Assalamu Alaikum, and welcome.
I realize that the title of this talk may seem rather vague: the nature of belief; so let me clarify that now, so you don't feel that you came to hear something, and it was a different thing they were talking about tonight. By nature of belief I don't mean to itemize all the things that a Muslim believes in; interested parties can find that out for themselves very easily - go and look it up in an encyclopedia. That's very easy. What I wanted to talk about was belief itself. Is there something different about the way a Muslim believes and the way that somebody else believes? In many cases maybe there isnt. For example no doubt there are many muslims, muslims in name, who believe what they believe because their parents believe that way and their parents before them. But, especially here in this society now, a muslim that lives here may find himself removed from his family, especially for purposes of education. He may find himself re-examining what he believes and asking himself, "why do I believe the things that I believe anyway?"
And it is in arriving at proper conclusions on self-examination that a person really becomes a Muslim in the true spirit, because the root meaning of the word is 'submission' [i.e. root meaning of Muslim], that means you have examined something and have decided that's where you belong; you want to take a certain position - you submit yourself to a certain position. That is what a Muslim is.
So, it is on the nature of belief, and you can't separate belief from salvation, so it is on those two things that I mainly want to speak of.
Usually in this society, atleast Western society, God is thought of as posessing atleast 3 superlative qualities:
- He is said to be
> All Mighty
> All Knowing, and
> All Good
But these 3 attributes lead to puzzles and paradoxes: Is God helpless to prevent evil? Or does He choose not to do so? In the first case He's not AlMighty, in the second case He's not All Good.
The problem is caused by the ascription 'All Good' - saying that God is All Good is an anthropomorphism; that is casting God in the image of man. Good is a relative term. For example, when a lion runs down a gazelle, that's bad for the gazelle; it's good for the lion. It depends on your point of view. Good and bad are a theme of mankind; they are not a theme of the Universe.
The Qur'an talks about the good and the evil things created by God. As a matter of fact, so does the Bible. But I've never seen it quoted by anyone who discussed from a Christian point of view 'the problem of Evil' as it is called. From our view point, good and evil, are really the terms "beneficial" and "harmful".
If you call good and bad as though they were absolute - as though they existed without reference to other things, forgetting their relative nature - you make a serious mistake. It is like calling boiling water 'hot'. It is hot to my fingers, but it's not very hot compared to the surface of the sun. It takes on the quality of being hot only relative to my fingertips. We make a mistake - no physicist would say that 'hot' is a thing that has existed from all eternity, that it is a basic priniciple. Temperature is what we talk about. Hot and cold are measures of temperature against something else. In the same way, good and bad is measured against something else.
Ethics - the study of good and bad - is like arithmetics in a sense. If you ask a two year-old, "why does 2+2 =4?" He might tell you, "because the teacher says so". But is that why 2+2=4? It doesn't depend on the teacher's authority; it depends on facts - you can discover it for yourself.
Similarly, alcohol is not 'bad' because God put it on an arbitrary list of things He decided to prohibit; it's bad for mankind because it is harmful for mankind. And here is a good point - Man is not punished for his sins, Man is punished by his sins. Evil done brings evil on the doer. The function of God is guidance - good and bad are pointed out to us, and we may verify the truth of the information by observation and by reason. The Qur'an repeats the lessons of history, it asks questions and it answers objections.
Salvation is the subject of the 103rd Surah [chapter] which is usually translated, "Man is lost, except for those who believe and do good, and enjoin truth and perseverence on others."
4 points. But let's examine more closely the root meanings of these 4 points:
The root meaning translated 'believe' (amana) has the fundamental meaning, 'confirm' or 'verify'. In some cases the Straight Path, which is sought by Muslims, is a result of elimination. If, for example, a creed tells a congregation what they must believe, the congregation should ask for a justification; not just sign up. If the creed says such and such, the believer should say, "why should I? Show me why". The Qur'an repeatedly warns against believing in something for which there is no warrant. Faith in Islam, then, is not a pledge, it is not a promise to believe something, but it is a conviction. So verification is really the first point of salvation.
Now at this point, and some other points, I might get into things that escape you momentarily or go right by you, but I would urge you to follow through. You can look them up in popular accounts, check your Encyclopedia, under references such as logic. Or maybe some of you are studying logic and you'll see some of the directions that I'm going here.
(So we're speaking about verification) Any theory is not infinitely defendable. You cannot keep saying 'because this, because this, because this' and keep on going forever. Theories are based on assumptions and one doesn't prove an assumption, but starts from the point of an assumption.
The Muslim's first assumption is simply this: The Universe makes sense. And this is the same as the modern scientific assumption. Where scientific theories overlap, they have to be consistent. If you have a theory of Chemistry and you have a theory of Biology, the two theories overlap; Chemistry is applied to Biology and so on. Where they overlap the two theories that explain both of them can't give an inconsistency, so there must be a bigger theory to take them all in. And this is the way the scientist reasons, that if he has a consistent theory he believes it's not going to conflict with someone else's theory as long as his theory is consistent also.
