Did Not Born And Did Not Have Children
My friend is a man who likes to argue and delights in talking.
He thinks that we, naive believers as we are, feed on illusions and miss the pleasures and attractions of this world, delighting ourselves with Paradise and the Houris. He studied in France, where he got a Ph.D. degree, consorted with Hippies, and came to disbelieve in everything.
You say that God exists. The chief among your proofs is the law of causation which stipulates that every artifact, creature, or existent must have been brought into being by a maker, creator, or efficient cause: a piece of fabric points to the weaver, a painting to the painter, an engraving to the engraver. According to this logic, the universe is the most persuasive proof of a Puissant God who created it.
Granted that we believe in this creator, aren't we entitled, according to the same logic, to ask, "Who created the Creator; who created that God you talk about?" Doesn't your reasoning and keeping with the same law of causation lead you to this question? Now, What has you to say about this dilemma?
I replied to him by making clear that his question was meaningless.
There is no dilemma or anything of that sort. You grant that God is a Creator, and then you ask about who created Him, making Him both creator and created in the same sentence, which is a contradiction.
The other side of your question's meaninglessness is that you imagine the creator as subject to the laws governing his creatures. Causation is a law for us who live in space and time.
God, who created space and time, is necessarily transcendent to both, and it is an error on our part to think that he is bound either by them or by their laws. God created the law of causation, and we cannot consider Him as subject to the law He made.
I’m inviting you to listen to the below part of the Holy Quran, and then you judge by yourself:
In this sophistry of yours, you are like those dolls that, seeing they move by springs, imagine that the human who made them must also derive his motion from the action of springs. If they were told that he is self-moved, they would retort that nothing can move spontaneously since everything in their world is carried by a spring. Just like them, you cannot imagine that God exists in His Essence with no need for an efficient cause; this is because you see everything around you in a condition of such a cause. It is as if you thought that God needs a parachute to descend among men or a fast car to reach His prophets; God is infinitely exalted above such conceptions.
In his Critique of Pure Reason, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant realized that the mind cannot comprehend infinite realities and is by nature fitted only to apprehend particulars. It is incapable of capturing such a universal or total existence as divinity. God was known by conscience, not by reason. Just as our thirst for water is proof that it exists, our yearning for justice proves that a just Being exists.
Aristotle followed the chain of causality, tracing the chair from wood, wood from the tree, the tree from a seed, and the seed from the planter. He had to conclude that this chain which regresses into infinite time, must have begun with an 'uncaused' cause, a primum mobile in no need of a mover, a creator who has not been created. This is the same thing we assert of God.
From another quarter, Ibn Arabi, the Muslim mystic, replied to who made the creator by saying that it can only occur to a disordered mind. According to him, God substantiates existence, and it would be erroneous to point to the universe's presence as proof of God. This is the same as saying that light indicates day, and it would be a lopsided argument to claim that day proves the existence of light.
God says in a Divine Utterance (Hadith Qudsi): "It is I who aids in proving and finding, there is no proof leading to me."
God is the proof that is in no need of another explanation. He is the self-evident Truth, and He is the evidence that substantiates everything. He is manifest in order, precision, beauty, and regularity; in tree leaves, in the feathers of a fawn, in the wings of the butterfly, in the fragrance of flowers, in the chanting of the nightingale, in the harmony of planets and stars which makes up that symphonic poem that we call it the universe.
If we allege that all this came into being by chance, we would be like a person who believes that throwing up paper pieces into the air can result in their spontaneous assembly into an authorless Shakespearean sonnet.
The Quran spares us all of these arguments with a few expressive words. It says without sophistry and in a decisive clarity:
"Say that God is One, the Eternal. He begot none, nor was He begotten. None is equal to Him."
My friend continued to question me in his sarcastic tone: "Why do you say that God is one? Why shouldn't many gods be sharing the 'work' among themselves?" I chose to reply to him not with the aid of the Quran but with the logic he accepts: that of science.
My answer was that God is one because the entire universe is built out of one material according to a unified plan. The ninety-two elements in the Mendeleev table are made from hydrogen and in the same manner in which stars and suns flame up in space, namely, by fusion and the emission of atomic energy.
According to one anatomical plan, all life forms are built of carbon composites — they are all charred when burned. The anatomy of a frog, a rabbit, a pigeon, a crocodile, a giraffe, and a whale reveals the same anatomical structure in all. The same arteries, veins, cardiac chambers, and bones correspond in them. The pigeon's wing is the foreleg in the frog, the same bones with only a slight transformation. The giraffe's long neck contains seven vertebrae, and we find the same number in the hedgehog's neck. The nervous system consists of the brain, the spinal cord, and the motor and sensory nerves. Their digestive apparatus contains the stomach, the duodenum, and the small and large intestines; The genital apparatus has the same components: the ovary, the uterus, the testicles, and their ducts; while the urinary system in all consists of the kidney, the ureter, and the bladder. The anatomical unit in each of these creatures is the cell. Whether dealing with plants, animals, or humans, we meet with the same features; they all breathe, breed, die and are born the same way.
I’m inviting you to listen to the below part of the Holy Quran, and then you judge by yourself:
What is so strange, then, in asserting that the creator is one?
Does He suffer from a deficiency to need completion? It is the imperfect only who multiply. If there were more than one God, they would fall among themselves, each taking his creation to his side and ruining the world. To God is sublimity and compelling — attributes which brook no associates.
My friend mocked the concept of divinity {Robobyya) that we entertain. He wondered at that God who interfered in everything big or small, mastering all creatures and "intimating to the bees to abide in the mountains." No leaf falls, but He knows of it, and no fruit grows out of its bud, but He takes count of it. No female conceives and gives birth without His Knowledge. He causes the foot to stumble over a hole and the fly to fall in a plate of food. Even if the phone is dead or the rain doesn't slip or, conversely, if it pours down, He is behind all of these events. "Don't you keep your god busy," asked my friend, "with too many trivial things under such conception of Him as that?"
I don't understand, my friend. Would God, in his opinion, be more of divinity if He relieved himself of all responsibility and, turning his back to the world he created, left it unattended to destroy itself in conflicts! In his estimation, is the true divinity that idle, unconscious being who does not hear, see, or respond to his creatures and look after them? It is to be further asked: from what quarter did he know that specific affairs are severe and substantial enough to deserve such attention?
The fly, which appeared to the enquirer so insignificant that it doesn't matter whether it falls in a plate of food or not, can change history with such an unimportant fall.
It could thus infect an army with cholera giving victory to the other side and, consequently, totally altering the course of history. Didn't a mosquito kill Alexander the Great?
The most trivial premises can lead to severe consequences, whereas the most critical beginnings can issue nothing. The Knower of the Unseen alone realizes the value of everything.
It remains to be asked whether my friend has set himself up as a trustee over God, defining his prerogatives for Him; our Lord is most Holy and High above such a naive conception. The God worthy of divinity is He whose Knowledge comprehends all; Who misses not one atom either in earth or sky.
He is God, the All-Hearing, the Responder, the Mindful of His creatures.
To be continued……
I’m inviting you to listen to the below part of the Holy Quran, and then you judge by yourself: