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Can It Be Matter?
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‘Granted that the existence
of
temporal
things necessi- tates the existence
of an
eternal cause, why should that cause be the
God
of religion? Why can’t matter
be eternal and be therefore in no need of an eternal creator?’
I shall argue, on an Islamic basis but at the same time also on a rational basis, that the attribute of eternity entails other
attributes, which matter does not and cannot have, and
can- not, in view of this, play the
role of the original and ultimate cause of temporal things. Muslim theologians say that eterni- ty of existence
logically implies everlastingness. This is true because, if something is eternal then it does not depend for its existence on anything outside itself. If this is so then it can never pass away, because
only
those things pass away that lose
some of the external conditions on which they de- pend for their existence. If the ultimate
cause
of
temporal
things is eternal and everlasting, it must of necessity be
self-
sufficient, [in Arabic] qayyoom and ghanee.
Can there be more than one such creator? The Quran tells
us
that this is impossible:
“God never had a child, nor have there been any gods
beside him. [Had there been any], each of them would
have appropriated to himself what he created, and some would have overcome others…” (Quran 23:91)
This Quranic argument was paraphrased by some
Mus- lims theologians in a way somewhat like the following:
The assumption that there are gods beside the one true
God leads to false consequences and must therefore be false. If there is more than one god, then:
(a) if every detail of everything in the world was the re- sult of the action of one of the gods, it cannot at the same
time be the result of the action of another god. But if,
(b) some things in the world were
created by some gods, and others by other gods, then each god would rule indepen-
dently over what he created, which means that nothing in
his
world can even in principle, be influenced
by anything out- side it. But this contradicts the observed
unity and interde- pendence of the world. And if that is impossible, then
(c) some gods will overcome others, but if
that happens then the ones who are vanquished cannot be true gods. There can, therefore, be no more than one creator.
How does this creator create?
Since
He is self-sufficient, He cannot be said to depend on anything outside Himself in
any actions, and cannot therefore
be said to produce His ef- fects the way
natural causes do. But if He is not a natural cause, He must be
a volitional agent. And since intention implies knowledge, and knowledge and intention imply life,
he must be
a living being. Since
He is an eternal and ever- lasting
being, all His attributes must reflect this quality; thus He must
be not only knowing, but
all-knowing, not only powerful, but all-powerful, etc.
Since no
matter in
any
form can
answer
to these attributes, and since all these attributes are implied by the two attributes of eternity
and everlastingness, no
form of
matter can be either eternal or everlasting, and thus no mat-
ter of any form can play the role of that ultimate
cause. This
much of the attributes that an eternal and everlasting creator
must
have is enough, I suppose, to show that it cannot be
matter.
But this conclusion can be further confirmed by what
modern science tells us about the nature of matter.
Why should He be the God of Islam?
Some might say, ‘Granted that this god is a personal and living God, and that He has the attributes which you men-
tioned, why should He be the God of Islam and not, say the Christian or Jewish God?’ The God of Islam is the God of
all true prophets of God from Adam down to Moses, Jesus
and Muhammad. But it is a basic claim of the religion with
which Muhammad came that previous religions (including
Christianity and Judaism) have not been kept in their pristine form which those
prophets advocated, but have
been tam- pered with and distorted. The only religion whose book has taken upon itself to be preserved from any such distortions is the
religion of the last of God’s prophets, namely Muham- mad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him.
This is not to say that everything in those religions is false or bad. No! There is much in them that is good and true; it is only
those elements in
them that contradict Islam which must be false
or
bad. But even if they were
to be purged of every- thing that is not in consonance with Islam, they would still be less perfect than Islam is, especially in their conceptions
of
God, therefore unsuitable for being universal religions.
Having said this,
let
me give one example of a
non- Islamic religious belief which the Quran considers to be
a stupendous blasphemy against God, namely
that He has
children. At the time of the Prophet, some Arabs believed
that the angels were the daughters of God, while some Chris- tians believed that Jesus was the son of God, and some Jews
believed that Ezra was the son of God. Just as the Quran
gave
arguments for the
impossibility of there
being any gods besides the one true God, it also gave elaborate arguments to show the impossibility of Him having a child, whether male or female. If the Creator is one and self-sufficient, then He is also unique, ahad:
“…Nothing is like Him...” (Quran 42:11)
But if so then:
“He neither begets nor is He begotten.” (Quran 112:3) “…How can He have a child if He has no wife, and if
He created everything?...” (Quran 6:101)
The Quran is here saying that the claim that God has
children contradicts the facts (acknowledged by
those who make this claim) that He is the Creator of everything, that
He
is self-sufficient, and that He has no spouse. Now if He is the
creator of everything, this necessarily includes the one who is claimed to be His child. But if this is created by Him, it cannot be His child; it has to be one of His creations. One does not create one’s child; one
begets it. If it is insisted that
the child is actually begotten and not created by God, this will entail the following false consequences:
The begotten child must be of the same nature as its fa-
ther, in which case God will not be unique or one.
God will not be the creator of everything.
God will have to have a spouse, who must of course be of
the same nature as He is, otherwise
they cannot beget any- thing.
But in that case the number of beings who are of the
same nature as God will be raised to three.
If the child is begotten then it cannot be eternal, i.e. it cannot be of the same nature as the father.
It must therefore be temporal; but in that case it has to
have a creator. But if the God who is its father cannot at the same time be its creator, then there must be its creator, then there must be another creator besides that God the father; but in that case, this other creator will be the
one
true creator be- cause
it
was through his power that the first one was able
to beget its son. This will raise the number of gods to four.
No wonder than that the Quran said about those who
claimed that God has a child:
“You have indeed come with something most monstr- ous, of which the skies almost burst, the earth
split asunder, and the mountains fall down in utter ruin. All this because of their attributing a child to God.” (Quran
19:89-91)
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