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Dr. Bilal Masud
The purpose of this article is to discuss if the Islamic
beliefs are in their very nature so alien to the rest of humanity
that they cannot be generally appreciated, or are they alien only
due to some misunderstandings? The use of the word “humanity” needs
a clarification. Of course, actually we gather opinions of the
parts of the humanity like of different persons and cultures
only. But in such opinions it is possible to select some consensus,
namely opinions uttered by someone or some cultures but not
opposed or disagreed by any other. Especially on the nature of the
scientific reasoning, some basic statements have been made by the
Greeks and not opposed by Muslims, made by Muslims and not opposed
by the western thought, or made by the present west without other
cultures finding anything wrong in them. These are the statements
termed “humanity” in this article. Specifically, six views from the
Muslim scholars, preachers and philosopher’s works have been
analyzed for the possible human reaction to them.
1)
Muslims infer from observation and examples to the unchangeable
dogmas, whereas knowledge should always change and progress.
Many human
observations and scientific results can be used to justify the
design in the universe indicating the Divine Existence and Action.
These include the signs of Allah mentioned in Quran such as the
alteration of day and night, the sun and the moon running with
precision, the animals serving human beings, the delicious and
healthy fruits, the water system on the earth, the winds and clouds
bringing life to dead earth, mountains stabilizing the earth, the
ships sailing on the sea, the fire and others. There are also
examples of extraordinary precision in the design of the universe
brought out by science and pointed out by Muslims1. These
include the universe expanding precisely according to a
required speed and the modern Big Bang theory of the start of the
universe in astrophysics (telling that the universe started from a
point long time ago), the precise balance of different forces
in the universe to guarantee the emergence of stars and life, the
precise arrangements for the formation of different elements in
the universe, the precise cancellation of electrical charges
in an atom, precise parameters like temperature, size, and
magnetic field of the earth and of its atmosphere like the oxygen
percentage and the Van Allen Belt, the precise equality of
the wavelength of light emitted from sun and the wavelength suitable
for life, photosynthesis and vision, the extraordinary thermal
properties of the water including its resistance to flow ideal for
respiration and the bigger mass density of 4 degree water than ice
allowing fishes in extremely cold weathers to survive in the water
beneath the thermally insulating ice layer, and the extraordinary
properties of different elements such as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen
necessary for life etc.
From these observations Muslims infer the Divine Existence
and, more frequently, Divine Unity (Tawheed). That these are
unseen should not be strange; in natural sciences most of the
concepts like atoms, protons, force and energy etc. are unseen.
Possible question is if Muslim’s way of inferring from these
observations is justified according to the normal human intellectual
standards. To see that, it is perhaps best to compare the Muslim’s
arguments with those in science. Till the 19th century,
most of the philosophers of science had the view that the logic in
science is basically what is termed induction,
generalizations from particular facts. For example, the statement
“unsupported stones fall down” is a generalization of whatever
stone-falling events we have seen. Or, if we have seen sun rising
from the east, it is induced that “the sun rises from the
east,” implying that even in the future sun will rise from
the east even though we have only seen it rising from the east in
the past. It has been pointed not only by Western
philosophers like David Hume but before him by Imam Ghazali as well
that this generalization from past to always (including future) has
no proof. (Imam Ghazali2 gave example that there
is no proof that a person would die if his head is cut and David
Hume3 said that it is only probable---but not
proved----that the sun will rise tomorrow.)
Strictly speaking, both of these philosophers are justified
in asserting that the inductive logic is incomplete. But the problem
is that without any kind of induction we have in principle no way of
getting any information from the human observation or experiment,
and are left with only deductive logic4 and mathematics5.
