Creativity of creation (design),
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So you‟d rather worship an uncreative designer? A creator who is less creative than some of His own creatures perhaps? Even though you can clearly see in everything around you that He can be nothing less than perfect in this respect? (And please do not raise the objection of why there has to be pain, war, mutations, and so forth, because we will come to that later on!)
“Absolutely no reason”, he says!
Listening to prayers, forgiving sins
The professor objects to this attribute as it is to him an example of what he calls “human attributes”! If such reasoning was valid professor, then actually all attributes are human attributes as well, aren‟t they? Even creation itself, and the purpose behind it, would – according to this reasoning of yours – be a human deed coming out of human attributes! Actually the very meaning of there being a willful creator itself should also qualify as such! The chain of causes has to end at a purposeful creator, so it‟s either a “personal God” who does what He pleases (sharing the meanings of these attributes with humans), or an infinite regress that destroys causality altogether!
And thus the rational question here should be: By what criterion of reason have you chosen to call these particular attributes: “human”?!
Because they provoke a human image in your mind of a man in heaven, lowering his head here and there to listen to people‟s prayers? Because you cannot think of a being that “listens” to prayers and forgives sins unless that being was “human”? Who said that there is any necessity of reason that links between the creator being capable of “listening” to His creatures – for example – and His being in any human – or similar - form or nature? This is absolutely false! The WAY we listen; is not by any necessity of reason the same WAY the creator listens! And the mere fact that He does listen, doesn‟t make this attribute “human”! In fact reason necessitates that there‟s no way it can be analogous to the way creatures listen! Obviously the creator should have the power to observe all, and listen to all simultaneously! One cannot imagine His being omnipotent and in full domain over His creation, while there‟s the slightest possibility that something may come to take place in the universe without His seeing it, listening to it, and knowing it fully! The meaning of omnipotence itself –which is already a necessity of reason for Him– necessitates His being capable of seeing all and listening to all, simultaneously! It actually necessitates that the very meaning of time itself does not limit Him in any way!
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Thus it follows by simple reason that none of his attributes should be viewed in analogy to corresponding attributes in humans!
In the Quran we are told that He sees all, hears all, knows all, even more, we are told that He has a hand, eye, finger, and so forth! However, we are also told that there‟s absolutely nothing like Him!: ((Naught is as His likeness; and He is the hearer, the seer))) Translation of Quran (42|11)
This verse is a rule of thumb that actually separates the rightful followers of the prophet and his disciples (the Salaf) (I.e. Ahlul sunnah wal jama‟a) in the way they understand scripture of Islam, from almost every other sect of innovators (i.e: Mutazilites, Shee‟ites, Ash‟arites, … etc!). The distinction comes from the fact that, while innovators were – like Dr. Dawkins here – influenced by philosophers in holding the opposite extreme position to the pagan view of a deity that is human – sometimes even animal in form! -, those who seek authentic references of knowledge in Islam and seek to obtain the correct understanding of the disciples as the only reliable source for understanding Islamic scripture correctly, find no contradiction and no trouble at all in ascribing those attributes to the Lord the way they are ascribed in the Quran and in Sunnah!
The rationale is this: His having a hand – for example – by no means necessitates that this hand be viewed as a limb or a “part” or an “organ” or be in anyway anything “like” a creature‟s hand! The meaning is not at all rationally objectionable! Whatever attribute of His that we learn from an evidently authentic source of scripture 4, we treat it in this exact same manner!
Reason necessitates that His attributes – all of them with no exception – undergo the golden rule of the Quran that there‟s nothing like Him! The reasons behind this debate among Muslim scholars who followed those philosophical innovations in Islam, and the evidence that we use to prove them all WRONG, is not our concern here. I only had to point out for every sane reader that those objections the professor poses here are not at all new to Muslim scholars, and ever since the first three centuries of Islam, scholars have been answering them in a clear and consistent way, with nothing but rational and scriptural evidence! However, it is a universal law that there be
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4 Remember that I‟m speaking at the level of examining scripture on the presumed basis that we already agree on the necessity of there being a creator! It was the professor‟s leap into the question of (human) attributes that drove me to do this
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innovations and people who call unto them, for a reason that has to do with the wisdom and purpose of the creation of life itself, which is another issue; topic for another discussion in another section of this literature.
The point is; if I have come to the rational conclusion that there has to be a creator, and that this creator is indeed and by necessity an omnipotent creator, with nothing less than perfectness in all His attributes, and then I have identified by means of evidence – not blind faith - what volume of scripture on this earth is indeed His word, and the teaching of His true prophets, and in those evidently authentic scriptures I found that creator describing Himself and ascribing certain attributes to Himself; I thus must accept those attributes as they are, since by necessity of reason I should expect them not to collide with anything that reason necessitates for Him! And the case here is that none of those attributes mentioned by the professor collides with what reason necessitates for the almighty creator, and they certainly do not necessitate any “human” resemblance, not in the pagan sense or in any other sense for that matter!
