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How To Account For Allah Controlling Events When We Know About Natural Laws
How can we believe that Allah is in control of the entire universe EG when the quran says that he rose above the throne of the universe and sends decrees every couple of thousand years when we know the causes for most natural phenomena. For example, we know earthquakes occur due to tectonic plates building up pressure and releasing and many other disasters like hurricanes have known causes and are studied in meteorology.
One could say that Allah causes these plates to move in such fashion or tornadoes to take such course. But if we hypothetically studied the course of events that led to any disaster we could see how it necessarily led to the next one.
EG the tectonic plate moves at lets say 1cm/year. Now this movement is governed by its density, the convection current power etc etc. This would have been part of a long cause and effect chain since the inception of the universe. If it started moving by 2cm/year then we can trace why this happened- maybe the density decreased- maybe the convection currents got warmer.
It could be understood that Allah willed everything in the natural world to occur the way it did in accordance with his will th emoment he created the universe- which would lead to a deistic idea of God in terms of tampering with the natural world except for when it comes to miracles of course.
Here are the ayaat to be contemplated:
As-Sajdah 32:4-5
ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضَ وَمَا بَيۡنَهُمَا فِى سِتَّةِ أَيَّامٍ ثُمَّ ٱسۡتَوَىٰ عَلَى ٱلۡعَرۡشِۖ مَا لَكُم مِّن دُونِهِۦ مِن وَلِىٍّ وَلَا شَفِيعٍۚ أَفَلَا تَتَذَكَّرُونَ
يُدَبِّرُ ٱلۡأَمۡرَ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ إِلَى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ ثُمَّ يَعۡرُجُ إِلَيۡهِ فِى يَوۡمٍ كَانَ مِقۡدَارُهُۥٓ أَلۡفَ سَنَةٍ مِّمَّا تَعُدُّونَAnother avenue that could be explored is divine occasionalism where Allah actually causes every single event to occur all the time so there are no natural laws just Allah’s will.
So would it be correct to assume that all such miracles in the past occured on a basis that was scientifically impossible to trace or predict- and now that does not occur since we can study the causes of most natural disasters.
A side question would remain which is how do we see Allah governing over the throne of the universe now? Could it be purely in changing people’s minds when someone else makes a dua as the nafs/ruh is a difficult matter anyway? Or is there something I have missed and do we think that control over the natural world still happens. If so please explain.
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12 Replies
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How To Account For Allah Controlling Events When We Know About Natural Laws
updated 3 years ago
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12
Replies
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Answer to your question lies in the story of Moses meeting a man of God in Sura Al Kahaf. There God showed how He intervene in how a small scale at His will to alter the course of actions or result of natural way of cause and effect into His desired direction.
There run two system, natural way of cause and effect, and the second is God’s intervention. This intervention comes in the guise of cause and effect.
As far as miracles are concerned , they are the extra normal happenings, brought in to establish a truth of the prophet. After the prophets we do not find them.
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But if we take the opinion that he was an angel as some scholars of al mawrid say then we don’t see walls magically rebuilt or ships having holes made in them supernaturally. All things still follow the natural chain of cause and effect.
I agree with your reply to miracles they are not to be accounted for of course under natural terms.
But then if miracles cannot be accounted for nowadays then dua would be pointless for worldly gain except that which relates to the nafs perhaps.
If I make a dua that ya Allah please don’t make it rain tomorrow then how would my dua ever be accepted given that whether it will rain or not was decided by the velocity and trajectory of the Big Bang billions of years ago? We may not be able to predict weather but true randomness cannot exist- there is. as far as I am concerned, a causal chain for every incident. And if my dua did cause it to rain (or if the dua was for something that we ate 100% certain in predicting)- then it would be no less then a miracle for it to be accepted.
Again this is if you don’t take divine occasional ism.
And if you say that it was in fact set out from the Big Bang then that could be interesting because you would be saying Allah knows all the duas that people will make and he has made a sort of ‘if then’ code for them being accepted in a predetermined matter which is almost deism
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I found this vid interesting…”Zindagi Aur Mout ALLAH Ke Hath Mein Hai – Dr Khalid Zaheer”
I appreciate how you are researching at this age…I mean questions like yours cause scholars like ghamidi sahab to make series to answer our questions,or scholars to rethink their opinions….Opinions of qataris and Saudis might be considered extreme;magar ab aap aah hee gain hai is kaam mai toh I was wondering if you feel brave enough to read islamqainfo or islamweb. I myself dont feel brave enough, kiyunkai kuch opinions extreme mehsoos hotee.
