The Argument from Causality by N. Fakhr - HTML preview
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Week Eight: The Necessary Existent Is One Thing—The God of Religion Is Another!
Believer: “Well... tell me, what conclusions did you reach after thinking about the argument from causality?”
Skeptic: “I drew two conclusions from everything you said in the argument from causality. One concerns the attributes of the Necessary Existent, and the other concerns the afterlife.”
Believer: “I’m eager to hear them.”
Skeptic: “I have to say that if, as you argued, the First Cause must not possess the characteristics of a phenomenon—otherwise it would itself require another cause—and if it is to be the first cause, itself in no need of a creator, then it must be timeless and incapable of undergoing any kind of change.
“This means that it must not think, because in the process of thinking, the thinking subject initially does not know something and then, by analyzing what it already knows, comes to know what it previously did not know. The subject in state one is a subject that does not know, whereas the subject in state two is a subject that knows. That means a change in the thinking subject. It means that the thinking subject and its existence are being renewed from one state to another.
“It cannot design, either, because a designer initially does not know the final form of what it is creating. Then, through thought and examination, the design is completed, and the designer becomes aware of a design of which it was previously unaware.
“In principle, it cannot perform an action at all, because initially it has not performed that action. In other words, it is first an existent that has not performed the action, and then it becomes an existent that has performed it.”
Believer: “Wait... I don’t agree with that last point at all. We do not know what characteristics a timeless existent has, or whether it can actually perform an action. It is we who divide it into a state before and a state after performing the action, because we are incapable of imagining anything except in temporal terms. That is a limitation of our minds. It is true that such a being must not undergo change; but the idea that a timeless being performs its actions in time as we do, and that it can therefore be divided into the being before the action and the being after the action, is merely our unavoidable way of conceiving it. It is we who cannot conceive of it otherwise.
“We should therefore confine ourselves to this conclusion: it cannot possibly be changeable or temporal.”
Skeptic: “Perhaps you are right about that last point alone. But there are several other attributes whose possessor would necessarily have to be temporal—or, more precisely, capable of change. ‘Becoming’ angry, or ‘becoming’ pleased or displeased, unquestionably means undergoing change. A being that is not angry before we perform an action and becomes angry afterward cannot be the Necessary Existent.”
Believer: “That is true. But bear in mind that what Islam says about God becoming pleased or displeased is open to interpretation.”
Skeptic: “I expected you to give that answer, and I have to say that it does me no good.
“Besides, I cannot see why we should assume that there is only one Necessary Existent. There are many chains of cause and effect, and there may even be multiple independent universes. Perhaps each causal chain and each universe could have its own independent Necessary Existent.”
Believer: “Don’t you think that, in that case, conflict would arise between them?”
Skeptic: “They do not change. So either they are eternally unaware of one another, or they are eternally aware of one another and of one another’s actions and simply have nothing to do with each other. They cannot suddenly interfere with one another, affect one another, become angry with each other and then make peace, or become displeased with one another and later become pleased again.
“It seems that this time, you are the one who has forgotten that they are neither temporal nor subject to change. Several Necessary Existents could exist without getting in one another’s way, because something that itself creates space cannot possibly occupy a place in such a way as to obstruct another. You also said that the Necessary Existent has no limits. So it would make no sense to say that several Necessary Existents could interfere with one another’s boundaries.
“Besides, you spoke of the absolute and flawless knowledge of this Necessary Existent. I accept that the Necessary Existent cannot acquire additional knowledge, because that would entail change. But why should we think that it possesses knowledge at all—or, for that matter, that it does not? How did you establish that it is a knowing being?”
Believer: “By looking at this world, can’t we infer that he knows what he is doing?”
Skeptic: “Knowledge consists of representations of the external world that take shape in our minds. We are the ones who refrain from doing certain things unless we know what we are doing and have a plan for them. On what basis do you think the Necessary Existent resembles us in this respect? Why do you think it must know what it is creating, or must know what what it creates is going to become? Apparently, your conclusion that it possesses knowledge is based on comparing this being to a human being—a human being who is a phenomenon, whose mind is also a phenomenon, and whose knowledge is a phenomenon as well. That is precisely why you keep referring to it with the pronoun ‘he,’ and sometimes you even mislead me into thinking of it that way.