The alternative to that assumption, the assumption that the Universe makes sense, is chaos. It means that one mistrusts everything. If one says that the Universe doesn't make sense, a man is really saying, "I can't be certain of anything." So we want to ask that man, "can you be certain of that?" So you see the trap he's in? If a man wants to mistrust everything, then he has to mistrust his mistrust, and he's paralyzed; he doesn't make any progress. So the first assumption seems to be an option that doesn't really have an alternative. Interestingly enough, two of the attributes of God, as described in the Qur'an, are always put together: AlWahed AlQahhar - The One, The Compelling/ The Irresistable. This assumption that the Universe makes sense, is really the same as the foundation of Islam: La ilaha illa Allah - There is no god but The God [ilah translated god]. La ilaha illa Allah is saying 'there is but the one ilah'
If God is a difficult term for people, because of it's connotations, translate ilah however you will. Ilah is that which ultimately influences events. It is the most basic of the Universal constraints. The assumption of consistency is a constraint; it's a restriction. Just as the priniciple of the conservation of matter and energy is a constriction - there's no proof of it. But it is an assumption and a restriction made on all physical observations - the belief of the physical scientist. La ilaha illa Allah says of this ultimate reality, that there is one such reality, and there is only one such reality. We assume the prinicipal of atleast one such reality when we say that the Universe make sense, and then we realize if there was more than one the Universe wouldn't make sense either, because overlapping theories would be inconsistent if they were under different initial constraints. Suppose some scientist believed in magic and in whimsical gods that acted however the mood would strike them, so that today you combine hydrogen and oxyen and you get water, but tomorrow you mix hydrogen and water and you get peanuts. Would a scientist that expected the Universe to function that way make any kind of progress? Would he be successful? As the Qur'an says of the believers, they are successful - muflihoon. The punishment of polytheists - those who believe in many gods - is expected by Muslims, not because there is a jealous god that takes the insult very personally and he'll get you for it; the punishment is another example of being punished by your sins, not for your sins. Man does strange things to his mind when he believes in many gods. He hurts himself.
We deal with life according to what we've been convinced of, and life leads to death. We have to live with that knowledge. And what happens to the ego, the conscience, the intellect - me, inside- what happens in dying? It must depend on what has gone before - whatever that experience is like. Is it frightening, or is it peaceful? When the senses are cut off and mental activity has a final burst - and there can be no doubt that it does (now we're talking about electrodynamics and collapsing electrical fields - there is a burst as the brain dies) - what is it like? I won't speculate, but we do know that false hopes will be dashed. If one believed, without justification, that there existed a god in such and such a way, according to what we believed and how we behaved, one is due for disappointment in the extreme, if one was misinformed or misdirected.
Now to the second point, as we said, man is lost except those who believe and do good - amilo assalihat. The root meaning of the word - salaha - indicates, really, being useful. And this should be an obvious prerequisite to avoid being lost. To say that a man is not useful is to say that he has not realized his potential. Unless you do what you are capable of you have lost something of your humanity. And the finish of your human life is going to be something less than that of another human life, another human who made more of his human life.
Albert Schweitzer said that he found God within himself, as the stirring of ethical will. In other words he knew what he could do and he did it. He left behind him the comfort and the riches and the fame that was a sure thing, in Europe, when he was a young man. He left that behind him and he moved to a leper colony in Africa, where he continued to study and write and help the lepers, and he lived until his 90s. He realized his potential. Now psychologists could tell us, no doubt, plenty about those who think they are happy, they are comfortable, but they face anguish from inside themselves. What kind of shape is their intellect taking under this kind of torture? People who have convinced themselves they are happy and they're not really. They are doing less than they could have done. What is that doing to their minds?
As to those who are making the most of their abilities, here is how God acts in the world: He acts indirectly. The Qur'an talks about taqwa - usually translated as God-consciousness. A man with taqwa has his mind on the Absolute as a reference point. His mind is not fixed on what is relative - he's not worried about money, or clothing, or various other things that depend on other things themselves. His mind is fixed on what depends on nothing - the Absolute. And then God moves people; not like we move a checker on a board, like that - but He moves people the way that the goal at the end of the soccer field moves the soccer team. That team will battle away, does the goal reach out and pull them this way? No, but it's out there. And by keeping an eye on that - that's where they're heading - indirectly they are moved by that goal. And here's where we are lead to deal with another concept of God, another item of belief.
Common practice divides reality into the natural and the supernatural. And occasionally God is thought to interfere with the natural order, reaching down from the supernatural, and He works a miracle. This kind of miracle is really a monster. It's not the same kind of miracle as the miracle of a beautiful sunrise, or the miracle that a spot as small as a speck of dust can grow into a human being - that's a miracle. But this miracle that interferes with the natural order, that's a whole different thing that people are thinking of - to me, it's a monster.
