And this world’s life is naught but a play and an idle sport and certainly the abode of the hereafter is better.
An‘am 6:32

Mr. B was an old medallion maker who took great pride in his art and craftsmanship. He had been making medals since his youth and he never missed any opportunity to boast about his fine engravings and embellished handiwork. As he had indisputably proved his worth in the small city in which he lived, in these last years of his life he was enjoying the pleasure of choosing his own assignments. He would create medals only for the more glorious events in which many people had worked and struggled, in which more time and money had been spent: he would only make medals for occasions that influenced more lives.

The reason for his inclination to the more important jobs was not financial. While trying to find original designs for these medals, Mr. B often found himself imagining how the winner of the event wanted to have the medal, how this person had endlessly practiced, sacrificing emotional and carnal desires; and here, the medal maker was sitting above the entire crowd, designing and polishing that object which was the goal of all this effort. He almost saw himself as a mythical figure, a ring-giver, who with great ease was able to give all the contenders a motive to live, and one who would give immense happiness to a few.

In this way, Mr. B too gave a special meaning to his own life and he would perhaps have gone on living this way if it weren’t for that pesky invitation he had one day received. He read the whole letter in a single breath; at first he could not decide if he should be happy or worried. This was a summon to a competition between all the medal crafters throughout the country; once and for all it would establish the person who made the most handsome, most elaborate, most original medal designs. Mr. B didn’t even read the awards; he only glanced at the deadline and rules. At that very moment he instantly knew that he would join the contest, even though this could jeopardize his position in his small city. If he didn’t join, everybody would think that he had already accepted defeat. On the other hand, deep inside, he knew that winning this contest was extremely difficult. He had had the chance to see the medals prepared by other artists in other cities during his visits and he often found their work to be superior to his own in a way that is only evident to the eye of a professional. He found himself profoundly hating whoever had come up with the idea of this contest. For a few days he silently walked the streets of his small city. Then he closed himself in his workshop and didn’t come out for a whole week; this left him only enough time to pack up and travel to the capital city with the new medal he had made.

On the day of the contest all the best medal makers in the country filled the finest room of the palace in the capital city. The artists, one by one, came forward and presented the best work of their lives to the head of the committee. All of the medals were spectacular pieces of skill and artistry. However, Mr. B didn’t even peek at any of them: he had developed a series of superstitions while he was preparing for this competition. He had started to believe that seeing any other medal in this period might harm his belief in himself, and this would inevitably affect his chances of winning. Moreover, he never once looked at his own medal after he had put it in its container in his workshop. He somehow thought that the initial place it was made had a spirit and the medal should see the daylight again only here at the competition. Mr. B slowly walked through the crowd to the committee to present the greatest achievement of his life; his heart was pounding and his movements were almost rehearsed and automated. He briefly introduced himself and left the medal for the detailed examination of the shrewd and astute group of experts.

The results were to be announced the following day and until that time Mr. B couldn’t bring himself to think of anything but the contest, even though he genuinely tried to enjoy the many delights the capital city offered. The award ceremony was dazzling; at the end the three best medal makers of the country were to be declared. Just before the names were read, Mr. B finally made peace with himself and decided that even if he were awarded third place, he would still be content. However, his name wasn’t read for third best. All of this was happening too fast. He felt an instant joy that he wasn’t third and calmly realized if his name was going to be called now, it would mean that he is even better than what he had decided to settle for. At the same time, he intuitively knew that there were only two awards left and his chances were much less each time a name was read. While contemplating this fact, the second best medal maker was called: it wasn’t him. Mr. B wasn’t thinking anymore. He could only feel a certain pity for himself and a slight envy for the second best medal maker. He glanced at the entire room filled with best medal makers of the whole country. He should have worked harder, or he should have known his place; he shouldn’t have deluded himself with such pretense! He had a feeling that everybody was looking at him now; then his name was called, he stood up and among the tumultuous applause and cheers he walked up to the stage. There, Mr. B was given a golden medal for his achievement in medal making. The moment he saw the medal around his neck, he felt a funny understanding in his heart.

Years passed. As an ironical finale, the players, the medal makers, and the medal maker who made the medals for the medal makers ended up with the same fate; they were buried in the same row in the same cemetery. Their eyes opened to larger truths and their hearts constantly going over the lives they led, occasionally when they remembered the vainness of the games they had played, they couldn’t help bitterly smiling.

