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Establishing An Almighty God
I asked Ghamidi sahab in his live q&a on the 22/11/20 about this:
What if we draw the analogy that we, humans, are simply ants on a piece of paper? We think what is being written is divine and must have a creator- and we are correct. But if we were to think that the creator of THIS paper is not contingent upon anything- how can we be justified?
He replies that if the creator were contingent he would have a creator and so on- so there must be one ultimate creator.
I agree
So let me construct the analogy a bit further-
What if the humans decide to send the ants some books- and choose to start prophethood in them? This could be for scientific experimentation to see how they react, or, a bit more scarily- a joke.
The ants will think undoubtedly the book is divine since their simple language will be used by humans to make it seem as though it is divine.
So the question is- how can we be certain that the creator of THIS SPECIFIC universe is the ‘ultimate creator’?
I am not denying that an ultimate creator must exist- but I am questioning he we can know if the creator of this universe is the ultimate one.
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16 Replies
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Establishing An Almighty God
updated 4 years, 1 month ago
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16
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We can know he is the ultimate Creator because he is telling us in the books? And we can come to know the reality of it when we meet him, this question is similar to the question that he responded , if everything has a Creator then who created God, watch it on YouTube its around 5 mins clip, we will only be able to know if our God is the ultimate Creator when we meet Him and analyse Him like we make anylise everything else around us before coming to conclusion who created it.
Peace
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Then how is it justified to have certainty that God is the God we say he is?
Like I said in my question- what if the books we are being sent are a part of an experiment- or perhaps a morbid joke
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Before you try to establish anything, the key is to know the perimeters of your knowledge. You have no source of knowledge to establish what you’re trying to establish without the scripture. If you have believed in the scripture based on strong evidence, then you can only know about God what the scripture tells you, period. Also the order of establishing the truth is of pivotal importance. I shared the correct order in my response below:
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And what I’m trying to say is that humans being humans have no way to know whether the scriptures you are referring to are a serious topic or a part of an experiment.
It seems we cannot know for certain.
Scripture and it’s validity and truth value is being judged here- you cannot use it to prove itself
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That is not correct. If you follow the correct order then you cannot reach any other conclusion but the existence of an Almighty God. Without following the correct order, you can keep banging your head all you want, but you will never be able to establish or falsify anything about God.
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‘The scripture then provides us with undeniable evidence that our hypothesis about a Creator was in fact accurate.’
You wrote this in your post on the other link that you shared. It is an unavoidable step in the process of coming to know of the description of God.
My point would be that you say that scripture provides us undeniable evidence. My argument is simple- the scripture is making truth claims that we as humans can only hypothesise about. Our hypothesis is based on the observation of he universe that the creator of it seems to be very strong.
This is why my analogy is important- we as ants on paper will think, on the face of it, that human communication is undeniable evidence for the hypothesis is ants make.
But obviously in my analogy the ants would be wrong. No matter if they had a priori knowledge or had a hypothesis.
Unless the claim is as humans we can’t know- but this is a likely possibility that the creator of this universe is not contingent in anything.
But then how can we be certain about religion and dedicate our lives to it?
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As humans we cannot find the absolute truth, given the constraints of sources of our knowledge. However, given such constraints, the most truth we can find is that there’s an Almighty Creator. After that we have only one source of knowledge that we can tap into in order to know anything about that Creator – the scripture. If there’s another source then please tell me, and if there isn’t, then this discussion is irrelevant.
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That’s the same conclusion I’m coming to. It’s a very high possibility that seems correct to say that the creator of this universe is an almighty God.
But then what would the reply to someone be who claims that he doesn’t believe in scripture since he has no way to absolutely confirm that it’s not eg part of an experiment?
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I don’t know what absolute confirmation is. The only thing that I can absolutely confirm is that I exist. Other than that, all my beliefs are only based on evidence.
We only have to believe what’s true based on evidence that we can gather, that’s all we can and are required to do. If the evidence changes in the future, so should our beliefs. It’s as simple as that. The only thing that’s required of us is to make our best effort in finding such evidence, and to sincerely believe whatever they imply.
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So just to open up the discussion a bit further- would you say that it is undeniable that the Quran is NOT a part of some experiment or morbid joke by some higher civilisation. Is the evidence (if it is even possible for us to have any evidence against this) against this claim strong enough to falsify it?
Because, if not, then we are stuck in a limbo
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We’re not stuck in any limbo. Given the limits of the sources of our knowledge, the best that can be established positively is that an Almighty Creator does in fact exist. Since there’s nothing at our disposal yet that has falsified this claim, we must have a firm belief in God, expect to meet Him one day, and live our lives in the pursuit of a life of eternal joy and comfort that has been promised to us. That’s exactly the message of the Quran as well.
If one fine day we find a way to convincingly establish that God in fact doesn’t exist, this fascinating universe, the mind boggling power of human intellect, all the beauty, every emotion is created just as a morbid joke, then we’re free to believe otherwise.
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I’m not denying the existence of an almighty creator- that’s simply a logical necessity.
‘Creator does in fact exist. Since there’s nothing at our disposal yet that has falsified this claim’
If you are referring to the idea of the books that are sent being a part of an experiment then you can’t use the books to falsify a claim that is saying that the books themselves are false.
Isn’t it incorrect to assume that the creator of this universe must be the ultimate creator since we are arguing from a place of ignorance- from our little piece of paper.
Divine books confirm our hypothesis of the fitrah and observations of the universe. But what authority do they have to confirm this hypothesis if they are simply a part of an experiment?
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Notice that I have not said a word about your hypothetical example, because there’s simply no end to what we can imagine. When we’re trying to establish facts, we should refrain from such examples because they tend to be not very useful.
With that, I won’t comment on your little piece of paper or ignorance part. However, I will reiterate that given the limitations of our knowledge, we have to bow down to the truth that we CAN and HAVE established. This exact same concept works in science.
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But the hypothetical example is proposed doesn’t need evidence- I’m not claiming it to be true. I’m simply pointing out (perhaps) a hole in the argument that I see.
Your argument is that the facts have been established with evidence.
I’m questioning the validity of the evidence itself.
So far what I seem to be leaning towards is that there is simply no way to prove (even with the way humans obtain knowledge) that divine scripture is from either the ultimate creator- or simply a creator
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I sympathize with you 😄😄
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What I mean is that we can establish that sun rays cause cancer because we have a logical possibility and also evidence.
For this universe’s creator being THE ultimate creator- we just have the logical possibility with perhaps some evidence.
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