Thus we have to accept and we already accept induction, not
because of any logical proof but because of human judgments6
and wise decisions; human beings somehow know that the
inductive generalization “all men are Pakistanis” is wrong but “the
sun rises from the east” is right, even though the former is
verified by millions of examples and later by a few thousand
instances (once everyday) only. Thus these are the human wise
decisions and metaphysical judgments, and not strictly
mechanical logic, which are to check induction-like beliefs such as
“sun rises from the east” and “all in the world is created.” (Please
note the metaphysics accepted by the influential philosopher of
science Karl Popper mentioned below.)
In recent times there have been efforts to present the
scientific method in a way that is not simply the inductive logic:
Karl Popper and others have suggested revised versions of the
scientific method7. This starts from considering the
previous knowledge or tradition. Through observations and
experiments, Popper says, scientists try to refute the
existing theories. If theories are refuted in this way,
scientists go back to modify them. With time, they try to refute the
new theories as well. Our confidence in the theories not refused in
this way gets developed, and this is the journey to laws etc.
If the Popper’s description of the scientific method is
sound at all, it is because Popper relies in his description of the
scientific method on a specifically human characteristic of
creativity, or “conjectures” in the Popper’s terminology. (Note
the words “scientists go back to modify…” In elaborating this,
Popper again and again says that scientists modify old scientific
theories by conjecturing new ones; for example the name of a
book summarizing his description of the scientific method is
“Conjectures and Refutations.”) But on the other hand, Popper’s
method is closer to the deductive logic; this method heavy relies on
a principle of the deductive logic, namely that examples can
only disprove and never prove rules. Thus it somewhat suffers from
the problems accompanied by neglecting the inductive logic due to
its logical incompleteness.
In neglecting the inductive logic, we forgo all the
knowledge obtained from the human observations and experiments. In
accepting Popper’s standards of knowledge, we save much of it but
still forgo the part of knowledge termed irrefutable by
Popper. Popper himself only says that the scientific theories must
be refutable. (Refutable means that the theory should tell at least
one kind of observation or experiment-----a prediction-----which
could not agree to it; it should not be of a nature to
agree to every possible outcome of every possible experiment. A
refutable theory of heat for example would agree to the fact of
water boiling at 100 degree centigrade, but would be refuted if it
boils at some other temperature or does not boil at all. In simple
words, a refutable statement is a statement making at least one
empirical prediction that can be tested. Such a statement is
obviously changeable.) But it is common to come across peoples
arguing from this that all the knowledge should be composed
of only refutable and thus changeable statements. This demand
seriously limits us genuinely learning from the human experience.
Popper’s refutability or testability do not apply to for example
historical analysis: Historical facts, such as “the second world war
happened”, are not reproducible and hence not refutable,
testable, falsifiable or changeable, but still a very important part
of our knowledge! A slightly different example could be the
statement “this persons is wise.” Like the probability statements it
is not a refutable statement. The persons may behave in
contradiction to what we predict about him considering him to be a
wise, but he may still do something else that is also a wise action.
But still statements like that form a very important part of our
personal and social knowledge. (Keep in mind the meaning of the term
“refutable” mentioned above in this paragraph.)