“In fact, we have never encountered, nor can we even imagine, any knowledge that is not itself a phenomenon. I cannot infer the knowledge of the Necessary Existent from this argument unless I compare it to a human being who is a phenomenon through and through, and that would contradict the conclusion of the argument. It is supposed not to be a phenomenon; therefore, we should remain silent about whether it is a knowing being.”
Believer: “So you think he does not know what he is doing and, like an inanimate and mindless object, has created the universe entirely without purpose?”
Skeptic: “I am saying that the argument from causality allows us to draw no conclusion whatsoever about the knowledge of the Necessary Existent. What we can say, however, is that knowledge of the kind that consists of representations in our minds—what we call ‘knowledge’—is impossible for it. It is also impossible for its knowledge to undergo change, decrease, or increase.”
Believer: “On the basis of the argument from causality, at the very least we can say that if he possesses knowledge, his knowledge has no limits. Moreover, if his knowledge were not complete and flawless, then if an event occurred and he saw it, something would be added to his knowledge, and he would come to know something he had not known before. That would mean that he had changed and acquired a new existence with greater knowledge. Since this new existence would be new, it would be a phenomenon and would require a cause. In that case, he would no longer be the Necessary Existent; like the example of the pen, he would acquire a new existence at every moment and would require a cause at every moment.”
Skeptic: “You just said, ‘if an event occurred and he saw it’... Come to think of it! God’s being hearing and seeing—al-Samīʿ and al-Baṣīr, among the attributes ascribed to him—does not seem compatible with what we would expect of a Necessary Existent.
“One who sees and hears is affected by what has occurred. Even if nothing is added to his knowledge, the very fact that he witnesses events means that those events affect him. Otherwise, it would have been sufficient for him simply to know what had occurred; there would have been no need to say that he hears and sees.”
Believer: “His seeing and hearing are not like our human seeing and hearing. We need our eyes and ears to be affected by light from objects or by vibrations in the air in order to see and hear. He is not like that.”
Skeptic: “The issue here is not at all about how seeing and hearing occur. If the God presented by Islam were to correspond to the very Necessary Existent established by the argument from causality, the Qur’an or the religious authorities should simply have said that God knows all things. Of course, as I said, the argument from causality does not establish God’s knowledge; in fact, it even rules out its human form. But it also rules out the attributes of hearing and seeing, regardless of how they might occur.
“To hear and to see mean nothing other than being ‘affected’ by an event1. Hearing or seeing an event may increase our information about it, or we may already know that the event has occurred and gain no additional information. In either case, the acts of hearing and seeing mean being ‘affected’ by the event.
“If God,
first, is not affected by any event whatsoever,
and second, merely knows about all events,
then attributing seeing and hearing to him in relation to those events is meaningless and mistaken.
“The issue here is not the manner in which hearing or seeing occurs. The issue is the very nature of these two acts. Neither act can occur except through being affected by an event, and this has nothing to do with whether information increases or remains unchanged. Perhaps we can suppose that the Necessary Existent knows everything and therefore undergoes no change; but it cannot, in any way, hear or see.
“The more I think about it, the more attributes I find ascribed to the God of Islam that cannot, in any way, be attributed to an unchangeable Necessary Existent.
“People are strongly encouraged to plead and lament before God in order to obtain his grace and forgiveness. How can someone know that the God he presents to people is unchangeable, and then tell people to move him to mercy through pleading? Worse still, how can he say that God is quick to become pleased and is readily appeased? That is nothing other than change accompanied by temporality.”
Believer: “There is no contradiction between people asking him for something and his granting it, on the one hand, and his being unchangeable, on the other. Just as God has established physical laws governing the affairs of the world, perhaps granting people’s requests after prayer and supplication is one of his laws as well.”
Skeptic: “Let us suppose that he has established such a law. Now, through reason and with the help of the argument from causality, I come to understand the immutability of that Necessary Existent. I might even have learned the truth of its immutability from that very same prophet. Correct?”
