What are the big questions? Big
questions. Who made
me and why am I here? It does not matter
whether you are atheist, agnostic,
Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu,
Buddhist. It does not matter.
Everybody at some time in their
lives asks
themselves, "Who made
me and why am I here?
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Alhamdulillah. We will now have
inshallah the talk and the speaker whom
I shall shortly introduce will be Dr.
Lawrence Brown from the USA who will be
addressing us inshallah on the topic of
the big questions. A brief background
about Dr. Lawrence Brown. Dr. Brown is a
practicing
opthalmologist, the medical director of
a major eye and ENT center. He is an
ordained interfaith minister and he's
also the director of interfaith affairs
for the Canadian Darawa Association. and
he's also the author of six
groundbreaking books of comparative
religion. Dr. Brown received his BA from
Cornell University, his MD from Brown
University Medical School, and his
opthalmology residency training at
George Washington University Hospital in
Washington DC. USA.
He now lives in the holy city of Medina,
Saudi Arabia, where he continues his
work as a medical director and subsp
specialist in cornea, cataract,
glaucoma, and refractive surgery and
writes for a pastime. So, I would like
to invite to the podium to address us on
his topic the big questions, Dr.
Lawrence Brown from the USA.
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[Applause]
[Music]
Oh, I
I greet everybody with greetings of
peace for the Muslims in the
audience. For all others, welcome. I'm
going to be uh talking today on the
subject of the big questions. But before
I begin my talk, I would like to express
my sincere thanks to Dr. Zachary Nike
and the Islamic Research Foundation for
inviting me to participate in this
year's conference. I hope everybody
understands the magnitude the importance
of the work that uh Dr. Zack and the uh
IRF are are doing. I will try in my own
small part to contribute to the
excellence of that work tonight.
So the first question everybody is
probably asking themselves is what does
the title of this talk mean? What are
the big
questions? Well, the big questions are
the questions that everybody at some
point in their lives asks themselves. It
does not matter whether you are atheist,
agnostic, Jewish, Christian, Muslim,
Hindu, Buddhist. It does not matter.
Everybody at some time in their lives
asks
themselves, who made me and why am I
here? Now, I'm going to take these
questions in order. I'm going to start
with the question, who made me or in a
broader sense, who made us? I am then
going to move on to the question, why
are we here?
what is the purpose of our existence and
then I am going to move on to the
logical extension the answer that
follows even after those two questions.
So let let's begin with who made us to
begin with let's start with how an
atheist would answer that question. An
atheist if asked who made
you will answer
well nobody.
Nothing. We as a creation are the result
of the big bang which brought the
universe into existence and we are the
result of evolution which brought life
into existence and the diversity of life
as we know it. That is the atheist
answer.
But does that answer make
sense? I would submit that it does not.
And here is the evidence. To begin with,
let's look at the Big
Bang. First of all, let's understand
that the Islamic religion does not have
any problem with the Big Bang. Islamic
religion does not deny that the Big Bang
happened. The Islamic religion however
teaches that the big bang was under the
control of the creator. Now which makes
more sense for us to believe that it was
a random event or that it was under the
control of the
creator? To begin with, the big bang did
not start with the
explosion. The big bang started long
before. Before the explosion, there was
a primordial dust cloud. a dust cloud in
the nothingness of space which drew
together as a massive hyperdense core of
mass and energy and it was that that
exploded. So where did this dust cloud
come from? Where did the primordial dust
where did the energy come from for this
explosion?
If there is one thing we know from
science, it is that we do not get
something from nothing. In the
explosion, it was the greatest explosion
in the history of our universe. It blew
everything outward to the universe as we
have it today, which is expanding as we
know it. And yet we are to believe that
this supposedly random
event resulted in the perfection of the
universe as we know it. Whereas any
other explosion results in destruction
and chaos, we are to believe that the
big bang resulted in the perfection of
the universe as we know it. This is an
example where science contradicts
science. What do I mean by that? If you
are going to explain the
universe on the basis of science, you
cannot have science
contradicting the science that explains
the existence of the universe. In
science, there is a general
principle called entropy.
Entropy is the principle that unless
there is a greater control over a
process, the process tends to chaos. Now
let's put it into real world terms. It
does not matter whether you are talking
about your child's
bedroom, the kitchen
sink, your workplace, or a complex
chemical reaction.