Many people have the problem of mixing the meaning of an attribute, with the way, or the nature it is manifested in the thing or the being it is attributed to! The meaning that I have the ability to see, for example, is one issue, and the question of HOW I can see, is another! We may agree that a certain species of birds – for example – has the ability to determine its path of flight and orientation for long distances, but we may – at the same time - lack any knowledge of how those birds do that!
So we accept the MEANING of this property or attribute to those birds, both rationally and by means of observation, but we do not know the WAY or the exact nature of this property!
Not knowing the latter, does not necessitate denial of the first!
A fly can see, and it does have an eye, doesn‟t it? Yes indeed! And so do we! So, in meaning; both humans and flies have the attribute of eyesight! And they both have what is to be called an eye! But does this mean that the way or the nature of a human‟s eye has to be analogous to that of a fly‟s eye? No, it doesn‟t!
Now if such is the case with the property of the sight, and the possession of an eye, in two species of creatures that are equal in their general physical nature and their submission to the laws of this universe; what would you expect, my reader, of the creator of the entire system Himself, who is in no
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way of reason anywhere close – in His likeness - to humans or to any of His creatures, and who is by necessity of reason unlike anything any man has ever seen or could possibly imagine (out of reach of any humanly affordable analogy)?
So yes, reason necessitates all perfectness and completeness in all attributes of the Lord, and it does not find any acceptable reason to deny Him those attributes, or to claim them to necessitate any form of human analogy whatsoever! We accept the meaning of those attributes, and refrain from attempting to imagine or understand their „nature‟ or the way they work!
As I mentioned earlier, as a Muslim I fully understand where the professor‟s position comes from! It is that of a former Christian, or at least one who was raised in a Christian household or a Christian society, and who once had to ask himself – like I suppose most Christians do one way or another at a certain point in their lives: “How do they claim the creator of all this majesty to be in the form of a superhuman white-bearded father up in heaven; one who regrets, changes his mind, sacrifices his own son unjustly when he really doesn‟t have to, and so forth? How come he begets a son in the first place, and to have him crucified and resurrected for the sake of the very same creatures he once flooded mercilessly? And to be three gods and one god at the same time… and they still claim him to be perfect? The myth is clearly badly written!”
And he is certainly right! Such clear paganism cannot coincide with meanings of ultimate knowledge, wisdom, power, grace, and so forth! The very faith in the trinity – the heart of what Christians believe – is clearly a claim of a meaning – not talking about the ways here but the meaning itself – that cannot be swallowed by any sane mind! Its mathematical expression is quite simply this: (3 = 1)! Not (1x1x1 = 1) by the way as some priests would so easily claim! This is not the logical meaning of multiplication!
Many Christians would argue that if He is omnipotent, and we cannot understand His nature, then we must find no trouble in accepting the meaning that He can be as such: three in one and one in three! I hope we can now see clearly where this argument goes wrong! Since we cannot understand the Means or the WAY he does what he does, then we cannot object to the MEANING of the trinity! I say no we certainly can, and we should!
If our minds cannot accept the meaning itself, then it‟s irrelevant to speak of the way it happens or the nature of it as though our lack of knowledge of this
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nature would affect our position regarding the meaning in any way! It‟s simply a FALSE MEANING! So there‟s NO WAY for it to be true! It‟s just like believing that God exists and does not exist at the same time! There is no reasonable argument that since God is omnipotent then He must be capable of doing this, one way or another! This is rationally impossible!
The trinity is possibly one of the clearest anti-rational arguments ever known to man! And they – Christians - are not the first to make it up in history by the way; history has known many trinities before this one! Many pagan faiths of old met with the very same dilemma! They have three gods, but at the same time they have every reason to believe that there can only be one supreme god, lord creator and keeper of all; not three! So there comes the trinity to say it‟s okay to have it both ways! The deity is both: Three gods and one god at the same time!
So, all in all, Dawkins is right to see that this faith is offering his mind a pagan imagery of a human god, and a core attribute the very meaning of which is clearly false! Thus I totally understand where it is coming from when he claims – following whoever he chooses to follow on that claim – that those attributes he mentioned imply or necessitate analogy to humans, or draw the pagan imagery of a superhuman god!
However, he has no right at all, to generalize his deductions in such a way that makes it appear to the uninformed as though all religions endorse such paganism! He knows that Islam condemns those meanings forcefully!
I hope that as I proceed with this book, my reader will start realizing how much knowledge the professor lacked and still needed to possess in order to acquire the position where he can so easily generalize all his comments and criticism on all “religion” the way he does! He‟s either a man who doesn‟t know the first thing about Islam – which is very unlikely – or a man who insists on lying to himself and to his readers regarding the reasons why he rejects it and places it in the same basket with all other religions! He lies to himself when he holds – like most western atheists do - that Islam is only a derivative from Christianity and Judaism, and that refuting Christianity would be enough to refute Islam as well! As a respectable scholar one would have expected from professor Dawkins to practice a sound process of scholarly research and induction as he approaches such an extremely dangerous territory of the human knowledge! However, it comes to none of my surprise that he doesn‟t; after all he is indeed a man of blind unfounded
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faith who bears not upon evidence, but upon whatever theory that comes to his liking! No offense intended!