Believer: “Yes, correct.”
Skeptic: “Now the same prophet who tells me this rational truth also tells me that if I ask it for something and pray to it, it will grant my request. You see no problem with that?”
Believer: “No, there is no problem at all.”
Skeptic: “Now that same prophet tells me that I must plead and weep so that that Necessary Existent will fulfill my need. That is a problem, isn’t it?”
Believer: “What is the problem? Perhaps he created the world in such a way that this is simply the formula by which prayers are answered.”
Skeptic: “My pleading and weeping do not increase my need. Pleading and weeping are intended to affect a person from whom we are asking something. In themselves, our pleading and weeping are nothing but acts intended to affect the one we are addressing—to bring about a change in him, for example, by moving him to compassion.
“Perhaps our need is so great that it naturally brings us to tears. In that case, our crying is the result of our need. There would then be no reason to tell us, ‘Because you have a need, cry,’ because the need itself would make us cry. But when we are told that whenever we ask God for something, we should also cry—even if we do not actually feel like crying—the meaning can only be that God is like a human being and that our tears and lamentation move him to mercy.”
Believer: “Our humility and submission affect us. This change in us, followed by the answering of our prayer, could itself be the law or formula that God has established. In other words, through weeping we become humble, and once we have become humble, our prayer becomes capable of being answered.”
Skeptic: “Humility and submission may do that, but weeping and lamentation are quite different. Weeping and lamentation do not necessarily produce humility and submission, just as a beggar’s weeping and pleading do not mean that he is inwardly humble before us or regards himself as lowly. Moreover, humility before a God whom we know is ‘in no way affected by our weeping’ would probably not make us cry. If you know that the one before whom you pray is in no way affected by your tears and lamentation, and that human characteristics are fundamentally meaningless and impossible in relation to it, then even if you are humble before it, you are unlikely to burst into tears. And even if you do, one would expect the prophet of that Necessary Existent to remind people like you that your tears have no effect on it, rather than doing the opposite.
“When you know that it is aware of all your needs, and that whether or not you express those needs adds nothing to its knowledge of them, you would tell it about your needs only if you either attributed a human-like personality to it, or its messenger had told you that by following this formula, it would grant you what you ask for. Had it not prescribed such a formula, you probably would not even tell it about your needs, because you would believe that it knows them better than you do.
“Now suppose that messenger says that although weeping has no effect whatsoever on God, you should still weep when you pray because that is simply the formula for having prayers answered. You would say, ‘What kind of ridiculous game is this Necessary Existent playing? Why does it insist that human beings imagine it to be something it is not?’
“You said that the Necessary Existent has no definite limits, characteristics, or qualities that would make it a contingent existent. But aren’t being merciful, vengeful, compassionate, accepting of repentance, patient, just, and appreciative all indications of possessing particular characteristics and limitations, and therefore of being a contingent existent?
“One who is merciful possesses characteristics that do not allow him to be unmerciful.
“One who is vengeful possesses characteristics that do not allow him to let certain actions pass without a response.
“One who is compassionate possesses characteristics that compel him to show compassion.
“One who accepts repentance possesses characteristics that prevent him from being harsh toward those who repent.
“One who is patient not only possesses limiting characteristics but is also plainly temporal.
“One who is just cannot act unjustly.
“One who is appreciative possesses characteristics that do not allow him to withhold appreciation and simply remain indifferent.
“All these attributes indicate the possession of limitations and definite characteristics—and worse still, they indicate that he is affected by phenomena and by his creatures and reacts to them.”
Believer: “One could say that he is not limited by characteristics that compel him to possess these attributes. Rather, he has freely chosen these attributes for himself and has decided to be as he is.”
Skeptic: “Even setting aside the temporality involved in the act of ‘choosing,’ choice means preferring one thing over another for some reason. It means that at first we do not know which of the available alternatives we want, and then we come to know which one we want. This act requires two things:
“First, changeability and the continual renewal of the chooser’s existence.
“Second, the possession of characteristics and limits that cause the chooser to regard one of the alternatives as more compatible with those characteristics and limits, while regarding the others as unsuitable.
