Look at the creation
Science
Twenty episodes on physics, chemistry, life, the Earth and the human body: the best of what science shows, set beside what Jews, Christians and Muslims say about the Creator.
Science shows how the world works. These pages ask what it points to: Allah, the One God whom Jews, Christians and Muslims call the Creator of everything.
In this series
11 minEpisode 1: The sky we breatheA layer of gas thinner, compared with the Earth, than the skin of an apple.
10 minEpisode 2: Carbon, the element of lifeDiamond and pencil lead, sugar and DNA, coal and the air you breathe out: one element with four hands builds the chemistry of every living thing.
11 minEpisode 3: DNA: the book inside every cellThree billion letters, written in a four-letter alphabet, copied every time a cell divides.
11 minEpisode 4: A universe set just so?Change some of nature's numbers a little and there would be no stars, no carbon, no us.
10 minEpisode 5: Gravity: the hand that holds the skyThe weakest force in nature keeps your feet on the ground, the Moon in its path and galaxies whole. Nobody yet knows what it really is.
9 minEpisode 6: LightIt is the fastest thing there is, the oldest thing we can see, and the reason you can read this. Light is stranger than it looks.
10 minEpisode 7: Mountains on the moveThe ground beneath your feet is drifting about as fast as your fingernails grow.
10 minEpisode 8: The deepThe ocean covers seven tenths of the planet, makes half its oxygen and holds most of its living space.
10 minEpisode 9: The periodic table: 118 building blocksEverything you have ever touched is made from a short list of elements.
9 minEpisode 10: Photosynthesis: eating sunlightEvery leaf is a solar-powered factory that turns air and water into sugar and gives out the oxygen we breathe.
11 minEpisode 11: How big is everything?From a picnic blanket to two trillion galaxies, the numbers are so large they stop making sense. That is where the wonder starts.
10 minEpisode 12: Made of stardustThe hydrogen in your body is almost as old as the universe.
10 minEpisode 13: The beginningThe universe has a history, and it started hot, dense and small.
10 minEpisode 14: The brain, and the mystery of the mindEighty-six billion nerve cells, a hundred trillion connections, and the power of a dim light bulb.
9 minEpisode 15: The cell: a city too small to seeYou are made of about 37 trillion cells, each a busy city of molecular machines.
9 minEpisode 16: The eyeA living camera that focuses itself, cleans itself, works from starlight to midday sun and can notice a single particle of light.
10 minEpisode 17: The body that heals itselfYour heart will beat about three billion times.
9 minEpisode 18: TimeWe measure it to a billionth of a second, and still nobody can say what it is. Time runs differently on a mountain, and only ever forwards.
10 minEpisode 19: The water cycle: rain that has been round beforeThe rain on your window has been sea, cloud, glacier and river, perhaps many thousands of times.
10 minEpisode 20: Water, the strangest ordinary thingIt is in every cell, it covers most of the planet, and it breaks almost every rule a liquid should follow. Life depends on its oddness.All three Abrahamic faiths tell people to look at the world. The Psalms ask: 'When I behold Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast established; what is man, that Thou art mindful of him?' (Psalm 8:4-5, JPS 1917). And they sing, 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork' (Psalm 19:2, JPS 1917). In the Gospels Jesus tells his listeners to “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow” (Matthew 6:28, WEB). The Qur'an makes the same call in its own words. 'Lo! In the creation of the heavens and the earth and (in) the difference of night and day are tokens (of His Sovereignty) for men of understanding, Such as remember Allah, standing, sitting, and reclining, and consider the creation of the heavens and the earth, (and say): Our Lord! Thou createdst not this in vain. Glory be to Thee! Preserve us from the doom of Fire.' (3:190-191, Pickthall). It asks its first listeners, 'Will they not regard the camels, how they are created? And the heaven, how it is raised? And the hills, how they are set up? And the earth, how it is spread?' (88:17-20, Pickthall).
Believers in all three traditions have answered that call with science. Al-Biruni measured the size of the Earth from a mountaintop. Ibn al-Haytham, in Cairo, tested by experiment how light and sight work, a thousand years ago. Maimonides, rabbi and physician, taught that studying the wisdom of creation leads to love and awe of God. Isaac Newton saw his laws of gravity as describing the work of 'an intelligent and powerful Being'. Gregor Mendel, a friar, founded genetics in a monastery garden. Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest, first proposed that the universe had a hot, dense beginning, and warned against using it as proof of God.
That is the spirit of this section: wonder, not proof. Each episode explains what scientists actually know, plainly and with sources, including where they disagree. Then it lets Judaism, Christianity and Islam each speak in their own words, and leaves room for you to think. We never say a scripture 'predicted' a scientific discovery. We think the universe is astonishing enough as it is. Looking closely at the creation is one of the oldest ways people have found to think about the Creator.
Cosmos and physics
How big everything is, what light and gravity are, the puzzle of time, a universe set just so, and the beginning.
Chemistry and the elements
The 118 building blocks, the stars that forged them, and two ordinary substances that make life possible.
Life
The book inside every cell, the cell itself, plants that eat sunlight, the eye and the mystery of the mind.
Earth
The thin sky we breathe, the unexplored deep, mountains on the move and rain that has been round before.
Us
The heart, the immune system and the body that heals itself.
Cosmos and physics
Chemistry and the elements
Life
Earth
Us: the human body
Watch more: Science
8 films and talks, chosen for this page. They play here.
Shoaib Malik - Islam, Science and God (1/4)
Cambridge Muslim College · 18 min
Cambridge Muslim College: Shoaib Malik on Islam, science and God.
How Science and Religion Can Agree on the Age of Our Universe | Faith Meets Fact Ep. 1
Jewish Learning Institute · 10 min
Jewish Learning Institute: how science and religion can agree on the age of the universe.
Choosing Science & God: A Testimony
BioLogos · 3 min
BioLogos: choosing science and God, a scientist's own story.
Prof. Roger Trigg on Rationality in Science and Faith
The Faraday Institute · 7 min
Beyond the Conflict Between Science and Religion | J. van Huyssteen
Closer To Truth · 12 min
The Known Universe by AMNH #datavisualization
American Museum of Natural History · 6 min
American Museum of Natural History: The Known Universe.
Powers of Ten™ (1977)
Eames Office · 9 min
Powers of Ten (1977), the Eames film from a picnic blanket to the edge of the universe.
How the Universe Might End
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 3 min
- More films and talks on F-ILMWatch free