By all means there are remarkable things that Muslims are ready to believe in, they are ready to accept. But they are things that are accomplished, not by a suspension of the natural laws, but by an unusual application of the natural laws. The Qur'an explains that when God Wills something, He simply says to it 'be' and it is. Is this hard to understand? Can the saying be the doing? In fact we deal this way ourselves, some say always. Suppose I say to this man, "I congratulate you." When did I congratulate him? Did I tell him about something I was going to do or I did? The same saying was the doing - I congratulate you - I did it when I said it. Or if I say to this man, "I appoint you as my representative." When I said it, I did it. It's not a difficult concept to understand, that the saying can be the same as the doing.
This is God as Baruch Spinoza understood him about 300 years ago, "the Will of God is no more and no less than those things which take place in the sense of physics." This is why we can say all things originate with God, but we bring evil on ourselves. For example, the chemical reactions between cigarette smoke and human lung tissue are a natural law. But the smoker brings the damage on himself. Spinoza said, "there is but one infinite item," and that only is logical, if it's infinite there can't be room for two of them, he said, "there is but one infinite item, and whatever the attributes of that item are, we can only know about two of them: extension and thought." He meant that we know the physical Universe and we know how it works. This is the same as the Qur'an's ascription of Allah as Alzaher, Albatin - The Evident and The Imminent [?] or The External and The Internal. This means that the Universe and how it functions is all we know of God. The same verse also describes Allah as Source and Goal - Alawwal, Alakher - The First and The Last; two attributes that seem to be opposites and yet they are really just two different viewpoints of one reality.
And let me continue with that thought. I'm talking here, a moment ago, about God being everywhere, in the sense that as the Universe performs, that's the way that He wants it to perform. His will is the same as the functioning of the Universe. From another point of view we could say that God is only rarely present, only sometimes is He present. And by this I mean He is present when a man has taqwa, when a man has really attained a constant awareness of God as a reference point, something remarkable happens - God puts in an appearance: whether that man be a Jesus Christ [PBUH] or an Albert Schweitzer; if their mind is fixed on the Absolute they become a remarkable individual.
So then to avoid being lost, in every sense of the word, it is necessary to (1) verify things and (2) to take necessary action. These are the first two points. The last two requirements parallel these because knowledge and action, in order to be meaningful, must be effective - they must accomplish something, or they don't really mean anything. So as we acquire knowledge we aid others to do the same, and as we do well we help others to do the same. So possibly the 103rd surah is more significantly, or alternatively, translated as:
Man is lost, except for those who verify things and realize their potential, and confront others with reality, and encourage others to persevere.
Now we've dealt with translating a short chapter of the Qur'an - a book which is said to be a revelation. This word 'revelation' is a problem for many because it has connotations of sacred mysteries beyond the limits of knowledge. The point is that Muslims believe God to be unknowable in the first place. The Qur'an does not reveal God, it reveals His Will.
Now to another topic concerning belief. If we have time I'll go to the blackboard and as I said if I lose you on something I encourage you to look it up for yourself and look it over to see that I do afterall know what it is that I'm talking about. The topic is: proving the existence of God. The rational arguments, those that would prove the existence of God - the rational arguments can usually be put into one of 3 categories:
The ontological,
The cosmological, and
The teleological arguments.
Without dealing with any of them right now I can tell you that they are all faulty. They don't prove the existence of God. The arguments were proven to be faulty 200 years ago atleast, if not 800 years ago, but they continue to be used. You will still see them printed in abundance - one of these 3 arguments. In the first place the argument which attempts to prove the existence of God is self-contradictory. God is said to be Absolute, which means He depends on nothing. Proving His existence means we make some more basic assumption and we build up to God, in which place God fails to be Absolute, He depends on our basic assumptions, you see. So it's a foolish kind of project in the first place. You assume you have an absolute, and then you go ahead and try to prove it, and you undo your definition. One produces a proof for a theorem which says it doesn't have a proof.
God is not a theorem based on some assumptions. Rather, God is a necessary item to complete our picture of reality. More accurately, I mean to say that, if we make the assumption that the Universe makes sense then we simultaneously acknowledge the singularity in the scheme which is the absolute - that which is independent of the total concept of the scheme. And there are two ways to seeing this. They are the results of the work done by the 20th Century mathematician going by the name of Kurt Godel, and you can look him up for an account. There are popular books on the subject; The Scientific American did an article on him a few years ago. In 1931 Kurt Godel came up with two theories that really shook the world of philosophy of logic and mathematics. I won't explain them in great detail, but I'll try to give you the import.
Remember that theories are built on assumptions, so one might think that if we made enough assumptions, then we can go ahead and decide the truth or falsity of every statement. But an interesting thing happens in logic: too many assumptions to start with produces a logical system that is self-destructive. You've heard of the man who says, "I've invented the Universal solvent" and his friend asks him, "what kind of a bottle are you going to keep it in?"
