In the run up to my Dawah Masterclass course, I’ve been graciously invited by the London Muslim Mosque (in Ontario, Canada [yes, Canada has a London too]), on Wednesday, 21st October 2020 to give a lecture (online) on the topic of ‘The Reality of God’ which will discuss how we can know the existence of God, and how we can know the truth of Islam.
The lecture will online, and will be held at 5pm ET (Ontario, Canada time or GMT-4).
The event has now passed, but the recording can be viewed below:
Ustadh, what is your opinion on the mainstream Ash’ari rejection of natural causation? (i.e. the doctrine of Munasaba – Occasionalism)
We can model standard cause and effect of science as occasional cause and occasional effect.
If we observe randomness (lack of pattern), then can we not say it is possible that Allah can cause/create/determine something such that we cannot comprehend pattern, or at least we see no wisdom in it as an isolated event?
Saying he can not do that limits the divine omnipotence in my humble opinion.
When Khidr Alayhis Salam killed the young boy we can say he did so for a reason after knowing more, but isolated as an event his action seems random. Is this not a message that we should be looking at the bigger picture not each isolated detail?
Perhaps (and Allah knows best) we can only observe patten and reason when seeing the full picture.
Personally I feel the First Cause argument should be amended to the Only Cause argument. We can arrive at that through reason. (I also prefer arguing from determination than causation – but both are linked.)
So, I think we need to get rid of the final assumptions. We need to seperate Rationalism and Empiricism, and realise the fire does not burn the cotton ball.
We can then prove all other doctrines to be wrong, including natural causation.
Allahu Alam.
I look forward to your Masterclass – and I hope we can discuss these things in depth.
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I feel science and the laws of physics are his Sunnan – he chooses to create in a pattern and when he doesn’t we call that a miracle. Rather he is always intervening.
This simple doctrine – that Allah is the sole cause and creator of all things – is the simplest understanding at a fundamental level.
But since he in his wisdom creates in pattern to allow us to arrive at understanding his wisdom. We see patterns in nature – we see one thing coming after another and as he is so consistent in what he does we then assume that one must necessitate another.
I think science is important, extremely, as he is so consistent in his Sunnan we can extrapolate models. But observing the patterns we see a beautiful design – and that intricate design demonstrates to us intelligence (this I feel is empirical evidence for the Hikma of Allah, not his Wujud which is more simply proven and is known even in an absolutely “random” universe. This just lets us see his Hikma – he would have it even in an absolutely random universe.)
But it also points us to question the nature of the world.
If everything comes in pairs, then what about this Dunya? Mars and Venus, the Jews and the Christians. The orbit of the moon around the Earth, the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, the orbit of the Sun around the black hole in the center of our galaxy. Our Earth is not too close and not too far, our Sun is not too close and not too far. And the Muslims make Tawaf around the Kaaba. Are the orbits perfect? Do the Hujjaj go round in a perfect circle? Down to the very atom and electron.
He made us a middle nation. He stated this in the middle verse of Surah Baqarah.
Some reject their lord. Others make parners with him. We worship him alone.
It was Buddha, whose religion has devolved into a strange agnosticism, who talked of the middle path. It was also Buddha who warned that Saddharma – the pure religion would only last 500 years. When do we find the oldest fragments of the Pali Cannon? And Buddha told of another Buddha – the Maitreya and said he would teach the Men and Daevya. But Budhhism has devolved into a spiritualistic agnosticism amongst some and spirit worship amongst others – Buddha’s criticism of Daevya worship falling on death ears.
In the scriptures of Hinduism, they called RasulAllah salallahu Alayhi Wa Salam “Kalki Autar”. In their oldest scripture Monotheism and the story of Nuh Alayhis Salam – Manu – is preserved. An eastern king once saw the moon split and he asked his sages. They told him it was a sign of the last Autar. So he went to Arabia, and became a Muslim – his tale even recorded by the bewildered hindus. But the religion of the Rishis (or whoever came to them) has long since become unrecognisable, devolving into Monism and Idolatry.
Judaism and Christianity – some reject the prophets, others deify them. Some chose to pursue Allah’s wrath and became deistic “monotheists”, and others chose to go astray and become trinitarian “monotheists”.
Some took “Osirus” as an unspeakable thing they invented, others took Isa Alayhis Salatu Was-Salam as that.
The Truth has been corrupted through history. Perhaps there are some trying to corrupt it now. They can try but they will only fulfill prophecy – and not the prophecies they want to fulfil.
Truth is always surrounded by falsehood and falsehood has degrees. Those who come with and to the Truth – Allahu Alam perhaps like Ahkenaten – are always persecuted, ridiculed and called liars in this life. Their legacy erased by later generations.
But like the man of Yasin, it is they who succeed in the end.
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Can there be more than one Creator?
Suppose there are two Creators.
What if Creator A wills to create arrangement X but Creator B wills to create arrangement Y. Both arrangements cannot exist at the same time, so only one Creator is effective – so the other is not a Creator.
What if we said sometimes Creator A creates and sometimes Creator B creates? This is a contingency – what is determining that one Creator creates and not another? So then there must be a Creator superior to them and in reality Creator A/B are not Creators – again negating multiple Creators.
Well what if Creator A and Creator B just always Create the same thing? Are the two differentiated by any quality? Leibnitz’s Law states that due to these two Creators being undiscernable they would both be the same Creator – again negating multiple Creators. Therefore there is only one Creator.
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Abdullah al Andalusi 
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