If it is not under control, it generates
into
chaos. If your child does not clean up
his room, if somebody does not control
the dishes in the sink, if somebody does
not control the chemical reaction, the
result is going to be random and chaos.
But we are to believe that the massive
explosion of the big bang resulted in
perfection and not chaos. This is an
example where science contradicts
science. The same way when the atheists
explain our existence as living beings,
they use the example of evolution,
natural selection. First, there was a
single cell organism. From the single
cell organism evolved all of life as we
know it. But you know, if there's one
thing that we know from our lives, it is
that if you look at something, you know
where it came from. If you look at a
painting, you know that there was a
painter. If you look at a sculpture, you
know that there was a sculptor. If you
know look at a building, you know that
there was an architect and a
construction company. And yet we are to
look at creation and think that there is
not a creator. This is the proposal. The
proposal of the atheist is that we
evolved by natural selection with the
absence of a creator. But I have a
question for those who put forward this
theory. Natural selection can explain a
lot of things. It can explain the
diversity of species. It can explain the
fossil record. It can explain where the
dinosaurs came from and where they went
to. But how can you explain where the
soul came from? If you believe in the
existence of a human soul, how can you
explain this as having evolved? For that
matter, how can you explain life as
having evolved? And what do I mean by
life? I mean the power that gives a body
once
assembled to live. We have reached a
point in science where we can transplant
virtually every organ of the body. We
can make a Frankenstein if we so desire.
But not all of the world's
scientists over the history of mankind,
if you brought them all together, cannot
make them live. We cannot even make the
wing of a gnat in the perfection that it
has been made by our creator and we
cannot give a body life. That is why
once
dead medicine is not able to revive a
dead person even when their organs are
still functioning. So the
explanation that we developed
from natural selection is another
example where science contradicts
science. We have the example of millions
of years of evolution or natural
selection. And the proposal is that
everything in our existence, if we don't
have some control over it to keep it in
order, everything degenerates into
chaos. Except for the big bang and
except for evolution. Those two things
just by themselves, they tended toward
perfection. Well, there are some people
who accept that explanation. But I
submit to you that it is not of those
who are enlightened. It is not of those
who have open minds or open hearts who
accept that explanation. The Arabs have
a story that they like to tell. A
Betawin is traveling in the desert. He
comes upon an
oasis and in the oasis there is a
perfect palace.
Now there are no building materials
around. He finds another nomad and he
asks him, "Where did this palace come
from?" And the nomad said, "Oh, subhan
Allah. Glory to be our creator. You
would not believe where it came from."
First, the wind blew so hard that it
shaped the rocks into perfect cubes with
square edges, and it tumbled the rocks
over the desert until they all fell
together in the shape of this palace in
perfect assortment. And then the wind
blew the dust with some, you know, hairs
and fibers from, you know, from the
trees into the cracks and brought the
rain. And that made the cement that the
cemented it all together. And then
lightning strikes blasted the sand into
sheets of glass and blew the sheets of
glass into the windows. And then the
elements took wood from the far corners
of the earth and shaped it with the wind
and the different force of the elements
into furniture and into window trim and
doors. And tornadoes and hurricanes
carried it here and dropped the doors
into the door places, dropped the
windows in, made the window frames,
tumbled the furniture into the rooms.
These strong winds took the fibers out
of the backs of our sheep, wo them
together into tapestries and carpets,
and coated the floors with it. And all
of this happened just in this one place
on earth to make this perfect palace.
You know, when we begin thinking about
it, we cannot help but roll our eyes and
realize, come on, this guy is is crazy.
This is impossible. And yet, what we are
told to believe is that the Big Bang and
natural selection through the two most
climactic events in the history of
creation accomplished something even
greater than this. Let's move on. Why
are we here?
If we agree that as we are creation
there is a
creator, we have to ask the question
why. For what purpose were we created? I
ask everybody to look around. Not just
now but for the rest of the night. Look
around. Everything that you see that we
have ever made with the hands of man, we
have made for a
purpose. What is that purpose?
