Signs in Creation
Look again
Places to start looking: the sky, the sea, small creatures and ourselves, each beside the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, the Qur'an and today's science.
Every sign here points to its Maker. The Qur'an calls the things of creation āyāt, signs of Allah; the Psalms say the heavens declare the glory of God.
In this series
2 minEpisode 1: Wonder, not proofWhy we never say a verse “predicted” science.
47 minEpisode 2: The map of signsEvery natural sign we found in the scriptures: 122 of them, in 10 groups, each with its Jewish and Christian echo and what science says today.
2 minEpisode 3: Look closerThree galleries of the small, the shining and the growing things that scripture asks us to look at.
9 minEpisode 4: The ant who warned her peopleA king hears an ant call out to save her colony, and he smiles. Proverbs sends us to the same small teacher.
9 minEpisode 5: The bee was inspiredA bee comes home and dances a map. Scripture says she was guided.
9 minEpisode 6: Birds held in the skyWings spread, wings folded. Who holds them up? A sign you can see from any window.
9 minEpisode 7: A camel through a needle's eyeThe same impossible picture in the Gospels and the Qur'an, and the same scholarly argument about a rope.
10 minEpisode 8: The cow without blemishThe longest chapter of the Qur'an is named after a cow. Behind it lies a murder, a lot of questions, and a heifer the Torah knows too.
10 minEpisode 9: The crow that taught burialThe first killing in scripture ends with a bird scratching at the ground. Science now knows crows study their dead closely.
10 minEpisode 10: Darknesses, and the lightIn the Qur'an, darkness always comes in the plural and light is always one. Physics, and the human eye, have their own things to say about both.
10 minEpisode 11: By the dawn as it breathesBefore the sun appears, the sky has already started to glow and the birds have already started to sing. Three faiths rise early to meet it.
10 minEpisode 12: By the fig and the oliveTwo of the oldest trees people ever planted, sworn by in the Qur'an and sat under in the Bible.
10 minEpisode 13: The four looksA camel, the sky, the mountains, the ground under your feet. Look at how each was made.
11 minEpisode 14: Green, then strawA meadow goes from green to gold to dust in a single summer. Three scriptures use it to talk about the length of a life.
10 minEpisode 15: The chargers, striking sparksBreath, hooves, sparks and dust: one of the Qur'an's shortest chapters opens with a cavalry charge, and then turns on the reader.
9 minEpisode 16: Your languages and your coloursSeven thousand ways of speaking, every shade of skin: the Qur'an files our differences under wonders.
9 minEpisode 17: Light upon lightA niche, a lamp, a glass like a star, and oil that almost shines on its own.
10 minEpisode 18: The lights that setA star, the moon, the sun: each rose, each set. Abraham's question, seen through his eyes.
11 minEpisode 19: The moon's stationsA thin old crescent, curved like a dried date-stalk. A new one, watched for from rooftops. Ramadan, Passover and Easter all hang on the same moon.
10 minEpisode 20: Mountains set firmSeashells on the top of Everest, roots of rock beneath every range: the mountains are older and stranger than they look.
13 minEpisode 21: Neighbouring plots, one waterTwo fields side by side, the same rain on both, and the fruit still tastes different. The Qur'an calls it a sign for people who think.
9 minEpisode 22: The night and the dayThe most ordinary sign of all: every evening the dark comes, every morning it goes. Your body keeps the time.
8 minEpisode 23: Neither drowsiness nor sleepEvery living thing we know has to rest. The Throne Verse and Psalm 121 describe the One who never does.
9 minEpisode 24: Each swims in an orbitThe sun runs its course, the moon wanes to a thin old palm stalk, and all three faiths set their calendars by them.
9 minEpisode 25: Rain on dead earthBare ground, one downpour, and a desert in flower. So, the Qur'an says, will be the rising.
9 minEpisode 26: If the sea were inkThree faiths reach for the same image: all the oceans as ink, and still not enough.
9 minEpisode 27: He splits the grainA date stone sat in a jar for two thousand years. Then someone planted it.
9 minEpisode 28: How He stretches the shadowWatch a shadow cross a courtyard and you are watching the Earth turn.
10 minEpisode 29: Sleep: the soul taken and returnedEvery night we let go of everything and trust we will wake. Three faiths say the same words as they do it.
9 minEpisode 30: The spider's houseThe toughest thread in nature, and still the flimsiest house: a parable about what we lean on.
11 minEpisode 31: Storm at seaWhen the waves come from every side, people pray who never prayed before. Three scriptures describe the same boat.
14 minEpisode 32: The plagues: warning after warningA river runs red, frogs fill the houses, locusts strip the fields.
10 minEpisode 33: The thunder glorifies HimA flash, a count of seconds, then the roll. The Qur'an hears praise in it; the Psalms hear a voice; physics hears air torn open by heat.
10 minEpisode 34: Where two seas meetFresh water and salt, side by side, with a line between them. The Qur'an calls it a barzakh.
10 minEpisode 35: Shaped in the wombYou began as one cell the size of a full stop. Three scriptures stand in wonder at what happened next.All three Abrahamic faiths say the world itself speaks of God. In the Hebrew Bible, on the fourth day of creation the lights in the sky are made “for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years” (Genesis 1:14). The Psalms hear the sky speaking without words: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork; Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night revealeth knowledge” (Psalm 19:2-3, JPS 1917).
The New Testament carries the thought on: Paul writes that God's “invisible things” are “clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity” (Romans 1:20, WEB).
The Qur'an calls the wonders of the natural world āyāt, “signs”, a word widely treated as a close relative of the Hebrew ʾot, “sign”. It is the same word it uses for its own verses: a star, a raindrop or an ant is, in a sense, a line of scripture written in the world. “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.” (Qur'an 3:190, Pickthall). The invitation is not to decode the universe, but to look at it, and keep looking.
Each page here sets a sign beside what all three faiths say about it in their own words, and beside what scientists have found, with sources. We never claim that a verse predicted or proved science. Wonder, not proof: the sign is there for anyone who looks.
Wonder, not proof: why we never say a verse “predicted” science →
Sky
Earth and water
Living things
Us
More signs
Keep looking
60 sec
GalleriesLook closerThe small, the shining and the growing things scripture asks us to see.
60 sec
PlayThe Ladder of ScaleFrom an atom to the observable universe.Watch more: Look again
10 films and talks, chosen for this page. They play here.
The Signs Of God In Nature | Green(ing) Muslim Programme - Sejad Mekić
Cambridge Central Mosque · 2 min
Cambridge Central Mosque: two minutes on the signs of God in nature.
Wonder at God's Creation
BioLogos · 2 min
BioLogos: wonder at God's creation, a short Christian reflection.
The Known Universe by AMNH #datavisualization
American Museum of Natural History · 6 min
Our Planet | Humpback Whales | Clip | Netflix
Netflix · 4 min
Bioluminescence in the deep sea: How and why do animals create their own light?
MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) · 4 min
Ten Million Starlings Swarm (7 Tonnes of Bird Poo) | Superswarm | BBC Earth
BBC Earth · 6 min
The Waggle Dance | Inside the Animal Mind | BBC
BBC Earth · 3 min
BBC Earth: the honeybee's waggle dance.
Pillars of Creation Star in New Visualization from NASA’s Hubble and Webb Telescopes
NASA Goddard · 2 min
What if there were no Moon?
whoisallah.org.uk · 1 min
- More films and talks on F-ILMWatch free