1-Ignoring and doubting the rational procedure when establishing sound knowledge.
Philosophers like to establish the basis of knowledge that they can be sure of – a branch of philosophy known as epistemology. This would provide the building blocks of establishing certainty of God’s existence, so if you doubt the method of knowledge or tools that you use to establish God’s existence then that would mean you could doubt God himself (the conclusion based on your method of knowledge).
There are many views on this topic that the philosophers had over the ages from Plato’s claims that our experience of the world is no more than shadows and that the true reality lies beyond these shadows, to Descarte’s doubt of everything except his own existence. From the empiricists, to the idealists, to the skeptics – all with different views of knowledge. Even in the Islamic world many philosophers who started to dabble with the translated works of the ancient philosophers started to also get affected with these ideas and fall into circles of confusion because of a lack of a clear basis of thinking of these matters.
One of the reasons for these many views is the use of hypothetical “thought experiments” which leaves the discussion open to any imaginable scenario. The problem with these discussions and the methods of thought experiments is that they are not necessarily based on reality. So for example Descarte’s ‘clever demon’ scenario where he imagines a demon that has convinced him of the reality around him which does not exist but which is really a dream. Likewise in the Islamic world philosophers would use these thought experiments not grounded in reality to make a case for their point such as the famous ‘floating man’ of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) to argue for the existence of the soul.
Because these thought experiments are not based on the real world that we can sense (e.g. a demon that makes us dream, a floating man etc.) then the conclusions that are derived are open to many routes that the imagination can come out with. The author of these thought experiments will only naturally focus on the route they wish to take in order to prove their point. However even in the presuppositions that are made there will still be different interpretations or routes that you could take to interpret the discussion. For example, Descarte’s thought experiment that a demon that controls us is making us think that we are alive and that 2+3=5, where in fact we are dreaming and that this controlling demon is making us think that we are conscious and that really 2+3= 6! He then argues that God must be true because God implanted this idea within our thinking however it could be (and has been) argued according to his same parameters that it was the same demon that made us believe in this untrue idea of God!
The biggest problem is that there is no grounding for the assumptions that are taken in these thought experiments. If what is taken as an assumption has no truth to it then what is built upon it will also have no truth. However the assumptions in these thought experiments are not grounded in reality. So for instance the assumption of Descarte’s thought experiment above (where he assumes that we are really dreaming and a demon controlling us is making us think we are alive) does not agree with what we know and sense between the difference of our conscious state and our sleep dream state. So if you were dreaming right now why aren’t you being chased by lions and flying away from them (as you might do in a dream)? Why isn’t your long dead relative making an appearance and sitting next to you? Why are those things that happen to us in our dreams not happening to us now?
As mentioned earlier, the framework of knowledge is important otherwise anything can be claimed! Not one of these philosophers could deny to live within their sensed realities- that has to be the basis upon which we build our knowledge- otherwise why do we refer to it when it comes to everyday living? You would not survive very long in this world if you denied the reality of the world. If you decided to exit a room through the wall instead of the door you would find your bones broken! Actually, one philosopher by the name of Pyrrho’s philosophical lack of trust in his senses led him to ignore cliffs, oncoming wagons and dangerous dogs, and his friends had to follow him around to protect him from these various everyday hazards. (Note: Pyrrho’s philosophical stance that no knowledge is definite and therefore to be trusted is argued to be self-contradictory for this life premise to him was definite and trusted knowledge!)
presupposing God and the denial of miracles:
using the mind to think about God and his nature has lead some people to pre-suppose what God does and what He does not do and how He must behave (Similar to the irrational infinity mathematicians who discuss the different theories of infinity and how it operates). This has led some to believe that God will not intervene in the universe after setting up the laws of the universe -and then to deny the existence of miracles as it would imply the removal of these laws of cause and effect. They then go on to argue that this supports God’s existence because it shows the existence of His law and order within the universe.
This reasoning then generates the problem of establishing the proof of His message to us. This would mean that there is no objective proof for any messenger; and belief in them and their message becomes a subjective opinion. This is not a method to ensure certainty in truth of a message.
Notwithstanding this problematic reasoning, the above argument has a philosophical error in it. As shown above it is irrational and speculative to discuss the reality of what we cannot sense. As God is out of our reality we cannot presuppose how He operates. We cannot put restrictions upon Him to say what He should and should not do. If He wants to intervene to give a sign of his authority to a messenger then how can we say he is not allowed to do so or that he cannot! just because it doesnt tie in with our observation of the rules of the universe and what we expect to happen? Divine interventions or miracles do not mean that there is no rule of causality and order within the universe, on the contrary they only make sense as miracles because of those rules of causality that they break. Furthermore, the messengers who display any such miracles do so declaring their mechanism as due to God and not in defiance of God - so how would they serve to demonstrate that God has no control over His universe? The existence of miracles do not contradict the necessity of Gods existence through the observation of His systems and laws within the universe.
However as a result,some people may then argue that according to this reasoning God may decide to renege upon His promise to reward the believers on the Day of Judgement. the answer to this is that:1) Of course God has the power to do that and cannot be bound by anything otherwise this contradicts the nature of absolute power. However He has Promised in numerous verses to reward the believers and the nature of faith is for the believer who believes in His message and follows it is supposed to believe in the promise of his Lord. Secondly, the rational behaviour of a human is to judge his choices based upon his reality and not upon God’s reality. The human choice is thus dependent upon the message that is given to him within his reality with the promise of God to consider as a reward. it makes no rational sense to base a decision upon information that is not within your reality. therefore to say I will base my decision of submitting to the miraculous message - not based on the proof in front of me- but upon what I think God might or might not do is non-sensical, irrational and as stupid as the one who crosses a road in front of a car based on the thinking that the driver could swerve out of the way!
No comments:
Post a Comment