“Look, Believer! The God presented by Islam and other religions is a God with human characteristics. He is a God with a personality. He, like a human being, changes, exists in time, has emotions, and possesses definite and limiting characteristics and qualities. He bears no resemblance to the Necessary Existent that results from the argument from causality. Although this anthropomorphic God of religions differs from human beings in certain respects, he is also vastly different from the rationally established Necessary Existent.
“The argument from causality proves the existence of a Necessary Existent and immediately rules out the God of religions. It tells us that the First Cause of the universe, even assuming there is only one, certainly is not the God of the monotheistic religions.
“In fact, what you have proved is that Islam and religions like it are products of the minds of human beings who believed in the existence of a God for the universe but conceived of him, to an inexcusable degree, as human-like and phenomenon-like.
“If the Necessary Existent you have established really sent a prophet, it would never ask that prophet to tell people that it hears and sees, or to tell them to plead before it, or to ascribe numerous human-like attributes to it. Worst of all, it would never have itself addressed with the pronoun ‘he,’ as though it were a personal, phenomenon-like, temporal, and changeable being. Being temporal and changeable, and possessing limits and qualities, are conspicuous and inseparable characteristics of being a personal being.
“Perhaps some of the attributes ascribed to God in Islam can somehow be interpreted in such a way that they do not conflict with the attributes of the Necessary Existent. But some of these attributes cannot possibly be interpreted or reinterpreted in that way, because they necessarily imply that God is capable of change, and that contradicts the argument from causality.
“The argument from causality is not an argument for the existence of the God of the monotheistic religions; it is an argument against the God of the monotheistic religions.
“Furthermore, if the Necessary Existent established by the argument from causality had sent a prophet, it would never have told that prophet that there is a Day of Judgment.”
Believer: “Why is that?”
Skeptic: “I’ll tell you next week.”
Believer: “In any case, I think the attributes ascribed to God in Islam and the Qur’an can be explained in a way that makes them defensible. Besides, Islam strongly emphasizes that God is free from every defect and imperfection and that he bears no resemblance to phenomena. As it is said: ‘Laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ’—‘There is nothing like Him.’”
Is It Justifiable to Be Lenient in Accepting Irrational Attributes for the Necessary Existent?
Skeptic: “I know that is what you think, and I also know that even if you fail to find those interpretations, you still will not reject Islam. But you are accepting these attributes by being lenient—and ‘there is no limit to leniency.’
“If leniency is allowed, then any other description can be accepted as well, and using reason and argument to determine whether a prophet’s claim is true or false becomes pointless. By this approach, even if someone today claimed to be a prophet and said that his god had hands, feet, and a tongue, while also saying that ‘nothing is like his god,’ you could, by being lenient, accept all these claims together, interpret and reinterpret those attributes, place most of your emphasis on the statement ‘nothing is like him,’ and regard the philosophical conclusions of the argument from causality as compatible with the claims of this new prophet as well.
“But the reality is that if someone made such a claim to prophethood today, you would immediately abandon your usual approach. You would devote all your effort to finding faults in what this newly emerged prophet says and emphasize the incompatibility between his claims and your rational conclusions. For you would reasonably recognize that if he has said even one false thing, no leniency regarding it would be justified. You rightly know that someone who claims to be a prophet may simply be a human being who is not telling the truth, and therefore you should look for his errors, not his correct statements, because everyone says some things that are true.
“A false prophet may say both things that are true and things that appear false but can, with sufficient leniency, be interpreted and explained away. If we assume that a true prophet may likewise say both things that are true and things that appear false but can, with sufficient leniency, be interpreted and explained away, then we have disarmed ourselves when it comes to critically evaluating the truth of a claimant to prophethood. We would have no way to distinguish between the two. We would no longer have any means of discovering which claimant to prophethood is telling the truth and which is not. At that point, all rational discussion becomes useless.”
Believer: “People cannot relate to a God to whom no human characteristics whatsoever are attributed. That would cause an important aspect of religion—namely, giving believers a sense of comfort—to be lost.”