That's what happens to logic, if it's capable of solving anything, it will dissolve itself. A logical system which has universal application - in other words that you can apply it to any question and decide is it true or false - is self destructive. And I can illustrate that by telling you to consider this sentence:
This statement has no proof.
If you can prove that statement is true, then you have a contradiction. On the other hand the only way to show that it's false is to prove that it's true - another contradiction.
So you have to leave it alone.
I am imagining of course that the statement, that difficult statement, is written out in symbolic logic, which has certain initial assumptions and rules. In order to avoid that contradiction - having a statement that doesn't have proof, you have to go back to your initial assumptions and remove one, or two, or three of them - so you don't have a complete list. This is called Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. In other words in any scheme, any thoery that you set up, your initial assumptions have to be incomplete, because if you have a complete list - by that I mean a list that will let you prove anything - it will be the undoing of the whole system. The whole thing will fall down. But then if you're missing some assumptions in the first place that means that the totality of reality is not knowable. You can never know all the truth, or all of the truth is unsolvable, or soluble. Logic is a solvent but we need a bottle to keep it in, we need something that it won't dissolve, in order to keep the Universe making sense. The root meaning of absolute is 'that which is not dissolved' - ab solute. Reality seen through logic and scientific inquiry is something like looking at an item with a magnifying glass. As you move the glass closer the image gets bigger and clearer and you see more details, but you reach a certain point where it's as fine a picture as you can get because if you move any closer the image is distorted and you've lost it.
So to go back where I started, the assumption la ilaha illa Allah or that the Universe makes sense, is exactly the same. It's all tied in with the assumption that there is an absolute, there is something not knowable. If the Universe makes sense to you, you are at the same time saying that there is some item that I do not have a hold on, that is outside of what I do know. You have to admit that in order for the Universe to make sense. The other theorem of Godel concerns consistency and here we need to think about how it is we think. [I hope I don't lose you!]
Note: The speaker uses the blackboard and as the lecture is only audio some of the following [in green] may not make too much sense!
A.
B.
Therefore,
C.
Suppose A and B stand for statements. Suppose:
A. It is night,
B.When it is night, it is cold,
Therefore,
C. It is cold
The way we think is according to the rule of detachment. If A and B are true, then C must be true. That's how we think - that's the Rule of Detachment.
A. It is night
[Not A].
Therefore,
B.
e.g.
It is not night,
Therefore,
B. It is day.
This is called a tautology
[?]
A tautology is true, no matter what the values of A and B are. In other words it is true whether or not A is true or B is true, that statement will always be true.
Now suppose somebody has a theory that is inconsistent, when we mean that two opposite things are both true. Well a very funny thing happens. If you want to admit to your scheme of reasoning an inconsistency, that two opposite things are both true - if you do that, you can prove that anything is true.
Suppose this statement is true, always true:
A.
Suppose [Not A] is true.
Since [Not A] is true, we can detach it. A implies B and it is true. That is the rule of detachment.
[Not A]
Therefore,
B.
Now since this is true, and our friend with the inconsistent theory says A is true but [Not A] is true also, then you have both of them and B is true also.
--- [End of blackboard use]
The danger being then, if you have a theory that is inconsistent, a theory that contains two opposite things and they're both held to be true, you can use it [that way] and prove anything is true.
If you believe that it is night, and it is day too, then you can prove that giraffes are born with two heads, because those are the rules. The point of it is, first of all to advise you that's the danger of an inconsistent theory - a person can use it to prove anything. But the point is, if you have a theory and you want to know if it's consistent, there's one way to find out: that's to produce a statement that has no proof. Because if the theory was inconsistent you could have proved it. If you come up with a statement that has no proof it means that there's no inconsistencies in your system, because there's no way I could juggle a proof out of this thing.
This is why a man cannot consistently build a case that there is no absolute. How do you people say that?
It's a way of life to a lot of people. They say all things are relative. If they try to build a consistent logical case to demonstrate to you that all things are relative they can't do it. Because when something is consistent you have to have an absolute in the system. It also explains why the absolute must be ineffable - unknowable - because this absolute that you're talking about, which is a necessary item in any scheme of thinking, has to be by definition something that is not defined in your system; it's outside your system - you can't know it.
So then the beginning of wisdom, to this muslim and to many, I trust, is the discerning between those things that are relative and that which is absolute. An intelligent man is one that knows the difference between something that really only depends on something else, and something that depends on nothing else. The man that puts his faith in money or fame, or some other item is fooling himself if he doesn't stop to think, 'wait a minute - money, but money depends on certain other things: the economy of the country, which depends in turn upon the state of peace worldwide and etc. etc.' He's put his faith on a relative thing. The man who's faith is on the absolute isn't subject to wavering and change because nothing affects the absolute - it doesn't depend on something else, how things are going. The certainty of la ilaha illa Allah - there is no god but one God - is the same as the assumption that things do make sense, that there is an absolute. It's a certainty that resides in here; in the intellect.
I realize that the title of this talk may seem rather vague: the nature of belief; so let me clarify that now, so you don't feel that you came to hear something, and it was a different thing they were talking about tonight. By nature of belief I don't mean to itemize all the things that a Muslim believes in; interested parties can find that out for themselves very easily - go and look it up in an encyclopedia. That's very easy. What I wanted to talk about was belief itself. Is there something different about the way a Muslim believes and the way that somebody else believes? In many cases maybe there isnt. For example no doubt there are many muslims, muslims in name, who believe what they believe because their parents believe that way and their parents before them. But, especially here in this society now, a muslim that lives here may find himself removed from his family, especially for purposes of education. He may find himself re-examining what he believes and asking himself, "why do I believe the things that I believe anyway?"
And it is in arriving at proper conclusions on self-examination that a person really becomes a Muslim in the true spirit, because the root meaning of the word is 'submission' [i.e. root meaning of Muslim], that means you have examined something and have decided that's where you belong; you want to take a certain position - you submit yourself to a certain position. That is what a Muslim is.
So, it is on the nature of belief, and you can't separate belief from salvation, so it is on those two things that I mainly want to speak of.
Usually in this society, atleast Western society, God is thought of as posessing atleast 3 superlative qualities:
- He is said to be
> All Mighty
> All Knowing, and
> All Good
But these 3 attributes lead to puzzles and paradoxes: Is God helpless to prevent evil? Or does He choose not to do so? In the first case He's not AlMighty, in the second case He's not All Good.
The problem is caused by the ascription 'All Good' - saying that God is All Good is an anthropomorphism; that is casting God in the image of man. Good is a relative term. For example, when a lion runs down a gazelle, that's bad for the gazelle; it's good for the lion. It depends on your point of view. Good and bad are a theme of mankind; they are not a theme of the Universe.
The Qur'an talks about the good and the evil things created by God. As a matter of fact, so does the Bible. But I've never seen it quoted by anyone who discussed from a Christian point of view 'the problem of Evil' as it is called. From our view point, good and evil, are really the terms "beneficial" and "harmful".
If you call good and bad as though they were absolute - as though they existed without reference to other things, forgetting their relative nature - you make a serious mistake. It is like calling boiling water 'hot'. It is hot to my fingers, but it's not very hot compared to the surface of the sun. It takes on the quality of being hot only relative to my fingertips. We make a mistake - no physicist would say that 'hot' is a thing that has existed from all eternity, that it is a basic priniciple. Temperature is what we talk about. Hot and cold are measures of temperature against something else. In the same way, good and bad is measured against something else.
Ethics - the study of good and bad - is like arithmetics in a sense. If you ask a two year-old, "why does 2+2 =4?" He might tell you, "because the teacher says so". But is that why 2+2=4? It doesn't depend on the teacher's authority; it depends on facts - you can discover it for yourself.
Similarly, alcohol is not 'bad' because God put it on an arbitrary list of things He decided to prohibit; it's bad for mankind because it is harmful for mankind. And here is a good point - Man is not punished for his sins, Man is punished by his sins. Evil done brings evil on the doer. The function of God is guidance - good and bad are pointed out to us, and we may verify the truth of the information by observation and by reason. The Qur'an repeats the lessons of history, it asks questions and it answers objections.
Salvation is the subject of the 103rd Surah [chapter] which is usually translated, "Man is lost, except for those who believe and do good, and enjoin truth and perseverence on others."
4 points. But let's examine more closely the root meanings of these 4 points:
The root meaning translated 'believe' (amana) has the fundamental meaning, 'confirm' or 'verify'. In some cases the Straight Path, which is sought by Muslims, is a result of elimination. If, for example, a creed tells a congregation what they must believe, the congregation should ask for a justification; not just sign up. If the creed says such and such, the believer should say, "why should I? Show me why". The Qur'an repeatedly warns against believing in something for which there is no warrant. Faith in Islam, then, is not a pledge, it is not a promise to believe something, but it is a conviction. So verification is really the first point of salvation.
Now at this point, and some other points, I might get into things that escape you momentarily or go right by you, but I would urge you to follow through. You can look them up in popular accounts, check your Encyclopedia, under references such as logic. Or maybe some of you are studying logic and you'll see some of the directions that I'm going here.
(So we're speaking about verification) Any theory is not infinitely defendable. You cannot keep saying 'because this, because this, because this' and keep on going forever. Theories are based on assumptions and one doesn't prove an assumption, but starts from the point of an assumption.
The Muslim's first assumption is simply this: The Universe makes sense. And this is the same as the modern scientific assumption. Where scientific theories overlap, they have to be consistent. If you have a theory of Chemistry and you have a theory of Biology, the two theories overlap; Chemistry is applied to Biology and so on. Where they overlap the two theories that explain both of them can't give an inconsistency, so there must be a bigger theory to take them all in. And this is the way the scientist reasons, that if he has a consistent theory he believes it's not going to conflict with someone else's theory as long as his theory is consistent also.