Why have we ever made anything, anything
small or anything big? As far as I'm
concerned, and I've never found anybody
to say otherwise, we have never created,
we have never made anything except to
perform a function for us. In other
words, we have never made anything
except to serve us. Does it not make
sense then that our creator made us to
serve him? In
fact, this is what Allah tells us in the
holy Quran when he revealed in the
translation of the meaning of the Quran
surah 51 IAT 56 quote and I God have not
created jin and men except that they
should serve and some translate worship
me meaning almighty god Allah. So that
is the purpose of our creation that is
reason for our existence. We were not
created in the same way that we do not
make anything except for it to serve us
by performing a function. In the same
way, we were not created except for a
purpose. And that purpose is to serve
the creator to serve and worship the
creator. So how how do we serve him?
Think about this. Our creator gave
everything a guidance system. We have
light to find our way during the day. We
have the stars and the moon to find our
way at night. This is for seeing
animals. Birds
migrate by polarized light. That is how
they are able to migrate even when there
are clouds covering the sky. They can
read the polarization of the light even
though they cannot see the sun. Other
animals migrate by reading the magnetic
field of the earth. Whales, lobsters can
actually sense the magnetism of the
earth and follow it. And that is how
they find their way. That was the gift
of our creator to them.
Salmon, this delicious fish that we
have, leave the place of their birth, go
down the river, out into the ocean for
years, for years. When they come back,
they come back to the river they were
born in. They fight their way back up to
the river to the very spot where they
hatched from an egg. And they find their
way there by smell. They smell their way
from the vastness of the ocean to the
river they were born with back to the
exact spot they were born. Bats and
river dolphins have
sonar. Marine animals in the deep ocean
so deep that there is no light. They can
read electrical currents so they can
know where they are. They can find their
prey by the electrical currents
generated
thereby. Insects have pherommones which
are chemicals so sensitive that they can
sense a single molecule. A single
molecule and find their ways to food,
find their ways to a mate.
Plants. Our creator gave plants a unique
guidance
photoism by which the stalk grows up.
Geotrophism by which the roots go down
and the two never get confused. You
never find the roots growing up and the
plant growing
down. What is my point? My point is that
our creator has given everything in his
creation guidance by which it can find
its way to the things that it needs.
Food, a mate, etc. Can we possibly
believe for one minute that our creator
would have so much mercy that he would
give us guidance in all things, give
guidance to all of his creation in all
things, but he would not give us
guidance to the hereafter. Is it
possible to believe that? What would be
the guidance to the hereafter?
Obviously, revelation. Think of us.
Think of our lives this way. A minute
ago I was talking about everything that
we as man have made with our own hands.
I drew the parallel that as we are
creation of our
creator, we were created for a purpose.
Now when we make something, we make
something with rules. It doesn't matter
how simple or complex it is. If you have
a spoon to eat with, that spoon has
rules. You use it right side up, not
upside down. You use the bowl of the
spoon to eat with. You don't use the
handle of the spoon to eat
with. Now, this may seem simplistic, and
you might say, "Well, I knew that."
That's obvious. It wasn't always. When
you were a baby, when you picked up that
spoon, you might have picked it up by
any end, and it might not have gone to
your mouth.
You could have put it into your eye if
you wanted to and as a baby you wouldn't
have known that that was not its
purpose. But with the simple things we
grow to understand the rules with the
complex things we don't. And so the
manufacturer gives
us a users's manual. We buy a
television, we buy a car, we buy a
computer. What does it come with? An
instruction manual. The instruction
manual, by the way, is written by
who? When we buy a
product, do we ever find that Sony is
writing the instructions for Panasonic
television? Do we ever find that Ford
Motor Company is writing the instruction
manual
for high-end cars? No. The instruction
manual is always written by the one who
made the product. That is the one who
knows it best. So it only makes sense
that the instruction manual for us would
be written by the one who made us, the
one who knows us best to draw the
parallel out a little bit longer. Think
of any instruction manual you ever read.
It starts with what? Warnings. Warning,
warning, warning. What will happen if
you use this product incorrectly?
