Thread by @AthariCritic

Logic in islam

Because reason is often a means of acquiring knowledge regarding certain phenomena, the question needs to be asked: “Can philosophical argumentation achieve certainty about fundamental Islamic beliefs?”

Quick note:

Islam here is understood through the leans of the four jurisprudential and classical schools, that is, not the reconfigurational Islam in the post modern era under the influence of western ideas.

It is with these set of parameters that the fundamentals of creedal differences within the taxonomies of thought can be identified.

from the get-go, it is argued that islamic epistemology views rational argumentation as a means and not an end.

to be clear, the role of rational argumentation is to respond to or uncloud the Fitrah. This means that the ultimate reliance of divine fundamental understanding should be taken up mostly by revelation- in whatever way it be

Among one of the fundamentals of religion is the belief in one God alone. Can this belief be substantiated with absolute certainty through mere philosophical argumentation? All one has to do is simply look into the works of the medieval Arabs to acknowledge this claim

Among such arguments was the kalam cosmological argument put forth by Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, which gave three premises:

-Whatever begins to exist requires a cause.

-The universe began to exist.

-Therefore, the universe has a cause.

The essence of the argument highlights a causal relationship of cause and effect which at some point unfolds back to the universe making it an effect and thus requiring a cause for its existence.Due to the problem of infinite regression,the cause needs to be uncaused by necessity

The problem with using this methodology however is that the apparatus (reason) itself is limited, and therefore cannot comprehend the nature of this uncaused cause. The farthest one can prove through Ghazali’s kalam argument is that some being necessary in its essence exists.

In other words, reason possesses the inability to completely rationalize God with certainty, and therefore, using reason to measure God is akin to using a ruler to measure your weight.

Often, people unwillingly over-rationalize God in this regard. Philosophical demonstration and argumentation, then, fails to rationalize certain attributes due to its inability to comprehend the nature of this uncaused cause, causing uncertainty in this matter.

This compels one to negate certain attributes and therefore reject the islamic narrative of God (with all his attributes). Without a doubt, what remains of this being is such a thing that exists only as a concept within the mind and has no external existence outside time-space.

This proves once again that the maximum one can prove from a logical perspective is a deistic God, and hence, no amount of first principles can be given to establish a personal theistic nature of God.

Furthermore, to establish the essential attributes of God using only logic, one is compelled to fall into resemblance between the creator and creation, and thus bases their existence of God over the assumption that God works the way humans do.

By using rationality to determine certain essential attributes, the mind drives shared meanings from what it sees. These shared meanings are non-delineated realities which have no existence except that which is formed in the mind.

This, without a doubt, forces one to admit that there is a sharing in the reality of external things in their definitions, even if only formed in the rational faculties.

To better concede this point, if one were to attribute intelligence to a necessary being using the fine tuning argument, they would presuppose the idea that all that exists contains complexity and precision, and therefore, the creator must have had intellect to design complexity.

The problem with this reasoning is that one must accept that “difficulty” here is similar to that seen by God. Without this non-delineated definition, one would not be able to apply intelligence to the designer where there is no need for intellect (due to the lack of complexity).

Therefore,philosophical demonstration requires unprovable or non falsifiable assumptions in its first principles and axioms which then result in uncertainty within its conclusions

hence, it can be shown that utilizing reason as an end is an epistemological rigorous apparatus