The Popper’s condition of refutability (changeability) does
apply but only to disciplines which progress by better
summarizing the expanding human experience. But for the other
subject matters, like logic, mathematics, metaphysics, historical
analysis, interpretation of manuscripts, studying the perennial
human feelings and values and evaluating religious knowledge etc.,
that are not bound to progress-through-experiments, we should keep
open the possibility of learning from observations in ways that are
not strictly mechanical like the deductive logic but are human like
the “conjecturing” even Popper relies on, or the inductive judgments
(like “sun rises from the east” or “everything is created”). Missing
this point results in the objection on the Islamic arguments that
appears as the first of our six questions, that is the heading of
this portion of the present article. (How do they base their
arguments on the observations and experiment without considering the
Islamic Faith to be testable and hence revisable?) To answer this
question, Muslims need not use any esoteric means and alienate from
the rest of the humanity. Either the Islamic belief can be regarded
as testable for the sake of arguments or, in harmony with the nature
of faith, it can be explained that scientific theories are revisable
because they get validity from the observation of the particular
parts of the universe. As the new parts of the universe may be seen,
a theory can be revised if it is not compatible with the new
observations. Or, the theory may be based on many logically
independent assumptions, and hence can be replaced with time by a
theory with a lesser number of independent assumptions. (For
example, this was basically what Newtonian theory achieved in the 17th
century by showing that Kepler’s laws and Galileo’s work and host of
other experimental rules can be logically inferred from just few
independent assumptions, namely the Newton’s three laws of motion
and the formula for the gravitational force.) But, in contrast to
scientific theories, the explanation of the universe as created and
designed depends upon the mere existence of the universe and general
order in it, facts which are not revisable. Moreover, this
explanation does not involve many logically independent assumptions
replaceable by fewer ones. So this explanation is not changeable or
revisable, differentiating it from a scientific theory, even though
like the scientific theories it is also the best explanation of the
certain aspects of the universe. (The difference between valid
natural sciences, social sciences and religious cosmology is not in
putting completely different kind of conditions on knowledge but
only in being less and less concerned with the details of the
universe, with the particular and hard facts. Whatever is valid in
natural sciences, social sciences, mathematics, logic, metaphysics
and religious cosmology is valid because of being the best
explanation, compatible with the human experience and logic, of the
universe or its parts, though for different questions about the
universe in accordingly different styles.)
Put in another way, if we do not like to remain restricted
by the principles the deductive logic like “examples do not prove”
and want to justify through observations the soundness of the
Islamic beliefs, this need not cut Muslims from the rest of humanity
and make them esoteric and thus alien in any way. All the human
beings in all the cultures share science, and, practically
speaking, scientists do argue even positively---in favour of
their theories----through the (scientific) observations and
experiments. (Some metaphysical decisions are involved in such
judgments of scientists even though they do not even like talking
about metaphysics, much less admitting their metaphysical
tendencies.)
Scientists normally do not have much taste for philosophy.
These are philosophers of science who warn scientists against
proving through observations and examples etc. But that does
not mean that Muslim preachers relying on examples alienate
themselves from the philosophy. At the end of day, even philosophers
do go beyond the constraints of deductive logic and learn from
experience in non-mechanical ways. What philosophers say about the
general nature of the universe is composed of the lessons that they
learn from the human experience. These lessons are not always
mechanical like the logical deductions or
refutations-through-examples. For example, Popper considers6
the law of cause and effect, the law of uniformity of nature, the
law of induction and probability (chance) statements as
valid basically because these are the lessons he learns from the
general human experience without being able to mechanically
justify these. A simple way to understand this mode of thinking is
to realize that particular scientific laws are refutable, changeable
and testable, but the statement “there are laws in the
universe”----meaning it is ordered enough----is irrefutable and
unchangeable (dogmatic!) though still justified from the human
observations and experiments. Even a statement can be made so that
the examples of the natural phenomenon Muslims use for preaching are
evidences refuting it. It is8 “there is available
a completely natural explanation of the start of universe,
design in it, and of life and consciousness in it.” So, we need not
be that much afraid of refutability as well.
Another misunderstanding that unnecessarily alienates
Muslims from the normal human thinking is that Muslims perhaps do
not accept human experience or science as an independent
source of knowledge but still use scientific arguments in favour of
the Islamic beliefs. Just like no court of the world would give much
importance to an evidence of a servant for his master, it is a
natural human demand that arguments in favour of a belief should be
based on knowledge that is neither subordinate to this belief nor is
logically derived from this belief. But during the last one-century
or two, it is common to hear Muslims saying that all the science is
either derived from Quran and Sunnah (“the whole science is a
part of Islam!”) or is by definition subordinate to them. And
interestingly these are the same Muslims who argue vehemently that
not only scientific facts but also theories support the Islamic
beliefs. It is essential to analyze if this inconsistent thinking is
based on some essential Islamic teachings. That brings us to the
second issue:
Is the human observation a source of knowledge according to
the Islamic teachings? Does the human reason has a right to pass
judgments on the Islamic beliefs? Or it can work only as a
subordinate. Is there a circle in which the human reason can
independently work without the constraint of remaining confined to
the logical inferences from the Quran and Sunnah? Is such a circle
limited to the natural sciences or includes the social sciences as
well?