Then it tells you how to use it
correctly and the benefit that you will
gain by doing so. And it finishes with
what? A troubleshooting guide. How is
that different from
Revelation? Revelation tells us what not
to do and the consequences of that. It
tells us what to do and the benefit to
be gained thereby. And it gives us a
troubleshooting guide. In other words,
it tells us how to sort ourselves out if
we have a problem. How to correct our
deficiencies and guide ourselves a
right. It tells us what not to do and
the consequences of that. It tells us
what to do and the benefit to be gained
thereby. And it gives us a
troubleshooting guide. In other words,
it tells us how to sort ourselves out if
we have a problem. How to correct our
deficiencies and guide ourselves a
right. Now, if you meet the
specifications of what your duties are,
you will reap the reward. And if you are
an employee who is
substandard, what happens to you? You
get fired. Think about that word
fired. The consequence of
underperforming. The consequence of not
meeting standards. That word did not
come from nowhere. In the
past, the people who were developing the
English language looked around and said,
"How should we describe somebody who is
a failure? What happens to them?" In the
same way that a person who is a failure
in life finds the fire in the hereafter,
the employee who is a failure on his job
gets fired. So let us not be failures in
life and let us not be failures in the
hereafter.
So hopefully by this point we have
agreed that as we are creation there is
a creator that as everything we make for
the purpose of serving us our creator
made us to serve and worship
him. We are then talking about how the
owner's manual the manual of
specification for us is the manual of
revelation. Why? What is the need for
revelation? Isn't it enough for all of
us just to be
good? Now, all of you know I am not
dreaming up these questions by myself.
All of you have heard other people
asking these questions. Yeah, sure. I
believe there's a God. Yeah, okay. I I
know I believe there's a God and I know
I should be serving and worshiping him,
but it's enough just to be good. I'm a
good person. That's enough. So, isn't
that enough? The answer is no. It's not
enough.
Why? Well, to begin with, we have to
examine the reason for
revelation. Our creator is fair and
just. Our creator is fair and just. When
we die, we are going to the day of
judgment where we are going to be
evaluated and assigned either to
punishment or to paradise. Would it be
fair for that assignment to be
arbitrary? We are going to stand in
front of a court. Think about a court
for a
minute. To establish justice, you need
four things. You need a judge. You need
a court. You need witnesses. And you
need a book of laws.
If you do not have any of those four
things, how can you establish
justice? And on the day of judgment, the
judge will be
Allah, the book of laws will be the holy
Quran, and the witnesses will be the
elements of creation, and the court will
be the day of judgment.
Now it is by those four things that we
will be
measured. The angels who are in
attendance with us from the day we are
born until the day we die will bear
witness. Our own hands will bear witness
to what they have wrought. Our own
tongues will say what has passed through
it. We will bear witnesses against
ourselves. The angels will bear
witnesses as well. Other elements of
creation who have witnessed our deeds
will be there as well. And there will be
no deed large or small that will be
missed. Those will be our witnesses in
the courtroom of the day of judgment.
And we will be measured by what?
by a book of laws and we will be judged
by who? By Allah. Now, if Allah did not
have that book of laws, would he be
establishing justice? No. If we were
assigned a place in in the
hereafter without having a chance to
guide ourselves a right in this life,
then that would be injustice. the same
as you if you went to a court here and
they they either let you go or put you
in prison based on nothing as if the
country had no
laws. So how do you know what is right
and what is wrong? Now why else do we
need
revelation? Back to the question, isn't
it enough just to be
good? What is good? What is good?
Good is defined
by our creator not by
us. Go and gather a hundred different
people together and ask them what is
good to you and you will get many
different answers. Obviously there are
criminals out there. There are criminals
out there who enjoy being criminals.
They enjoy certain crimes and for them
that is good. There are tyrannical
leaders throughout history who have led
their entire populations to destruction.
Men like
Pharaoh, military leaders who have led
their people and their armies and their
countries to destruction on the basis of
misguidance because they set the rules
for themselves instead of accepting the
guidance of our creator. Mankind cannot
agree on social justice, economics,
politics, laws. We cannot
agree. So what is good if
not what is defined by our creator? It
is interesting that it is in the field
of
religion that mankind presumes to write
its own rules. How many people here I
want you to raise your hands. How many
people here entered your
job, walked up to your boss and said,
"Thank you for the job, but you know
what? I'm going to write my own job
description. I'm going to write the my
own
rules. I am going to dictate to
you what I'm going to do and then you've
got to pay me. I don't see any hands up.