This world and its pleasures are a heavy burden. No one (except the corrupt in spirit) is contented with it. Rather than suffering from dependence on almost the whole universe, being needy of all means and causes, and appealing to contending deaf, dumb, and blind masters, people should seek refuge in a single, All-Hearing, and All-Seeing Master. If they place their trust in Him, He is enough for them.

Fourth truth

Know, O ego, that the scientific inventions woven around your head, the lines of conscious artistry connected to you, and the things put in your hands stretched out in neediness all demonstrate that your Creator, Maker, and Helper hears your sighs of destitution and your cries for help. Having mercy on you, He gratifies all your needs. Seeing that the Creator and Maker answers your tiniest cells’ calls for help, why should He ”the All-Hearing, All-Seeing” not answer your call for help?¹

Know, O spacious cell called ego or selfhood and built up of lesser cells. Say: O God! O Lord! O my Creator! O my Fashioner! O my Owner! O my Master! O my Guardian! Yours is the dominion (of all things) and to You is all praise! I am a guest in this body, Your property that You have entrusted to me.

O selfhood! Why do you claim to own that which you will never own? Give up this false claim that throws you into acute pain. Consider the emotions of pity and affection, which are among the spirit’s exhilarating embellishments: If they were left to your pretended ownership, they would harm and torment the spirit.

For example, the misfortune and calamities striking you or others would cause you to remain in continual pain and go so far as to blame Destiny for them. However, when you see a soldier who has lost his horse or whose residence has been burnt down by mistake working directly under a king, you do not feel much pity for the soldier. If you consider that both the horse and residence belong to the king, you will see that their disappearance does not cause a significant decrease in his property. Nor does the soldier worry about it”indeed, inasmuch as he is poor, it is highly probable that out of pity the king will compensate his losses with something better. In the same way, God is the All-Compassionate and always treats His servants with utmost compassion.² Therefore, compassion for creatures as creatures of God exhilarates the spirit. By contrast, pity arising from supposing that everything owns itself continually suffocates and distresses the spirit.

One with a sound viewpoint based on belief in Divine Unity sees every living being’s body as resembling a hired captain on a king’s ship being controlled by that king, who controls his property as he wills. This viewpoint does not allow one to see an ant or a honeybee as contending with attacking causes. Rather, according to it, the ant controls an earthly vehicle while the other controls an aircraft, the reins of which are in the hands of the Power of an All-Powerful One. Causes do not have much weight in the sight of either animal, which depend on the True Owner (of all things).

By saying: Surely we are God’s and surely we are returning to Him (2:156), when struck by misfortune, one means: All property is God’s and I am under His command, journeying to Him. My relation with my body, which is His property, is like that of a soldier holding something belonging to the king. When robbers attack him, he states: I am responsible for guarding this property entrusted to me. However, I am unable to guard it now. Like this property, I also belong to the king and am going to him. When those with such a viewpoint see a fellow struck with misfortune or suffer personal misfortune, they are relieved of continual distress. Otherwise, they are constantly weighed down with pain and distress.

Footnotes

1. For example, a person equipped with the limited powers of sight, hearing, and learning may conclude that the Creator must be All-Seeing, All-Hearing, and All-Knowing. One’s poverty, helplessness, and mortality may lead one to discover that the Creator is Absolutely Wealthy, Powerful, and Permanent. (Tr.)
2. The best analogy applicable to certain aspects of the relation with God and the creation is that between a monarch and his subjects. Since many immaterial truths, especially those pertaining to the Divine Being, are abstract and difficult to understand, Divine Scriptures usually use parables, metaphors, similes, and analogies. For example, God is sometimes introduced like a monarch or king, having a throne and armies. Another reason why Said Nursi used such analogies may be that he wrote this book in the 1910s, when there was still a sultanate in Anatolia. (Tr.)

Adapted from Bediuzzaman’s Epitomes of Light (Mathnawi al-Nuriya)

Two of the ways that people demonstrate their intelligence are communication and learning. Effective communication requires skills in the analysis of messages received and in the synthesis of messages transmitted. The ‘message’ may be a letter, an article, a poem, musical composition, painting, or indeed any other form of communication. In order to communicate effectively, one must be able to synthesize a message. To do that well needs the ability to make judgements about the level of sophistication of the recipient, careful use of the language of the communication and appropriate speed of presentation. Understanding a message also requires intelligence. A listener needs to know the meaning of most of the words being used and to have some knowledge of the context of the message.