The alternative to that assumption, the assumption that the Universe makes sense, is chaos. It means that one mistrusts everything. If one says that the Universe doesn't make sense, a man is really saying, "I can't be certain of anything." So we want to ask that man, "can you be certain of that?" So you see the trap he's in? If a man wants to mistrust everything, then he has to mistrust his mistrust, and he's paralyzed; he doesn't make any progress. So the first assumption seems to be an option that doesn't really have an alternative. Interestingly enough, two of the attributes of God, as described in the Qur'an, are always put together: AlWahed AlQahhar - The One, The Compelling/ The Irresistable. This assumption that the Universe makes sense, is really the same as the foundation of Islam: La ilaha illa Allah - There is no god but The God [ilah translated god]. La ilaha illa Allah is saying 'there is but the one ilah'
If God is a difficult term for people, because of it's connotations, translate ilah however you will. Ilah is that which ultimately influences events. It is the most basic of the Universal constraints. The assumption of consistency is a constraint; it's a restriction. Just as the priniciple of the conservation of matter and energy is a constriction - there's no proof of it. But it is an assumption and a restriction made on all physical observations - the belief of the physical scientist. La ilaha illa Allah says of this ultimate reality, that there is one such reality, and there is only one such reality. We assume the prinicipal of atleast one such reality when we say that the Universe make sense, and then we realize if there was more than one the Universe wouldn't make sense either, because overlapping theories would be inconsistent if they were under different initial constraints. Suppose some scientist believed in magic and in whimsical gods that acted however the mood would strike them, so that today you combine hydrogen and oxyen and you get water, but tomorrow you mix hydrogen and water and you get peanuts. Would a scientist that expected the Universe to function that way make any kind of progress? Would he be successful? As the Qur'an says of the believers, they are successful - muflihoon. The punishment of polytheists - those who believe in many gods - is expected by Muslims, not because there is a jealous god that takes the insult very personally and he'll get you for it; the punishment is another example of being punished by your sins, not for your sins. Man does strange things to his mind when he believes in many gods. He hurts himself.
We deal with life according to what we've been convinced of, and life leads to death. We have to live with that knowledge. And what happens to the ego, the conscience, the intellect - me, inside- what happens in dying? It must depend on what has gone before - whatever that experience is like. Is it frightening, or is it peaceful? When the senses are cut off and mental activity has a final burst - and there can be no doubt that it does (now we're talking about electrodynamics and collapsing electrical fields - there is a burst as the brain dies) - what is it like? I won't speculate, but we do know that false hopes will be dashed. If one believed, without justification, that there existed a god in such and such a way, according to what we believed and how we behaved, one is due for disappointment in the extreme, if one was misinformed or misdirected.
Now to the second point, as we said, man is lost except those who believe and do good - amilo assalihat. The root meaning of the word - salaha - indicates, really, being useful. And this should be an obvious prerequisite to avoid being lost. To say that a man is not useful is to say that he has not realized his potential. Unless you do what you are capable of you have lost something of your humanity. And the finish of your human life is going to be something less than that of another human life, another human who made more of his human life.
Albert Schweitzer said that he found God within himself, as the stirring of ethical will. In other words he knew what he could do and he did it. He left behind him the comfort and the riches and the fame that was a sure thing, in Europe, when he was a young man. He left that behind him and he moved to a leper colony in Africa, where he continued to study and write and help the lepers, and he lived until his 90s. He realized his potential. Now psychologists could tell us, no doubt, plenty about those who think they are happy, they are comfortable, but they face anguish from inside themselves. What kind of shape is their intellect taking under this kind of torture? People who have convinced themselves they are happy and they're not really. They are doing less than they could have done. What is that doing to their minds?
As to those who are making the most of their abilities, here is how God acts in the world: He acts indirectly. The Qur'an talks about taqwa - usually translated as God-consciousness. A man with taqwa has his mind on the Absolute as a reference point. His mind is not fixed on what is relative - he's not worried about money, or clothing, or various other things that depend on other things themselves. His mind is fixed on what depends on nothing - the Absolute. And then God moves people; not like we move a checker on a board, like that - but He moves people the way that the goal at the end of the soccer field moves the soccer team. That team will battle away, does the goal reach out and pull them this way? No, but it's out there. And by keeping an eye on that - that's where they're heading - indirectly they are moved by that goal. And here's where we are lead to deal with another concept of God, another item of belief.
Common practice divides reality into the natural and the supernatural. And occasionally God is thought to interfere with the natural order, reaching down from the supernatural, and He works a miracle. This kind of miracle is really a monster. It's not the same kind of miracle as the miracle of a beautiful sunrise, or the miracle that a spot as small as a speck of dust can grow into a human being - that's a miracle. But this miracle that interferes with the natural order, that's a whole different thing that people are thinking of - to me, it's a monster.