To find out the sources of the logical inconsistencies found
in the Muslim literature, one is forced to admit some problems with
the works of some of the greatest Muslim scholars: Imam Ghazali says9
that our sense perceptions may be erroneous and we correct them
through reason. (He goes on to say that by the same token our reason
may be erroneous, and we correct it through the mystic----sufi----
experience!) The examples chosen by Ghazali to point out misleading
of the senses are of motion of shadows and size of stars. He says
that our sight tells that a shadow is stationary, but the reason
tells us that it is very slowly moving.
An answer to possible objections to the human
observations as a standard of knowledge arising out of such comments
is that our sense perceptions may be wrong, but we correct them
through other sense perceptions and through the explanations of the
data thus collected. The flaw in the Ghazali’s argument becomes
clear if we examine how do we know that a shadow is moving.
Obviously this is because of later observations, as Ghazali himself
says. (Precisely speaking, Ghazali says there that our
observations and experiments tell us that our senses may mislead us.
It is not clear how he differentiates observations and experiments
from sense perceptions.) Thus our observations may err, but the
correction to them also comes from observations10. So,
our observations as a whole remain a standard (source) of
knowledge. The other example Ghazali mentions is that the
observations tell us that stars are small but “reason” tells us that
they are huge. What Ghazali means by reason here is science, and
science is an explanation of observations-----its criterion and
source of knowledge is observations and experiments. Likewise, all
the explanations of the observations are based on considering the
human observations as a source (or criterion, to be precise) of
knowledge.
Reading Quran and Sunnah, one finds nothing against the
common human belief that observations give knowledge. In the surah
Al-takasur (number 102) of Quran two stages of surety are
mentioned: ilm-ul-yaqeen and ain-ul-yaqeen. Referring
to ain-ul-yaqeen (belief-through-sight) is a
description-without-objection in Quran of the simple state of
affairs that a normal person becomes confident of the existence of
an object if he or she observes it. Reservations about this simple
conclusions are mostly based on forgetting the basic principle of
Islam that all what is not forbidden by some Islamic injunction in
halal or mubah (permitted); one can not look
for a complete list of all halal things in Islam. Since the
common human habit of taking experience as a source of knowledge is
not even discouraged in the Islamic teachings, it is obviously a
criterion and hence source of knowledge for a Muslim as it is a
source of knowledge for any human being, Muslim or non-Muslim alike.
If needed, this conclusion can be supported (or illustrated) by the
famous hadith (in the Sahih Muslim) in which the Prophet
Muhammad (sallal-lahu-alaihe-wa-sallam) said to some Medinian
farmers about some agriculture problem related to the palm tree
growing that “It is up to you to decide what is right and what is
wrong. You can better decide in these matters.” (Since experienced
people knew better what was to be obtained from the human
experience.)
In the Islamic teachings, the human experience is mentioned
as a source of knowledge in two kinds of contexts. First, to show
that human experience supports the Islamic beliefs and teachings and
indicates that the Islamic family, social, political, educational
and economic systems are more wise and just. (The examples of this
are many ayat of Quran inviting humans to look around and see
the Divine plan in the universe.) And second, to tell that Islam
leaves many details of the worldly knowledge to human experience if
they have no bearing upon the Islamic message and training. Many
needs of even the Muslim ummah such as most of the natural
sciences and the technical side of the social sciences like
data analysis and traffic management, accounting, vote counting, map
making and reading, surveying techniques, students examination
methods, manuscript reading etc. are not in the Quran and Sunnah.
