The Ninth and Tenth Evidences: ‘And the regular excellence and careful adornment’
All the beautiful creatures which display the manifestations of an eternal beauty and loveliness especially in the spring on the face of the earth, for instance the flowers, fruits, small birds and flies, and especially the gilded, sparkling flying insects — in their creation, forms, and members are such a miraculous skill and precision, such a wonderful art, mastery, and excellence, and all sorts of shapes and tiny machines which show their craftsman’s wondrous proficiency, that they point decisively to a truly comprehensive knowledge, and —let there be no mistake in the expression— an extremely skilful, scientific innate knowledge, and testify that it is impossible that aimless chance and unconscious, confused causes could interfere. While the phrase “and careful decoration” means that those fine artefacts are adorned in a way so agreeable, are decorated in a way so sweet, display a beauty and art so attractive, that their maker could create these works only through an infinite knowledge. He knows the best manner of everything, and wishes to display to conscious beings the beauty of exquisite craftsmanship and the perfection of its beauty. For He creates and decorates the most insignificant flower and tiniest fly with the greatest care, skill, and art, giving them the greatest importance. This attentive adorning and beautifying self-evidently point to a boundless and all-encompassing knowledge, and testify to the number of those beauties to the necessary existence of an All-Knowing and Beauteous Maker .
The Eleventh Evidence, which comprises five universal evidences and proofs: ‘The utterly perfect order, balance, and total distinction with absolute ease, and the creation of things in unlimited abundance with absolute skill and speed with absolute balance, to an unrestricted extent with perfect beauty and art, over infinite distances with complete congruence, with unlimited intermingling yet with complete distinction.’
This evidence is another and better form of the similar lines at the end of the Arabic piece above, but because of my severe illness it explains the five or six evidences it comprises in the form of a very brief indication only.
Firstly: Throughout the earth we see the making of wondrous living machines, some instantaneously and some in a minute or two, in orderly and measured fashion, each different from its fellows, with the greatest ease, arising from a thorough knowledge and skill, all of which point to an infinite knowledge and testify that the perfection of knowledge is proportionate to the ease resulting from the skill and knowledge in the art.