The ability to learn and understand is considered by many as a vital component of intelligence and perhaps a definition of it.

‘Learning denotes the changes in a system that are adaptive in the sense that they enable the system to do the same task or tasks drawn from the same population more effectively the next time.’ ‘When a computer system improves its performance at a given task over time, without re-programming, it can be said to have learned something.’

There are many definitions for Artificial Intelligence or AI. One is: ‘the study of mental faculties that encompasses computational techniques for performing tasks which apparently require intelligence when performed by humans’. The term Artificial Intelligence was first used by John McCarthy in 1956. Since then, and especially in the last two decades, there has been a growing amount of research on AI. With many scientists, engineers and programmers either studying AI techniques or building AI systems or both, national and international organizations dedicated to AI have been formed and are growing. In the USA, for example, there is now an American Association for Artificial Intelligence. A number of AI applications in the medical and engineering fields have been successful and so established AI as a promising area of study with specialist sub-sectors, namely robotics, machine vision, natural language processing, machine learning, expert systems and neural networks.

Looked at closely, each of these sub-sectors turns out to be an attempt to imitate some human organs or faculties. Robotics, for example, aims to imitate what a human being can do using limbs, hands and feet, in co-ordination with the eye and brain-which is what ‘vision systems’ aims to copy. ‘Natural language processing’ is the development of systems that perform tasks using the kind of language that humans use in routine interactions. ‘Machine learning’ aims to make computers learn how to use computational techniques. An ‘expert system’ is built to house and sift large amounts of human knowledge in order to give advice in particular circumstances just as a human expert would do. And ‘neural networks’, as the name suggests, try to reproduce in part the human nervous system.

Even though there have been many successful applications devel

oped in these areas, AI, compared to human intelligence, is still in its infancy. Everyday observation shows that the modest brains of lower animals can perform tasks that are far beyond the range of even the largest and fastest modern electronic computers. Just imagine that any mosquito can fly around at great speed in unknown territory without bumping into objects blocking its path. And a frog’s tongue can catch these insects in full flight within a split second.

At present the number of processors which can be built for specialized parallel hardware is somewhere between 50,000 and 1 million. Compared to the number of neurones in the human brain this number is extremely small. The total number of neurones in the human central nervous system can only be estimated; some estimates put the number about 1011 combined with the average number of synapses per neurones this yields a total of about 1015 synaptic connections in the human brain, the majority of which are developed within a few months after birth.

Comparative facts like those show that there is a lot still to be learnt from human beings, animals and other creatures. When somebody looks at an intelligent system-say a vision system or an intelligent robot, they will remark that it is amazing. Indeed it is amazing to see a system correctly inspect and classify many products in the space of a second. Such systems are already installed and in operation on production lines and their performance is quite good. There are several expert systems in use in real world tasks. The importance of these systems derives from their artificial intelligence which in turn derives from human intelligence. A man-made system can be very smart and artificially very intelligent but no such system so far has been awarded a prize for its innovative abilities. It is the human being who made it who wins the prize. What is prized, what is of higher worth, is not the system but its maker or builder. What about the fantastic system that is a human being? Just as an AI system is strong evidence of the existence of its maker, namely, a human being, so too human beings and other natural systems are more and stronger evidence for the existence of their Maker. To make an artificial intelligence one must first have natural or real intelligence. That means the Maker of human beings and all other creatures has a supernatural power over all of them. Just as no one could say that AI systems build themselves, it should be impossible to say the same for human beings and other creatures. This supernatural power is the All-Mighty Creator. As we have seen, it is not the system but its maker that is prized and respected. Self-evidently, the One who created human intelligence is to be prized and respected more than anything or anyone else. God says in the Qur’an: ‘We have indeed created man in the best of moulds’ (95.3). As we believe that there is definitely a maker of an AI system, why should it be hard to believe that there is a Maker of human being?

References

• CHARNIAK, E. and McDERMOTT, D., (1985) Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
• HANCOX, P.J., MILLS, W.J. and REID, B. (1990)
• Artificial Intelligence/Expert Systems, Ergosyst Associates, London.
• MULLER, B. and REINHARDT, J. (1990) Neural Networks. An Introduction, Springer Verlag.
• FORSYTH, R. and RADA, R. (1986) Machine Learning:
• Applications in Expert Systems and Information Retrieval, Ellis Horwoood, Chichester.