By all means there are remarkable things that Muslims are ready to believe in, they are ready to accept. But they are things that are accomplished, not by a suspension of the natural laws, but by an unusual application of the natural laws. The Qur'an explains that when God Wills something, He simply says to it 'be' and it is. Is this hard to understand? Can the saying be the doing? In fact we deal this way ourselves, some say always. Suppose I say to this man, "I congratulate you." When did I congratulate him? Did I tell him about something I was going to do or I did? The same saying was the doing - I congratulate you - I did it when I said it. Or if I say to this man, "I appoint you as my representative." When I said it, I did it. It's not a difficult concept to understand, that the saying can be the same as the doing.
This is God as Baruch Spinoza understood him about 300 years ago, "the Will of God is no more and no less than those things which take place in the sense of physics." This is why we can say all things originate with God, but we bring evil on ourselves. For example, the chemical reactions between cigarette smoke and human lung tissue are a natural law. But the smoker brings the damage on himself. Spinoza said, "there is but one infinite item," and that only is logical, if it's infinite there can't be room for two of them, he said, "there is but one infinite item, and whatever the attributes of that item are, we can only know about two of them: extension and thought." He meant that we know the physical Universe and we know how it works. This is the same as the Qur'an's ascription of Allah as Alzaher, Albatin - The Evident and The Imminent [?] or The External and The Internal. This means that the Universe and how it functions is all we know of God. The same verse also describes Allah as Source and Goal - Alawwal, Alakher - The First and The Last; two attributes that seem to be opposites and yet they are really just two different viewpoints of one reality.
And let me continue with that thought. I'm talking here, a moment ago, about God being everywhere, in the sense that as the Universe performs, that's the way that He wants it to perform. His will is the same as the functioning of the Universe. From another point of view we could say that God is only rarely present, only sometimes is He present. And by this I mean He is present when a man has taqwa, when a man has really attained a constant awareness of God as a reference point, something remarkable happens - God puts in an appearance: whether that man be a Jesus Christ [PBUH] or an Albert Schweitzer; if their mind is fixed on the Absolute they become a remarkable individual.
So then to avoid being lost, in every sense of the word, it is necessary to (1) verify things and (2) to take necessary action. These are the first two points. The last two requirements parallel these because knowledge and action, in order to be meaningful, must be effective - they must accomplish something, or they don't really mean anything. So as we acquire knowledge we aid others to do the same, and as we do well we help others to do the same. So possibly the 103rd surah is more significantly, or alternatively, translated as:
Man is lost, except for those who verify things and realize their potential, and confront others with reality, and encourage others to persevere.
Now we've dealt with translating a short chapter of the Qur'an - a book which is said to be a revelation. This word 'revelation' is a problem for many because it has connotations of sacred mysteries beyond the limits of knowledge. The point is that Muslims believe God to be unknowable in the first place. The Qur'an does not reveal God, it reveals His Will.
Now to another topic concerning belief. If we have time I'll go to the blackboard and as I said if I lose you on something I encourage you to look it up for yourself and look it over to see that I do afterall know what it is that I'm talking about. The topic is: proving the existence of God. The rational arguments, those that would prove the existence of God - the rational arguments can usually be put into one of 3 categories:
The ontological,
The cosmological, and
The teleological arguments.
Without dealing with any of them right now I can tell you that they are all faulty. They don't prove the existence of God. The arguments were proven to be faulty 200 years ago atleast, if not 800 years ago, but they continue to be used. You will still see them printed in abundance - one of these 3 arguments. In the first place the argument which attempts to prove the existence of God is self-contradictory. God is said to be Absolute, which means He depends on nothing. Proving His existence means we make some more basic assumption and we build up to God, in which place God fails to be Absolute, He depends on our basic assumptions, you see. So it's a foolish kind of project in the first place. You assume you have an absolute, and then you go ahead and try to prove it, and you undo your definition. One produces a proof for a theorem which says it doesn't have a proof.
God is not a theorem based on some assumptions. Rather, God is a necessary item to complete our picture of reality. More accurately, I mean to say that, if we make the assumption that the Universe makes sense then we simultaneously acknowledge the singularity in the scheme which is the absolute - that which is independent of the total concept of the scheme. And there are two ways to seeing this. They are the results of the work done by the 20th Century mathematician going by the name of Kurt Godel, and you can look him up for an account. There are popular books on the subject; The Scientific American did an article on him a few years ago. In 1931 Kurt Godel came up with two theories that really shook the world of philosophy of logic and mathematics. I won't explain them in great detail, but I'll try to give you the import.
Remember that theories are built on assumptions, so one might think that if we made enough assumptions, then we can go ahead and decide the truth or falsity of every statement. But an interesting thing happens in logic: too many assumptions to start with produces a logical system that is self-destructive. You've heard of the man who says, "I've invented the Universal solvent" and his friend asks him, "what kind of a bottle are you going to keep it in?"