There's a reason for that. I asked my
father this. My father is not a Muslim.
May Allah guide him. I was talking to
him and I said, "Dad, imagine that when
I was a
child, imagine that I came home one day
and I said to you, "Dad, you know, I
recognized your existence and I thank
you for everything that you've done for
me, but you know, I've decided to
rewrite the rules of the
household. From now on, we're going to
do things my way and you're going to
like it. I said, "Now, Dad, what what
would you say to me if I did
that?" And he said, "Son, I'd tell you
to go to hell. Think about it." Now,
that is a very human response, but that
is expected to be Allah's response.
Those of us who presume to write our own
religion, to set our own rules, to do
what we feel we want to do, we are
following nothing but our own
desires. And that is not the example of
the righteous. That is not the example
of the pious throughout
time. Why can't we worship God in our
own way? Another big question that comes
up. Why can't we worship God in our own
way? I'll tell you why. I'm in India.
I came from Saudi
Arabia. I was born and raised in
America. But you know what? There are
places here where if I go and I eat a
meal, they will not take my Saudi real
and they will not take my American
dollars. Do you get the point? You have
to pay with the currency that is
accepted. Once again, you can't make
your own rules. You have to pay with the
currency that is accepted. If you are
not paying with the currency that is
accepted, you will be in default. Think
about any laws that you have ever been
subjected to, city, state,
international. They have all been
written by men. They have all been
designed as
guides. But over them all are the laws
of God Almighty, Allah.
That is the guide book for our lives and
that is what leads to paradise in the
hereafter. Now let's talk for a minute
about this concept of the accepted
currency. What is the accepted currency
in terms of revelation? Well, if you are
a believer in any of the monotheistic
faiths, Judaism or
Christianity or
Islam, you follow the chain of
prophethood to its
conclusion. I can quote to you passages
in the Old Testament which predict three
prophets to follow. John the Baptist
being the first, Jesus Christ being the
second and obviously pointing the way to
Muhammad
Salah as the third. I can then point to
passages in the New Testament which in
which Jesus Christ alluded to the final
prophet to follow. All of you who have
been following peace TV, who have been
following the teachings of Dr. Zacharik
knows that he can ripple off the books
and the verses in which the Hindu
scriptures predict the final prophet,
the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
Now, what have we discussed up until
this point? Again, I may sound like a
broken record going over these points,
but I'd like to summarize. Inshallah, we
have agreed that as we are creation,
there is a creator over all things.
Inshallah we have agreed that the
purpose in our life is to serve and
worship him. And inshallah we have
agreed that the way in which we serve
and worship him is to follow the book of
his guidance revelation. What I am now
going to take a minute to discuss is why
we should consider Islam as the
completion of that revelation. I'm going
to start with what I know best, which is
the monotheistic religions, Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. So, let's take
it out of faith. The Old Testament
predicted three prophets to follow. John
the Baptist was one. Jesus Christ was
the second, leaving 3us 2 equals 1.
Now, we would expect that it makes sense
that Jesus Christ, if there were a
prophet to follow
him, would
have mentioned the fact, maybe not
directly, but in some way. This takes us
to John chapter 14 verses 16-1 17. In
these
verses, Jesus Christ speaks of his going
away.
He says, "And I will pray the
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father and he will give you another
helper that he may abide with you
forever, even the spirit of truth."
Let's not read it in the
translation. Let's read it in the
manuscript from which it is translated.
Notice I am being very careful with my
words. I am not saying let's read it in
the original. There is no original. Make
no mistake about it. The Bible is
translated from coin a Greek. Jesus
Christ spoke Arabic. The authors of the
Bible who wrote the different books of
the Bible were writing in a language
Jesus Christ did not speak. It is a
translation. There is no such thing as
the original Greek. But it's the best we
have. Everybody who has ever done
translation knows that when you make a
translation, something gets lost in
translation. But as I said, it's the
best we have. And what the passage says
in Greek is alos
paracletos. Alos meaning another
paracletos meaning paraclete. Now
pariclete has been fought over. It has
been argued about. What does paraclete
mean? It has been translated helper,
advocate, assistant, holy spirit,
comforter. I'll tell you right
now in the phrase alos
paracletos, it doesn't matter what
paricles means. The word that is
important is
alos.
