Introduction

But they have adopted gods apart from Him which do not create anything but are themselves created. They have no power to harm or help themselves. They have no power over death or life or resurrection. (Surat al-Furqan: 3)

There are hundreds of species of spiders in the world. These small animals can appear to us sometimes as a construction engineer capable of performing calculations for building its nest, sometimes as an interior designer making complicated plans, sometimes a chemist making incredibly strong and flexible threads, deadly venoms, and dissolving acids, and sometimes as a hunter using the most cunning tactics.

Despite their numerous superior characteristics, nobody in his daily life even bothers to think what special creations spiders are. According to this underestimation there is nothing surprising in the existence of spiders, nor in that of anything else. But this is a completely mistaken way of thinking. Because, as we begin to learn more about spiders, as about the behaviour of all creatures, examining for example their methods of hunting, reproducing, and defending themselves, we find ourselves face-to-face with characteristics that fill us with awe.

In nature all living things adopt behaviour patterns that require intelligence in order to live their lives. These behaviour patterns, that underlie skills, proficiencies and superior planning capabilities, have one thing in common. Each and every one necessarily requires ability. Skills that a human being can master only by learning, and gaining proficiency and experience, already exist in these living creatures from the moment they are born. The later parts of this book consist of questions which need to be answered: how these abilities, which will be described in some detail, came about, and how living creatures learned them. These living things, acting in accordance with such highly intelligent blueprints, hunting with such calculation, and when necessary, behaving like chemical engineers, knowing what material to produce in a particular situation, really baffle scientists who study them. So much so that even evolutionist scientists admit that the cleverest living creatures have characteristics necessitating intelligence. Scientist Richard Dawkins, despite the fact that he is an evolutionist, describes spiders' behaviour in this way in his book, Climbing Mount Improbable:

On our route we shall have occasion to look at spider webs - at the bewildering, though unconscious, ingenuity with which they are made and how they work.¹

Actually, saying these, Dawkins comes up against such questions as "how the animals' conscious and intelligent behaviour emerged, and what its source was," which cannot be explained in any way by the theory of evolution. Really, questions such as "How do living creatures come to possess this intelligence, and how do they learn where to apply it?" are ones to which the defenders of the theory of evolution are unable to supply open and definitive answers.

At this point an examination of the arguments the evolutionists use to try to answer the question of conscious and intelligent behaviour in animals will be appropriate. Let us do this by explaining the real meaning of a term which evolutionists use in their claims.

Evolutionists searching for an answer to the question of "how living creatures came to have purposeful behaviour" use "instinct" to try to shed light on the matter. But they are in no way successful. This can be clearly seen by a more thorough appreciation of the concept of "instinct." Evolutionists say that animals engage in such things as devotion, planning, tactics or behaviour requiring special abilities, which require consciousness and intelligence, thanks to "instinct." But, of course, evolutionists' just saying this is not sufficient. In addition to making this claim, they also have to provide answers to such questions as how this behaviour first came about, how it was passed down the generations, and how the concept of "instinct" managed to give living creatures consciousness and intelligence. However, evolutionists have absolutely no answers to these questions. Gordon Rattray Taylor is an evolutionist expert in genetics. He has this to say about instincts:

When we ask ourselves how an instinctive pattern of behaviour arose in the first place and became hereditarily fixed we are given no answer. ²

Other evolutionists say that all living creatures' behaviour is founded not on instinct but on their genetic programming. But in that case they have to explain who wrote the programme and installed it in living creatures. But evolutionists are unable to do this. Despite being the originator of the theory, Charles Darwin admits their dilemma in the following words:

So wonderful an instinct as that of the hive-bee making its cells will probably have occurred to many readers, as a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.³

As the above makes quite clear, a concept such as "instinct" is absolutely insufficient to shed light on living creatures' conscious behaviour. Of course there is a power that programmes living creatures and teaches them what to do. But this is not a result of "Mother Nature" as it is called, nor of the living creature itself, which will defend its young at the cost of its own life, or which will go back to deceive the enemy with various tactics in order to save the life of another member of its own group.

The power which gives them all these characteristics, which creates their intelligent behaviour and purposeful movements, belongs to God. God is the only lord of that intelligence which we witness in living creatures in countless examples in nature. It is God Who inspires living creatures to do what they do.

It is impossible to explain the behaviour of any living creature by coincidence, or by any other mechanism or interesting concept. No such claim can be any more than a deception. All this is revealed in one of His verses:

Say: 'Have you ever seen your associates whom you appeal to instead of to God? Show me what they have created of the earth; or do they have a partnership in the heavens?' Have We given them a Book whose Clear Signs they follow? No indeed! The wrongdoers promise each other nothing but delusion. (Surah Fatir: 40)

The living creature which is the subject of this book, the spider, its behaviour patterns and the flawless mechanisms it possesses, is one of those that give the lie to the theory of evolution, or, to put it more robustly, "destroy the theory of evolution." The pages that follow will demonstrate one of the countless miracles of God's creation, the spider. At the same time they will once again set forth how the theory of evolution, which relies totally on coincidences, has fallen into impotence and ridicule.