths (see Quran 65:12). Is it possible
that there may be other earths out there?
In a recent article published in the Toronto Star, two scientists advanced evidence that there may indeed be many earths waiting to be discovered. The headline read: "Earths may be dime a dozen out there." The Quran also uses the symbolic
plural number 7 to indicate the existence of a plurality of heavens (see
Quran 2:29, for example). Dr. Bucaille comments that this is "confirmed
by modern science due to the observations experts in astrophysics have
made on galactic systems and their very large number" (p. 150).
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