The scientific method and philosophy of (natural or social) science
are not the topics Quran and Sunnah directly address. Obviously,
these are left to analysis of the human experience.
Accepting the two sources of knowledge (Divine revelation
and the human experience), question of the relations of the two
sources faces us. This includes what we should do if an experiential
(e.g. an empirical) statement about the world contradicts a
religious statement about it. A good answer to this question is the
position of Ibn-e-Taymiya’ summarized10 as follows:
There cannot be such a contradiction if the two statements are
certain (qat’i). (This claim of Islam, made in the desert of
Arabia in an extremely uncivilized part of its history, and the
validity of this claim is a strong argument in favour of the Islamic
beliefs.) There may be contradiction between one certain and one
probable (zan-ni) statement or between two probable
statements. In such a case, we should prefer the one having stronger
evidence behind it, irrespective of whether it is religious,
rational or empirical evidence. The empirical evidence should be
based on human experience including the natural or physical world,
our internal states, human beings as physical objects or informants,
dreams and minds.
This means we should regard science as something
independently progressing but still not contradicting the
Islamic beliefs and teachings. So, adopting the Islamic view on
these issues does not disturb the freedom of the doing the
scientific research based on observations, experiments and
calculations. Many Muslims think that such a freely progressing
science has harmed the Islamic teachings. Recent history does convey
such an impression. But it should not be forgotten that it was not
science but comments by scientists and exaggerations disallowed by
the nature of science that have troubled us. Present Muslims are
generally unable to separate such personal opinions and
culture-based comments by scientists from the bona fide science. As
long as they have this handicap they can face the challenge any way.
But at least in principle the proper way is that we should regard
science as independent knowledge, feel comfortable with the freedom
of research etc., and if a problem arises through the false claims
made in the name of science we should be able to separate such
claims and the science-based false exaggerations from the proper
science. It is only such a proper science that we can confidently
take in the way (mentioned in the above paragraph) suggested by
Ibne-e-Taymiya.
A clarification is must before ending this particular
discussion: It is not claimed that the human reason can find out or
know all the details of the Creation /or Creator, and is able to
answer each of the wild questions about the Creator that the human
speculative thought can provide like “who created the Creator?”
Saying that the human reason has a right to pass judgments on the
Islamic beliefs means only that the human reason can appreciate (not
invent) the general soundness of the Islamic beliefs if these are
properly presented. The clarification in this paragraph is not a
refusal to satisfy any demand that is normally satisfied in the
human intellectual discourses: In physics we cannot experience or
logically infer from experience the elementary particles like the
electron, nor are we able to answer all the questions about them.
(For example one cannot tell if a photon was inside an electron
before an electron emitted the photon11, and how it is
that an electron can be detected in any one of the two boxes even if
it is not possible for it to be at the boundary between the boxes
etc.) But still we believe in their existence. As a simpler example,
the same can be said about the concept of force and energy etc. We
cannot see them, understand each and every aspect of them or answer
all the questions about them. But we still believe in them because
these help us in understanding many phenomena or we know enough
about these.
3)
Causality and Divine Action: Has the Divine Action finished after
the creation of the universe because of being bound by the
unchangeable scientific laws, and is replaced by the blind
scientific causality or randomness? Are Divine-ordered
miracles also impossible?
In
modern times, the humanity generally takes science as showing that
we can describe the universe causally without mentioning any
supernatural influence. As far as scientific calculations and
experiments are concerned, it is very difficult to avoid this
conclusion. In the working of science there is only a scientific
causality and apparently no Divine action. Thus the
Divine action is normally not to be found in the working of science.
But, there is no argument for confining the Divine action to the
creation of science only. To see where the Divine action is, in
addition to the creation of science, one has to realize the
limits of science12. To understand the Divine action
without clashing with the (apparent) scientific causality, one has
to understand the following: a) the scientific laws do not have a
power in themselves unless sustained by the One responsible for the
very existence of science, and b) these rules do not keep the
Creator of science within any limits even while all the events
caught by the scientific predictions and observations remain
normally obeying the rules of science through an arrangement unknown
to us. (Exceptions to this norm are the Divine ordered miracles.)
But by the human reason we also cannot deny the possibility that the
events not caught by scientific predictions or
observations happen according to the
Divine-Special-Will-in-reply-to-prayers, and not according to
what the blind science would have told us. The Islamic belief makes
this mere possibility as something to look forward to.
Hence in challenging the present dominant ‘atheistic
science’ without denying its universally recognized merits, Muslims
need to point out the limits of science, in addition of course to
emphasizing the creation of the wonderful science; we need to show
that science, be as it is, is not a complete description of
the world; we need to clarify that science (as defined by Popper or
others) is a human activity directed only towards noting the
regularities (termed ‘uniformities of nature’) in human experience
and understand them in terms of the summaries expressed in form of
law-like statements. So, if there are violations to the ‘law of
uniformity of nature’, science is by definition unable to
deal with them. Similarly, science is by definition unable to
answer the question that how this very law of uniformity of nature
and hence science originated at all; to answer this question you
have to compare the situation without science and with
science, and science can obviously describe only the situation with
science. And religion is basically concerned with the aspects of the
world beyond science. So many clashes and competitions, if not
comparisons as well, of religion and science are unnecessary.
4)
Causality and Divine Action: Masal-a-e-Jabr-o-Qadr (if we
human beings are the cause of our actions----Qadr, or Allah
is totally responsible for all what we do----Jabr).
During most of the time in the last fourteen hundred years,
if Muslim philosophers have addressed any issue related to the
question of causality and Divine action, perhaps it was this
Masa’la-e-Jabr-o-Qadr and not the above mentioned apparent clash
with the scientific causality or randomness. Perhaps modern
thinking cannot add too much to what Ashari (Muslim)
Ilm-ul-Kalam explained through the concept of Irada-e-Juzwiya
(partial freedom/free will). But for completeness it is necessary to
mention this issue. Moreover, the human development till present
perhaps may provide us with further examples helping in being able
to feel comfortable with the dual aspects of any properly Islamic
explanation. (Please note that both Jabr and Qadr are
mentioned in Quran.) These may be modern management practices where
a prime minister or president is head of government and is
eventually responsible for each decision made in his or her country,
but in practice many decisions only he eventually approves are
actually initiated by some ministers or officers working under him.
Another thing to be noted that modern tafasir of
Quran have put more emphasis on the context dependence (shan-e-nazool)
of even the Quranic ayat and instructions. Or in modern
period it is easier for us to collect together all the Quranic
ayat about an issue and only then conclude something. This may
suggest that in Quran the teaching of Jabr was emphasized
while addressing to arrogant peoples and Qadr while
addressing the peoples blaming Allah for their own bad deeds. But
the full picture Quran teaches us has both aspects of Jabr
and Qadr.
5)
Infinity is impossible. Universe cannot be infinitely old and thus
had a start.
Here the question is if the universe had a start or not.
With reference to the science, the question may mean either do we
know if the universe had a start or can we know if the universe had
a start? The first question is about what the present science says
about the issue. The answer of the present science, especially the
Big Bang theory, is discussed in for example ref. 13 along with the
Islamic view. In the present article the topic is if it is possible
for science in its very nature to describe a universe that
had no start. If what science can describe has to be of finite age,
the universe must be of the finite age as it is well described by
science.
The analysis is the following: All what is happening in the
world is the result of some process. We do not know all the
processes that have resulted in the present world, but surely the
processes must have completed in time intervals in a way that the
time interval of a process and the double of this time interval are
not the same, even though both the time interval and its
double may be unknown to us. If the time of a process were infinite,
its double would be the same because the double of infinity is also
infinity. So, every event of the world is a result of a process
completed in a finite time. Carefully summing all these processes
(avoiding duplications etc.) we can in principle find out the total
finite time in which the whole universe has developed into
the present form. This age of the universe is thus in principle a
knowable finite time interval. Even if we are unable to calculate
this age, the simple conclusion that it is not infinite is
sufficient to tell that there was a start and creation of the
universe.
The only way universe can have an ‘infinite age’ is for it
have to have no change, or have no change for infinite time followed
by changes, or have every change followed by an exact counter
change. The first option is against every experience we have; there
are always changes in the world. The second choice cannot answer
what would be special about the moment when the changes started. The
function of (scientific) knowledge is to determine the significance
of different moments of time with respect to the start of the
universe. For example, to tell what will happen after one second of
the start of the universe, after one year, after a thousand years,
etc. If the universe had no start, the role of different moments in
the history of universe would not be determined ones. So, for any
particular change in the state of the universe there would be no
explanation through (scientific) knowledge why it happened at the
moment it happened and not before or after it. This means that there
would be no basis for any scientific explanation of the
events in universe.
As far as the third choice (every change followed by an
exact counter change in a period), a scientific argument against
this very idea of a periodic universe is that in the later part of a
period order must increase if this later part has to exactly
compensate for all the loss of order in the first part and
make the situation at the end of a period exactly same as at
the start, and that is impossible. (This scientific argument is
further explained in the paragraph below.) But perhaps this reply
can be subject of some scientific discussion. So, it must be noted
that even if future science somehow strangely allows such an exactly
repeating and hence self-ordering phase of the history of the
universe, these kind of periods cannot be an arguments for an
eternal universe either: A period must have a start, and how can a
period take start in a universe that itself has no start? There must
be something special about the starting moment of a period that
makes it different to so many other moments before and after it! The
period-starting (or change-starting) moments must have a special
relationship to the universe-starting moment; there is no other way
that the period-starting or change-starting moment can be special.
When we draw pictures of a periodic motion in our books, we
decide where to start a period in that drawing. But in a universe
with no start and no Active Agent, how can there be such decisions?
Another way to see this conclusion is that any process or
change heading in one direction indefinitely would make the
world not sustaining life etc. In the language of science, this is
the ever-present consensus in science that the total disorder in the
universe goes on increasing. This general observation of the nature
of the universe has found a technical version in the form of the
second law of thermodynamics (or the law of ‘entropy’). Thus if
the universe were infinite old, the disorder in it would have
increased without limit leaving no order in the universe and making
everything in the universe in the same state of disorder at the same
temperature (the Big Chill). But we see lot of order, life and
variety in the universe. Thus there must have been a lot of order
(fine tuning) in the early universe, and this order and variety has
been decreasing for only a finite time i.e. for a finite age of the
universe.
6)
Mumkin-ul-Wajud and the Wajib-ul-Wajud (Allah). Can the human reason
consistently think of a universe that is not created?
This may well be technical note included here for
completeness, and need not concern a normal reader. Peoples have
always thought that the chain-of-creation in this world must
stop somewhere, in a way that the First Creator, is essentially
different to all the other members of the chain. Someone having the
supernatural quality of not needing a further creator can be
the only way for stopping the chain of natural causes; any natural
cause or creator or factor cannot have a supernatural quality, must
have its own cause or creator and thus can never be a termination of
the chain of beings. Even uneducated simple persons, whether
agreeing or disagreeing to it, have always felt the weight of this
argument. To put all this is in philosophical language, the Muslim
philosopher Ibne-e-Sina introduced the terms
Mumkin-ul-Wajud and the Wajib-ul-Wajud that were later
translated in English as the contingent and the Necessary Being.