That's what happens to logic, if it's capable of solving anything, it will dissolve itself. A logical system which has universal application - in other words that you can apply it to any question and decide is it true or false - is self destructive. And I can illustrate that by telling you to consider this sentence:
This statement has no proof.
If you can prove that statement is true, then you have a contradiction. On the other hand the only way to show that it's false is to prove that it's true - another contradiction.
So you have to leave it alone.
I am imagining of course that the statement, that difficult statement, is written out in symbolic logic, which has certain initial assumptions and rules. In order to avoid that contradiction - having a statement that doesn't have proof, you have to go back to your initial assumptions and remove one, or two, or three of them - so you don't have a complete list. This is called Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. In other words in any scheme, any thoery that you set up, your initial assumptions have to be incomplete, because if you have a complete list - by that I mean a list that will let you prove anything - it will be the undoing of the whole system. The whole thing will fall down. But then if you're missing some assumptions in the first place that means that the totality of reality is not knowable. You can never know all the truth, or all of the truth is unsolvable, or soluble. Logic is a solvent but we need a bottle to keep it in, we need something that it won't dissolve, in order to keep the Universe making sense. The root meaning of absolute is 'that which is not dissolved' - ab solute. Reality seen through logic and scientific inquiry is something like looking at an item with a magnifying glass. As you move the glass closer the image gets bigger and clearer and you see more details, but you reach a certain point where it's as fine a picture as you can get because if you move any closer the image is distorted and you've lost it.
So to go back where I started, the assumption la ilaha illa Allah or that the Universe makes sense, is exactly the same. It's all tied in with the assumption that there is an absolute, there is something not knowable. If the Universe makes sense to you, you are at the same time saying that there is some item that I do not have a hold on, that is outside of what I do know. You have to admit that in order for the Universe to make sense. The other theorem of Godel concerns consistency and here we need to think about how it is we think. [I hope I don't lose you!]
Note: The speaker uses the blackboard and as the lecture is only audio some of the following [in green] may not make too much sense!
A.
B.
Therefore,
C.
Suppose A and B stand for statements. Suppose:
A. It is night,
B.When it is night, it is cold,
Therefore,
C. It is cold
The way we think is according to the rule of detachment. If A and B are true, then C must be true. That's how we think - that's the Rule of Detachment.
A. It is night
[Not A].
Therefore,
B.
e.g.
It is not night,
Therefore,
B. It is day.
This is called a tautology
[?]
A tautology is true, no matter what the values of A and B are. In other words it is true whether or not A is true or B is true, that statement will always be true.
Now suppose somebody has a theory that is inconsistent, when we mean that two opposite things are both true. Well a very funny thing happens. If you want to admit to your scheme of reasoning an inconsistency, that two opposite things are both true - if you do that, you can prove that anything is true.
Suppose this statement is true, always true:
A.
Suppose [Not A] is true.
Since [Not A] is true, we can detach it. A implies B and it is true. That is the rule of detachment.
[Not A]
Therefore,
B.
Now since this is true, and our friend with the inconsistent theory says A is true but [Not A] is true also, then you have both of them and B is true also.
--- [End of blackboard use]
The danger being then, if you have a theory that is inconsistent, a theory that contains two opposite things and they're both held to be true, you can use it [that way] and prove anything is true.
If you believe that it is night, and it is day too, then you can prove that giraffes are born with two heads, because those are the rules. The point of it is, first of all to advise you that's the danger of an inconsistent theory - a person can use it to prove anything. But the point is, if you have a theory and you want to know if it's consistent, there's one way to find out: that's to produce a statement that has no proof. Because if the theory was inconsistent you could have proved it. If you come up with a statement that has no proof it means that there's no inconsistencies in your system, because there's no way I could juggle a proof out of this thing.
This is why a man cannot consistently build a case that there is no absolute. How do you people say that?
It's a way of life to a lot of people. They say all things are relative. If they try to build a consistent logical case to demonstrate to you that all things are relative they can't do it. Because when something is consistent you have to have an absolute in the system. It also explains why the absolute must be ineffable - unknowable - because this absolute that you're talking about, which is a necessary item in any scheme of thinking, has to be by definition something that is not defined in your system; it's outside your system - you can't know it.
So then the beginning of wisdom, to this muslim and to many, I trust, is the discerning between those things that are relative and that which is absolute. An intelligent man is one that knows the difference between something that really only depends on something else, and something that depends on nothing else. The man that puts his faith in money or fame, or some other item is fooling himself if he doesn't stop to think, 'wait a minute - money, but money depends on certain other things: the economy of the country, which depends in turn upon the state of peace worldwide and etc. etc.' He's put his faith on a relative thing. The man who's faith is on the absolute isn't subject to wavering and change because nothing affects the absolute - it doesn't depend on something else, how things are going. The certainty of la ilaha illa Allah - there is no god but one God - is the same as the assumption that things do make sense, that there is an absolute. It's a certainty that resides in here; in the intellect.