The existence of man is such a unique phenomenon that no other such example can be found throughout the vastness of the cosmos.

Out of all God’s creatures, man is the only one who has the greatest need for certainty, for he must know what lies ahead of him. No other created entity, whether animate or inanimate, possesses such a concept of “tomorrow.” It is a well-acknowledged fact that all creatures, save man, simply have the concept of ‘today’ in them; while man has the concept of ‘tomorrow’ firmly imbedded in his nature. This ‘tomorrow’ indicates the probability of a world hereafter. This indicates that the destination of all creatures, save man, is simply that of ‘today’, while man’s destination pertains to ‘tomorrow’.

We can come to grips with this paradox by examining the observable phenomenon of the principle of pairs, which is universally operative.

The Qur’an says:
      And all things We made in pairs, so that you may give thought. (51:49)

This means that everything in this world exists in pairs; everything becomes complete only in a pair.

It was known in ancient times that there were pairs in the human and animal worlds. Later on man learnt of pairs in trees and plants. In 1928, however, it was discovered that solid matter also had a pair. In that year the British physicist Paul Dirac demonstrated the possibility of other, invisible particles existing alongside those of matter. Then, in 1932, K. Anderson discovered, while studying cosmic rays, that with electrons there were other particles with an opposite electric charge. These particles were called anti-electrons. This research was pursued further and finally it was learnt that all particles in the universe existed in the form of pair-particles: particle and anti-particle, atom and anti-atom, matter and anti-matter; there was even, as Dirac showed in 1933, an anti-world.

Many present-day scientists are of the opinion that this anti-world is an entity apart from us, having a parallel existence of its own. This world is made up of matter; according to the law of opposites there should be another world made up of anti-matter. It is estimated that 20 million years ago, when the Big Bang explosion occurred, photon-matter and anti-matter came together in two separate forms. The two then started to form the world and the anti-world.

The first people to work on this theory were a Swedish pair, physicist Osker Klein and astrophysicist Hannes Alven. The results of their research were published in 1963. The Soviet mathematician, Dr Gustav Naan, further consolidated the theory. According to him, the anti-world cannot be fully explained by known theories and laws of physics, yet he is convinced that the anti-world exists, even now. It is, however, independent of us, existing on its own, parallel to this world. In the present world all anti-particles are in an unstable condition; but in the anti-world they will all be stable, for the nuclei of atoms have a negative electric charge, while electrons are positively charged.

Therefore, everything is in accordance with this law of nature. Nothing is complete without its pair. So this world must also have a pair, for only then will it be complete. It is this pair of the present world that is called the hereafter. If we accept this logic, everything becomes meaningful. Everything begins to fall into place but if we do not believe in a world after death, then this most perplexing question will remain unanswered.

Since this world is ephemeral, it follows that the anti-world, or to use its religious term, the hereafter, must be an eternal world. The discoveries of modern science, then, have given us a picture of the next world – an ideal eternal world. Religion gives us another name for this world of the hereafter – Paradise.