There is no god but Allah, and He can prove it! Part III

Does Allah SWT Exist?

What is it to exist?  The Arabic word, “Kawn” implies being created.  If existence depends on being within Creation, then certainly, Allah cannot be said to “exist.” 

When we say, “Allah exists,” what kind of statement are we making?  As we have mentioned, there are two forms of perception, tasawir/conceptions and tasdiq/assertions.  Tasawir are either possible or impossible.  Assertions are of two kinds as well, factual and analytical.  Although the logical positivist philosophers contend that factual statements can be verified, and hence rendered conclusively established by experience, others such as Alfred Ayer, the English logical empiricist, held that verifiability means only that a statement is rendered more probable by experience.  This is true because factual assertions are verified through induction and as we have seen in Part I, induction only renders statements probable, not necessarily actual.  “Induction is a probable inference.”  (Our Philosophy, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Trans. Shams Inati, p. 76, footnote 22).  Such probable statements have potential.  In our swan example, swans have a strong potential to be white based on the probability statistics generated by our experiential observations and use of inductive logic.

Analytic statements, on the other hand, are verified through deductive logic, and hence are proven to be either true or false.  If they are proven true, then they are necessarily actual, and if they are proven false, then they have no actuality. 

So, when we say, “Allah exists,” we are making a factual statement, subject to induction.  Unlike swans, though, there is only one Allah, so how do we make the multiple observations necessary to generate an inductive proof?  Moreover, such a proof would only generate potential, not actuality.  If Allah exists, then surely His existence must be necessary. “Allahu as-Samad.”  “Allah is the self-sufficient upon which all depends.” (Surah al-Ikhlas).  The very definition of Allah as the Being that is most primary, the First Principle, the Unmoved Mover, the Source of All, means that if anything exists, then He must.  So again, this Ontological Proof is circular.  If the definition of the tasawir, Allah, includes His existence, then of course, He must exist. 

So can we prove the existence of Allah?  Allah Himself does not attempt to do so.  First, He makes it clear that Allah – the One most Worthy of Worship – is a tasawir, and tasawir are either possible or impossible.  So is Allah a possible being?  We have explored the idea of infinity and found that infinity is impossible, but Allah is not impossible.  He is Witr – Singular – and Samad – the self-sufficient upon which all depends.  Certainly, Allah as a tasawir, as the first tasawir, the primary tasawir upon which all else is based and upon which all else depends, which is singular, without beginning nor end, which is of no duration or extent; is possible. 

Then the next question is not “Does God exist?” but “Is Allah actual?” 

Allah SWT Himself answers this in the Qur’an through inductive means. 

1 By the sun and his brightness,

2 And the moon when she followeth him,

3 And the day when it revealeth him,

4 And the night when it enshroudeth him,

5 And the heaven and Him Who built it,

6 And the earth and Him Who spread it,

7 And a soul and Him Who perfected it

8 And inspired it (with conscience of) what is wrong for it and (what is) right for it. (Surah Al-Shams)

Here Allah SWT swears by the things He has created that He is actual.  Because there is a sun, moon, day, night, heaven and earth, and soul, then there must exist the One who Created them.  Over and over in the Qur’an, Allah used such inductive proofs for His actuality.

1 The Beneficent

2 Hath made known the Qur'an.

3 He hath created man.

4 He hath taught him utterance.

5 The sun and the moon are made punctual.

6 The stars and the trees adore.

7 And the sky He hath uplifted; and He hath set the measure,

8 That ye exceed not the measure,

9 But observe the measure strictly, nor fall short thereof.

10 And the earth hath He appointed for (His) creatures,

11 Wherein are fruit and sheathed palm-trees,

12 Husked grain and scented herb.

13 Which is it, of the favours of your Lord, that ye deny ?  (Surah Al-Rahman)

Here again, Allah recounts all of His favours.  Which of them can we deny?  All of them are inductive evidence of His actuality.

However, as we have noted, induction only produces probability, degree of potentiality.  If Allah is actual, He must be fully actual, the most actual, with no degree of potential.  He must be completely actual.  For this, we must turn to deduction.  Only a deductive proof can bring us such a degree of necessary actuality.

Is Allah SWT Actual?

And for this, we turn to our great teacher, Shaheed Sayyed Muhammad Baqir Al Sadr.  Hidden in his book refuting dialectic materialism and socialism, is a gem.  Embedded in his discussion of Matter and God, he states a proof for the necessity of the actuality of God.  Without rehashing his entire work at this time, we start with the conclusions of modern physics regarding the substance of the universe.  Scientists agree that the original matter of the world is one substance.  All qualities of this matter (including extension and duration) are accidental to this primary matter.  For example, fluidity, vaporousness, solidity, are qualities that can be removed from the underlying substance.  If they can be removed, then they are not essential.

We also hold that matter is divisible into elements – the periodic table.  And that matter is made up of particles such as atoms.  However, even these qualities are not essential.  For example, light behaves as both a particle and as a wave.  Even the attribute of physicality is not essential. 

This last point is very important.  Unlike Descartes, who held that there are two substances, physical and mental, Materialists who hold that there is only physical substance, and Idealists, like Berkeley, who hold there is only mental substance, Baqir al Sadr held that there is only one substance and that physicality and mentality are merely attributes of one substance.  The mental or non-physical is merely a higher quality, not a distinctly different quality.  So Baqir al Sadr is not a minimal attribute dualist or dual-aspect theorist.  He says there is only one substance, and physical and mental are merely different attributes among many attributes. 

In answer to materialism, Shaheed al Sadr then states that singular matter could not be the source of multiple attributes.  In fact, materiality itself is an accident, so how could it produce other attributes?  The substance of the universe is merely clay.  Something else has to give it attributes and qualities. Something else has to mold it.

“Empirical and scientific experiments have shown that all the qualities, developments and varieties of primary matter are not essential; rather, they are accidental.”  (Our Philosophy, p. 246).  “Similarly, the variation and difference in the qualities of the common matter also reveal a cause beyond matter.  The result of this is that the efficient cause of world is other than the material cause of the world.  In other words, the cause of the world is different from its raw matter that all things share.”  (Id). 

Here, Shaheed al-Sadr has shown that the essential cause of the world must be of necessity actual.  Because we observe qualities, and we observe physical matter, and even physicality is an accident, then whatever is the essential cause must be actual, and it must be actual of necessity.  And the cause of these attributes must be something other than this one substance of the universe.  And the only thing that this could be is Allah, SWT.