Another why?
Because in the first epistle of John
chapter 2 verse 1, Jesus Christ is
identified as a
pariclete. Read it in the Greek. Don't
read it in your
translation. It states that we have an
advocate with the
father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
The word translated to advocate is
paraclete.
Now what is the
conclusion? The first epistle of John
2:1 tells us Jesus Christ was a
paraclete. Then Jesus
Christ tells
us that at the end of his mission
following his
mission another pariclete alos
paracletous will
come. What is the obvious conclusion?
Whatever Jesus Christ was a prophet he
is telling of another to come another
prophet. Does it not make sense that
when we are told in the Old Testament of
three prophets to follow, when we find
two of those prophets in the New
Testament and the last of them speaking
of the final prophet to come, does it
not make sense to follow the chain of
revelation to its conclusion? to embrace
the final prophet predicted by the
previous books of
scripture to acknowledge Muhammad peace
be upon him as that prophet. I would
mention again if you look in the New
Testament you only find this word
paraclete mentioned five times.
In these five times it is mentioned that
the one who will come will honor Jesus
Christ and he will be the spirit of
truth. It's interesting to note that in
the life of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
wasallam even his
enemies even his
enemies knew him by the title of Assad
Alamin the truthful the
honest and Islam is the only religion
it's the only major world religion that
honors Jesus Christ as he deserves to be
honored as a prophet of
Allah. I am a doctor. We have a saying
in the field of
medicine. When you hear hoof
beatats, think about horses. Don't think
about zebras. When you see a lot of
evidence
suggesting that this person has a
certain
disease, a certain common
ailment, don't go looking for the odd,
strange, the rare
things. When you hear hoof beatats
behind
you, think of horses, not
zebras. There is an obvious conclusion
to all of this. It is the conclusion
that leads to
paradise. And there are many ways of
denying it. And every one of those ways
of denying is a going astray. And every
one of those paths of going astray lands
you in the fire. Please accept the
obvious. Accept what is
clear and model your lives around it.
I was telling the story the other day of
a time when I attended an ice sculpture
festival. Now, many of you may not know
this. It's kind of a hot country for ice
sculptures, but in some countries they
have ice sculptures. We went in the
winter to this vast array of ice
sculpture. There was there was one
sculpture of a truck. You can see it
with your eyes. It's a truck. There's no
doubt about it. I mean, it has wheels.
It has a hood. It has a steering wheel.
Anybody can look at this and know that
it's a truck. But the person who was
with me opened their guide book and
said, "You know, that's a
locomotive, the head car for a train."
And I said, "What are you talking
about?" And they said, "It says in the
guide book that this is a locomotive."
I said, 'Use your eyes. It's a
truck. We We see these on the road how
many times a day? This is a truck. They
said, 'N no, no. Says right here, it's a
locomotive. I argued. I walked them
around it. I showed them all the
features of a truck that a blind man
could feel his way around and identify
that this is a truck, but this person
can see it with their own eyes. In the
end, it just so happened that the
sculptor walked
by and saw us arguing about what this
is, identified himself, and I said,
"Okay, look, just just settle the
argument. Is it a locomotive or is it a
truck?" And he looked at us as if we
were a little bit crazy. And he said,
"Well, at first I said I was going to do
a locomotive, so that's what they put in
the book. But at the last minute, I
changed my mind. I made a
truck. It doesn't stop
there. The person who was with me said,
"You know, I still think it's a
locomotive." Now, we are talking to the
person who made
it. We are talking to the person who
made it and we can see with our eyes.
Please, not for me, for yourselves, for
your families, for the lineage that is
going to follow in your wake for your
children, your grandchildren, and all
who will follow until the day of
judgment, except what is clear in front
of your eyes. The Holy Quran is
revelation from Almighty God. Allah
Muhammad sallallah.aii Wasam was his
final
prophet. And if you have any doubt about
this message, pray to God for guidance.
Pray to our creator. Just use that term.
Pray to our creator with sincerity,
asking him to guide you to the religion
of truth. Study, watch peace TV. Stay
tuned to the channels that will broaden
your mind and improve you and guide you
to a good end. And I thank you very much
for welcoming me here. That concludes my
talk for tonight.