Skeptic: “The prophets’ primary claim is not that they have come to give people a sense of comfort. Their claim is that they have come to tell people the truth: to enable people to distinguish right from wrong, and to help them understand what they cannot discover on their own through the divine knowledge given to the prophets, so that they may be guided.
“Claimants to prophethood present whatever they tell people as truth, not as comforting words or consolation.
“Given that any human being who traces phenomena back through their causes arrives at a Necessary Existent that is immutable and does not possess the attributes of phenomena, we can say that knowledge of these attributes of the Necessary Existent is entirely accessible to every human being. One need only reflect on the concepts of existence and nonexistence, as well as cause and effect, to arrive at the existence of the Necessary Existent and become aware of some of the attributes it cannot possess. Therefore, this is one of the tools available to us for testing the truthfulness of claimants to prophethood. If proving the Necessary Existent through the argument from causality is to serve as evidence for the truth of a claimant to prophethood who says that God exists, then discovering the attributes of that Necessary Existent through the same argument must likewise serve as evidence against that claimant whenever he attributes to his god characteristics that contradict the conclusions of the argument from causality.
“If we regard every human attribute that a claimant to prophethood ascribes to his god as open to reinterpretation, and simply pass over it leniently, what rational tool remains by which we could determine whether that claimant is presenting a god fashioned by his own mind as the Necessary Existent?
“If a claimant to prophethood says in one place that his god is unlike anything else, while elsewhere saying that his god sees, hears, becomes angry, becomes pleased, and undergoes changes of this kind, can we conclude merely from that one statement—‘Laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ’2—that he knew what he was talking about and that his other statements are open to reinterpretation?
“Now that you and I have concluded that the Necessary Existent cannot resemble any phenomenon, can we answer ‘yes’ whenever someone asks us, ‘Does the Necessary Existent become angry?’ If our understanding of ‘Laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ’ is the same as what we have concluded regarding the Necessary Existent of the argument from causality, then it no longer allows you and me to tell others that it hears, sees, becomes pleased quickly, or becomes pleased slowly. Can we really say that this claimant to prophethood was a messenger of the Necessary Existent, yet understood that Necessary Existent far less than you and I do?
“In any case, now that I have arrived at this conception of the Necessary Existent through the argument from causality, I can no longer set its conclusions aside and say that I accept half of the argument’s conclusions while ignoring the other half.”
Believer: “Wouldn’t you rather wait and see whether you might eventually find an answer as to how such attributes can be interpreted and understood in a way that makes it clear that they do not necessarily imply that the God of Islam is changeable or phenomenon-like? Do you think it is reasonable to announce your final conclusion so soon? Perhaps this mystery will become clear to you in a few days or a few months.”
Skeptic: “Perhaps things will turn out as you say. But until that day, reason requires me to withhold acceptance of the Islamic prophet’s claim that he really is a messenger of the Necessary Existent. And until this ‘mystery,’ as you call it, becomes clear to you, you too ought to stop teaching religion to children. You should not instill in them, as certain and sacred truths, a religion that—at least at this stage—your own rational arguments do not establish as a religion sent by the Necessary Existent.
“Remember that, up to this point in our discussion, the argument from causality has not remained silent or neutral regarding many of the attributes of the God of Islam and other monotheistic religions, such that you could simply retain your belief in all of them. Rather, regarding certain attributes, such as God’s oneness and self-sufficiency, it is, under certain conditions, neutral: it neither disproves nor establishes them. But regarding some other attributes, it takes a negative position and regards them as rationally impossible. Therefore, it is not reasonable simply to disregard these conclusions and continue teaching religion as before.
“You expected me, immediately after the Necessary Existent had been established, to believe in the God of Islam. Are you yourself prepared, in light of the conclusions of that very same argument, to give up your belief in the personal, phenomenon-like God of Islam—or at least suspend that belief for the time being?”
Believer: “Of course, there are other ways of evaluating whether a prophet’s claim is true.”
Skeptic: “For now, we are following the path of reason. And if a claimant to prophethood makes a claim that contradicts reason, it would be strange if other methods succeeded in proving his claim.”
The Believer remained silent for a few seconds, then said: “I’m curious to hear how, next week, you’re going to connect the argument from causality to heaven and hell.”