Allah Created Every Living Thing from Water: A Deeper Look
The Wonders of Water
The Qur'an and Hadith contain numerous references emphasizing the importance of water and its purifying qualities. In fact, Muslims are often identifiable by their use of water for purification rituals. It is said that during the Spanish Reconquista in Andalusia, when Muslims were forced to convert to Christianity, households that used unusually large amounts of water were suspected of secretly maintaining their Islamic faith while outwardly professing Christianity to preserve their lives.
With that context, let us reflect on this single ayah, which is intriguing in multiple aspects.
“Allah has created every [living] creature from water. And of them are those that move on their bellies, and of them are those that walk on two legs, and of them are those that walk on four. Allah creates what He wills. Indeed, Allah is over all things competent.” Surah Al-Noor (24:45)
وَٱللَّهُ خَلَقَ كُلَّ دَآبَّةٍ مِّن مَّآءٍۖ فَمِنْهُم مَّن يَمْشِى عَلَىٰ بَطْنِهِۦ وَمِنْهُم مَّن يَمْشِى عَلَىٰ رِجْلَيْنِ وَمِنْهُم مَّن يَمْشِى عَلَىٰٓ أَرْبَعٍۚ يَخْلُقُ ٱللَّهُ مَا يَشَآءُۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ قَدِيرٌ
We all have read this ayah so many times in our life. Until I watched the below lecture from Denis Noble I couldn’t see the intricacy and interconnectedness of the facts mentioned in this ayah. What this ayah is talking about?
All living things are created from water. It’s talking about the origin of life. The essential ingredient of every living organisms on this earth.
The living creatures are of different kinds and forms. Some of them are creatures without legs, some have four legs, and others have two legs. This highlights Allah’s power to create various forms of life originating from water. It may or may not point to the evolution of living creatures. If we consider the evolutionary development of life on earth, we can see that the scientific view of the origin of life is not far from this idea of progressive forms of life.
Water-based life and the variety of living forms are mentioned together in one ayah. When these two facts are presented together in a single ayah, there must be a sign for us to reflect upon, as every revelation in the Qur’an is called an ayah, which means a sign. Is there a connection between the two? Until I came to understand the properties and attributes of the water molecule, I was completely unaware of this possible connection.
Now let’s take a look into some scientific aspects of Water. Water possesses several unique properties that set it apart from all other liquids. Water is a chemical with several unusual and important properties that are fundamental to life and free action.
Liquid over a wide temperature range: Water, formed by hydrogen and oxygen, is liquid at temperatures significantly higher than where its constituent atoms would vaporize (oxygen at -90°C, hydrogen at -253°C). This bonding is crucial because it allows water to remain liquid at the temperatures necessary for life to occur.
Excellent solvent (with a crucial exception): Water is a flexible and good solvent for most chemical compounds, allowing nearly all molecules to dissolve in it. However, fats cannot be dissolved in water. Instead, fats can exist in water suspensions, forming structures like soap bubbles, which are critical for the vast membrane structures in our cells, tissues, and organs. These membranes are where nearly all the control processes in our bodies are located, with proteins in lipid membranes being particularly important. The intelligence of life is suggested to reside in these membranes and the processes they enable, not in our genomes.
Ice floats: Unlike other solvents whose frozen forms sink, ice is lighter than liquid water and floats. This property is unusual and vital because it allows large bodies of water like lakes and seas to remain unfrozen beneath the surface, enabling living systems to continue to flourish even when the surface is iced over. Ice also acts as a good insulator, preventing heat loss and potentially contributing to life's survival during periods when Earth was frozen. This characteristic also suggests the possibility of life existing on completely iced-over planets or moons elsewhere in the solar system.
Enables Brownian motion: Water molecules are in incessant, continual, random movement, a phenomenon known as Brownian motion. This was first observed by Robert Brown in 1827 when pollen dust particles suspended in water were seen to be continually jiggling. Albert Einstein later showed in 1905 that these movements were due to the constant buffeting by water molecules.
This random motion is a fundamental difference between living organisms and non-living things like a solid-state computers (made of silicon or metal), whose atoms may vibrate but do not move around in the same way as in water-based systems.
Our genetic material, DNA, exists in a water-based environment and is continually buffeted by water, thus also experiencing this random motion. This stochasticity (chance) is crucial because it leads to "DNA breakage" and occasional errors (it should be called as “feature” rather than error as that’s key mechanism for the growth and survival of living things) during DNA replication. While Neo-Darwinists acknowledge chance, they often view it as "blind chance" that cannot be functionally used by organisms. However, the source argues that organisms actively control and harness this stochasticity, for example, by correcting DNA errors and even regulating the error-correcting process to generate new DNA sequences when under stress. This "harnessing the control of stochasticity" enables creativity and flexibility in living organisms and is fundamental to the concept of free will.
Nerve cells also have ion channels in their membranes that exhibit this "stochastic dance," suggesting that nervous systems are designed to harness chance, similar to how the immune system distinguishes DNA variations to latch onto new viruses. This idea, called "neural Darwinism," proposes that harnessing chance operates within the nervous system, allowing conscious choice and values to influence physiology and behavior.
To recap: the chemistry of life begins with water, and its properties form the basis for our survival and evolution as living organisms. It is a universal solvent, except for fats and oils. It exhibits random motion (known as Brownian motion), which contributes to gene mutations that drive variability in humans and other species and most importantly, the evolution in living creatures. Additionally, unlike any other liquid, water in its solid form (ice) floats on its liquid form due to changes in density. This phenomenon allows ice to act as an insulator, preserving life beneath it by keeping the water in a liquid state even under extremely harsh cold conditions.
Considering these remarkable attributes of water, and our current level of knowledge, when we read the same Quranic ayah in which Allah states, “He has created all living things from water,” it offers an intriguing perspective. It gives goosebumps to realize how an apparently simple statement in the Quran holds the secret of the origin of life. Through this introspective lens, enriched with these new insights, this ayah never reads the same again.
Reference lecture from professor Denise Noble: