Sign Here If You Exist At least they admit that belief in God and Afterlife is not unnatural or difficult - quite the contrary. It is inevitable. What is difficult is to not believe in it. It's completely out of sync with innate human nature - it is not belief in God that is learnt - it's disbelief that is a learnt behavior - and not an easy one at that. Seems that it takes continuous indoctrination and super-scale distraction (and the company of passionate disbelievers) to keep someone constant in their disbelief - if these artificial props are removed - the person will revert to his state of fitrah - that is belief in God and Eternal life. so in a way my questions get answered. rare moments of frankness ...
Some questions that occurred to me while I read that article: 1. Truth is one and unchanging 2. This is the 'ilm of Allah subHan wa ta'ala 3. We have been given something which we label as "ilm" or knowledge - which is from the informing of Allah ta'ala - through Prophets, Awliya or through observation, experimentation, experience, reasoning. Questions: 1.Why is Ghayb the bedrock of faith? imaan bil ghayb - why is belief in ghayb essential for Eternal salvation? 2. there are millions of smart, intelligent people around (as the world goes) who find it "difficult" if not impossible to simply trust something of such momentous import as 3. An all Powerful Creator - whom We are all obligated to not just Believe-in - but also there are very very minute rules and regulations as regards life in general that we are supposed to follow/obey/perform/abstain. 4. Looking from the perspective of a general person who grows up in daar al kufr - it's a non-starter - he can't even imagine a discussion on a topic like this. 5. It's beyond the orbit of his life - he is just existing in a region/culture/society that never makes him consider this subject with anything like seriousness. 6. How do we reconcile general intelligence with lack of faith due to - well - the condition of believing without complete testable, quantifiable, verifiable, definable evidence? 7. is the answer to all of above that capacity to believe in Allah ta'ala (Islam) is innate to human nature and the perceived inability to do so is really an act of rejection which stems from the fault of the person himself? 8. that since Allah ta'ala did take a covenant from ALL the arwaah - the question of "capacity" or "motivation" for belief is simply moot - it just is there - and if the person finds it unworthy of entertaining then it's his very much conscious and voluntary act of rejection - rather than something that simply happens to him?
Carroll Thinks We All Exist on Multiple Worlds [no, it's not the same Carroll who created a fictitious wonderland, it's another guy who thinks he lives in one] Interesting replies: What is reality? Carroll: The best answer we can give is that reality is a vector in Hilbert space. This is the technical way of saying that reality is described by a single quantum mechanical wave function. [always knew it would be something very simple ...] Where are the worlds? There’s no such thing as where they are. Certain things don’t have locations. Where is our universe? The universe is not the kind of thing that has a location. Where is brotherhood located? Where is the number five located? The worlds just exist simultaneously as our own.
subhanAllah! This is a very important thing to remember and indeed it is so as the Quran says: ' WE do not punish unless we have sent a messenger ' so we can't say that hujjah is established just by using 'science and logic' and conversely we can't expect science to "prove" the haqqaniyat of islam *ever*.
actually, existence of God cannot be proven through rationale or [scientific] observation because aql is deficient in comprehending what is beyond its limits, that is why Allah subhanu wa ta'ala sent prophets. however, prophets were also humans therefore there was a chance that people would claim equality with them and reject their dawah, and it happened (qaalu maa antum illa basharun mithluna) therefore prophets were given mu'jazat for the their proof of being the messenger of Allah subhanu wa ta'ala.
The easiest proof (to my mind) is proof by contrapositive (or proof by contradiction). The "very sanctimonious" science can't (and can never) prove that the following proposition: (i) universe was (or could be) created without a Creator (or an agent) arguing that would necessitate the abhorrent possibility of "perpetual motion" (which flies in the face of 2nd law of thermodynamics). then, the opposite proposition must be true: (ii) the universe was created by a Creator This argument is also known as creatio ex nihilo. ----- I have heard the following incident a number of times in durus (but I haven't across this in writing in authentic source): Imam Fakhr al-Din Razi on his death bed was confronted by shaytan to prove the existence of Allah (azza wajal). The Imam provided one proof after the other and shaytan successfully negated/refuted each of these arguments. Imam Razi provided 100-odd proofs, only to be refuted by shaytan each time; the Imam was in the imminent danger of losing his life in the state of disbelief. Shaykh Najm al-Din Kubra, who was performing his ablution in another country/place, came to know of the situation of his contemporary (and protege?) and he immediately came to Imam Fakhr al-Din's rescue and commanded him (by inspiration) to state that he "believed in the existence of Allah (azza wajal) without any proof". As soon as shaytan received this reply, he beat a retreat and Imam Razi managed to proclaim shahadah before his death. If someone can verify and confirm the above incident (and correct other details), I would be grateful.
Assalamua'laikum. "I believe because it is absurd" This phrase is often used by atheists to mock non-atheists. Needless to say, the phrase is completely idiotic and not worth consideration. I feel that 'belief' is 'inspired' not 'acquired'. Specifically, i feel that no amount of reasoning can convince a skeptic to become a 'believer' unless Allah (azzawajal) opens his heart to truth. Is that not implied by the verses: (Ar-Ra'd: 27, 33), (Al-Kahf: 17), (Faatir: 8), (Ibrahim: 4), (Ash-Shura: 13) , (Al-Baqara: 26, 272), (Al-Muddaththir: 31), (Ghaafir: 33) , (Al-A'raaf: 178, 186), (Al-Israa: 97), (Az-Zumar: 23) ? i mean, there are many logical/ physical 'evidences' for the existence of GOD but is there a 'proof' of HIS existence? is it not the case that the evidences that cause one person to accept islam/acknowledge existence of GOD are not sufficient for another and if more rigorous analysis is applied then even the former may not be fully able to explain the reason for his change of heart? Islam is the only religion which is totally in accordance with the fitrah and not averse to reason. But Can EVERY single statement from the Aqida Tahawiyyah, say, be proved with tangible, measurable, reproducible evidence? Aren't the believers characterized as 'Those who believe in the UNSEEN' ? So instead of harping on mindlessly that every single islamic belief is scientific, as ZN does (he even says that in due time science will prove the existence of heaven and hell! i dunno if by 'due time' he means Qiyamah ....), will it not be more prudent to say that science/logic is not a sufficient yardstick to measure the reality of the universe and that islam DOES expect us to believe in many 'scientifically unproven' things? Of course there is one thing that can bring about proven conviction: The 'Mushahada' of the sufiya. But then that is not everyone's cup of tea, not everyone can emulate Imam Ghazali in his expedition to absolute certainty! Any comments? May Allah preserve our iman. Wassalaam.