Mumkin-ul-Wajud (contingent) is something that is not
essential to understand the world; it could well be absent
without making the process of the understanding of the world
impossible. Although Imam Ghazali was very much against the
philosophy of Ibn-e-Sina, but we may take help of Ghazali’s examples
to understand Mumkin-ul-Wajud: Ghazali said that it is not
necessary that the fire burn cotton. Thus, as far as logic and
the process of understanding the world are concerned, the burning
ability of fire could well be absent. It is only due to our
observations and experiments that we believe fire burns. In the
modern terminology this means that had fire did not burn, science
was still possible. (Though in that case we had to accept some
scientific theories different to what we presently believe.) But the
Necessary Being (the Creator) is the One whose absence causes
problems for the reason as well, not only for the observations; the
human reason cannot consistently think of a universe that was not
created, of a universe that has no explanation having the
supernatural quality of not needing a further explanation. (A
natural/scientific ultimate explanation would demand a further
explanation, leading to a contradiction.)
Here it is to be pointed out the distinction between the
problems for reason and problems for observations only is not alien
to the humanity at large. The particular scientific theories
scientists we believe in are the ones whose absence would cause
problems for the observations only. But the absence of
mathematics, deductive logic and generally accepted metaphysics
(like the law of cause and effect, the law of uniformity of nature,
the law of induction and chance statements) would cause
problems for the human reason as well. Put in terms of
another example, had some of our observations been different we
would have come up with a different science. But if there were no
pattern or order in our observations at all, no science would be
possible.
Notes and
References:
-
For example, Haroon Yahya “The Creation Of The Universe”
(Canada: Al-Ateeq, 2000).
-
Al-Ghazali “Tahafa-ul-Filasifah”. (See for
example the Urdu translation by the same name done by Hanif
Nadvi and published by the Institute of Islamic Culture, Lahore,
1974.)
-
David Hume “Theory of Knowledge” (N/P: Nelson and
Sons, 1951) p.43.
-
For example,
from the statements that “all men are mortal” and “X is a man”,
deductive logic tells that “X is mortal.”
-
In its logical nature, mathematics is also deductive logic
though in the symbolic and not verbal form.
-
It is to be noted that these human judgments are
objective human judgments, meaning that all the human
beings tend to make the same or similar judgments. These should
not be confused with the (subjective) human emotions and
personal likes and dislikes that have no such universal trends
that can be described in clear words. For the meaning of the
terms “objectivity” and “subjectivity” and its status in the
Islamic thought, the reader may read for example the article
“Objectivity: An Epistemological Value” by Bilal Masud in the
Journal Al-Hikmat of the Department of Philosophy,
University of the Punjab, 2002 issue.
-
Karl Popper “Logic of Scientific Discovery” (New
Yourk Basic Books INC, 1959) p. 36.
-
Bilal Masud “Causality and Divine Action” Science
Religion Dialogue, Vol.1 No.1 (Mansehra: HSSRD 2002).
-
In his “al-munqaz min-al- dhalal”. (See, for example,
the Urdu translation by Hanif Nadvi entitled “Sargazisht-e-Ghazali,”
published by the Institute of Islamic Culture, Lahore, 1959,
pages 6,7 and 114.)
-
See for example the article “the Islamization of the
Sciences” by J. S. Idris, then professor of aqida in a
Saudi university, in the
American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 2,
1987.
-
Read for example on page 84 of I. J. R. Aitchison and A. J.
G. Hey “Introduction to Gauge Field Theories,” published
by Adam Hilger, second edition, 1989 the incidence of (the Nobel
laureate) Feynman not being able to answer this simple question
about the emission of light particles from excited atoms. The
reason is that science cannot answer the sort of questions put
to Feynman. (The report here is in turn taken from R. P.
Feynman, The Physics Teacher, vol. 7, No. 6, September
1969.)
-
Peter Medawar “The Limits of Science” (London: Oxford
University Press, 1989).
-
Bilal Masud “The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe in
Religious Perspective” Science Religion Dialogue,
(Mansehra: HSSRD, 2003).
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