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You couldn’t figure out the venue for Dua in my previous reply. When God is to intervene, we can request Him to intervene in this natural world of cause and effect and direct the circumstances in our favor.
God’s knowledge is another thing, He knows everything in advance , but His knowledge doesn’t shape out action or the results of cause and effects.
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So you are saying that our dua is taken in such a way that the cause and effect that Allah has interrupted of the natural order is undetectable to us as humans?
What would the evidence for this be? I can understand it as a way to reconcile beliefs but is it ok to just make our own philosophies this way especially since the quran is silent on this relatively complicated philosophy?
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This is what, quran told us we can’t say a word on our own about How Gid works.
This is explicitly described in Sura Kahaf as I alluded to earlier. See how God intervenes and on what grounds.
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Ok thank you very much for your time بارك الله فيك
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1. We know that when our prayer is answered, we don’t see God’s “hand” being extended out of the sky. But our prayer perhaps was fulfilled through the help of a kind-hearted friend.
2. We know that when God guides us, there’s no light bulb that suddenly pops up over our head. But we’re guided to the right path by being convinced perhaps of Ghamidi’s articulation of Islam.
3. We understood from Qur’an that when God sends His revelation, the angels will manifest them to the prophets. Even Musa (AS) when he speaks to Allah (SWT), it was through the burning bush.
4. We understood how God protects the Qur’an from corruption through massive transmission and living tradition.
We can clearly establish a fundamental pattern of how God interacts / intervenes with His worldly creations. His divine actions are carried out through the agency of creation(s). The meaning of miracle doesn’t apply to God, it’s all “business as usual” for Him whether that’s answering my prayer or splitting the sea. But in our perspective, these events are both miracles. The only difference is we don’t have enough epistemological understanding of the latter.
As for the schoolboy prayer to stop the rain, God can surely stop the rain any time of the day. But why would the boy assume that the only way God can answer his prayer is for God to go against the weather forecast? What’s his objective to ask such prayer? Is it to test God if He can stop or bring rain into a particular region? If the topography of such region is frequented with rain, then surely there are organisms that existed thereof over thousand years that require rain to maintain their habitat. Why would God prefer the boy’s request to stop the rain over the survival of those organisms?
If the boy’s purpose is just want to avoid getting wet, then God can provide him with a raincoat through his dad. What’s the difference of prayer-answered between ‘stopping the rain’ and ‘having the raincoat’ if the latter can achieve the objective of the prayer. If I’m the dad I would rather contend that having a raincoat is even a better ordeal for my boy as he can learn a lesson or two that may develop himself in achieving his human potentials by overcoming some kind of trial in his life.
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Just as a small comment making dua for rain is a very normal thing especially in desert societies where water is not so common.
I think maybe in the ‘chaos’ and ‘randomness’ of particle movement etc- is where we could hypothesise God’s intervention in the universe since we cannot measure to such a quantum level yet
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The same argument can be made. At times, rainy days are detrimental, I’ve seen that it causes flood due to lack of drainage infrastructure. Again, why ask for rain if God can provide a bottle of cold water or build a water desalination plant?
Agreed. There’s no chaos and randomness from God’s perspective. But I think it’s not fair to say that God doesn’t intervene in our daily lives because we can explain His divine action in a naturalistic way.
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The prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم has made dua for rain. According to your logic we should not make dua for anything because it could be not happening to teach us a lesson.
I am asking about the method God enacts to answer our duas not whether he answers our duas or not. You can read my previous reply for where I think that occurs
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I think it’s fair to say that the Prophet (SAW) didn’t ask for rain just for the sake of rain. My point was if one pray for an A to be happened with a purpose of X, then if God fulfill such prayer by providing B (instead of A) with the same effect that one can achieve the purpose of X. That’s a prayer answered, we shouldn’t differentiate A from B so long as X is attained. And God being the all-wise and most merciful, logically B is a better alternative for whatever reason befitting to His grand scheme of things. The problem is when we quantified God’s ability to answer our prayer that the only way He can answer our prayer of A is by giving us the A. Looks like we’re putting God in a box here.
Whether one subscribes to the vision of God as synthesized by occasionalist schools or by Avicennan model, God remains in the equation. Therefore, either view can be grounded to the attributes of God described in Qur’an.
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