The Fallacies of Religious Clerics by N. Fakhr - HTML preview

Philosophy

Whatever religion I belong to as a religious cleric, if I cannot prove the truth of my religion by appealing to morality, common sense, or miracles, I may claim that a precise and profound philosophy, supported by undeniable rational proofs, establishes the truth of my beliefs.

This claim has an advantage for me.

Ordinary people usually have little interest in complicated philosophical ideas. The impressive name of “philosophy” itself, together with the repeated claim by the scholars of their religion that such a deep philosophical system exists, may be enough to convince them that it must be true.

They may come to believe that, just as their religious scholars say, there really is such a precise philosophy, and that opponents have repeatedly been defeated in philosophical debates by the logical proofs of their religion and have left the discussion with nothing more to say.

A critic may respond:

“Many religions and sects make the same claim. How am I supposed to know that you are the one telling the truth? Besides, there are many philosophers who do not have religious faith at all.”

At this point, I, as the cleric, may confidently take the upper hand and say that those philosophers simply have not studied this philosophy properly.

Then I may tell the critic:

“Come and study the philosophical books of my religion yourself.”

These books may be very long, written in dense language, and extremely difficult to understand.

The believer who hears this may become even more confident in his faith. The critic, if he does not have the patience to study such works, may still remain unconvinced—but from then on he may also be troubled by doubt:

“Perhaps the cleric really was telling me the truth.”

But what if the critic does take the time to study them?

What will he find in this supposedly precise philosophy?

What kind of philosophy is it that I, the other clerics of my religion, and the clerics of other religions that also claim to possess a philosophical system all regard as flawless and as clear proof that our own religion is true and that our own prophet was genuinely sent by God?

Apparently, we clerics must have discovered something extremely precise and error-free in it.

What Kind of Philosophy Is Supposed to Prove Religion?

When people speak of philosophy that supports religion, they usually mean a kind of thinking that begins with questions such as:

What is existence?

And where did it come from?

In other words, they are mainly speaking about metaphysics or ontology.

There are, of course, also philosophies of ethics, history, art, and government. But these have not generally been used to prove religion.

And, strictly speaking, even metaphysics has not actually been used to prove a religion.

Rather, it has been used to argue for the existence of a creator of the universe, a first source, or a necessary being.

This philosophy begins by examining the concepts of “being” and “existence.” It then proceeds through pure reason—the human faculty of judgment and evaluation—while trying, as far as possible, to keep emotion out of the process.

In some of its most important arguments, it asks why every event or thing that comes into existence requires a cause.

The argument from causation then becomes the foundation for many other philosophical arguments.

For example, the argument from order says that the order found in the universe requires an organizer or designer.

The argument from beneficence says that the benefits and favors provided to human beings require a source of those benefits.

In both cases, order or beneficence is first treated as something that has come about and therefore requires a cause. That cause is then identified as the God of the religion.

The Argument from Causation

A very important point in the argument from causation is this:

After various discussions and through different lines of reasoning, philosophers conclude that something that is not eternal—that is, something that did not exist from eternity but came into existence—cannot possibly come into existence without a cause.

And that cause itself is subject to the same rule.

If it too is not eternal, then it too is an event or an effect and therefore requires another cause.

Philosophers then use various arguments to claim that this series, chain, or sequence of causes and effects must eventually reach a first beginning.

That first cause is the cause of all causes.

It must always have existed.

In other words, it must be a necessary being.

In short, it is regarded as the ultimate source of creation and existence.

Whether this philosophy can itself be criticized is not the subject of our discussion here.

Historically, this kind of reasoning appears to have been developed in one form by Aristotle and in another form by Plato. Both of them, by the standards of today's monotheistic religions, would have been regarded as followers of non-monotheistic religious traditions rather than believers in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.

Later, many religions and sects adopted and developed versions of these arguments.

Each of them said that this necessary being, or ultimate source of existence, was God—and by “God,” they meant the God of their own religion.

But metaphysical arguments by themselves have never explained why this ultimate source of existence must be the particular God described by that religion.

The God of Philosophy and the God of Religion

Religious scholars have generally understood that the ultimate source of existence established by these arguments must have special characteristics if it is not itself to become another thing requiring a cause.

For example, ordinary things have limitations of time, place, mass, and other similar characteristics. They also undergo change and transformation and therefore, according to this philosophical framework, require a cause.

I will not enter into the reasons for all these claims here.

It is enough to say that religious scholars familiar with philosophy generally accept that the ultimate source of existence must have characteristics different from those of ordinary created things, so that it does not itself require a cause.

From this, they conclude, for example, that if this first cause has knowledge, its knowledge must be unlimited.

Its power must likewise be unlimited.

And because it does not undergo change, it cannot have needs. Need exists when something must move from its present condition to another condition.

And so on.

There is no problem when religious scholars describe their God in these philosophical terms, because they have chosen philosophy itself as their foundation and as their standard for understanding what God must be like.

Whether that philosophy is flawless or contains weaknesses is a separate question.

The problem begins when the sacred texts of a religion describe God in ways that sometimes seem completely different from the God of philosophy.

For example, religious texts may describe God as ruling from a throne, which appears to imply location, or as merciful, vengeful, or angry, with His anger being calmed by repentance.

Religious scholars have tried to answer these problems in different ways.

They may say that such descriptions are intended to make difficult ideas understandable to ordinary people.

Or they may say that these expressions are metaphors for a reality about God that lies beyond the human mind.

There are many responses of this kind.

Such arguments convince some people and fail to convince others.

But the more serious problem with this philosophy is something else.

Causation, Responsibility, and Free Will

In all religions, what people do can make them deserving of reward or punishment in another life.

In other words, the God of a religion can question individuals about what they have done and, according to laws that He Himself has established, reward or punish them.

It seems clear that such responsibility before the ultimate source of existence would make sense only if a person's actions resulted from a will that God had played no role in bringing into existence.

But according to the law of causation, a person's will is certainly not eternal.

It did not exist from eternity.

It came into existence.

Therefore, it must have a cause.

That cause must itself have another cause, and so on, until the chain eventually reaches the ultimate source of existence.

In that case, the ultimate source of existence would seem to be the one being who cannot reasonably ask a human being why he did or did not perform a certain action and then punish him for it.

Under the law of causation, there is no difficulty in saying that one human being becomes unhappy with another person's supposedly criminal act and that this unhappiness causes retaliation.

There is also no difficulty in saying that the desire to prevent similar actions in the future leads a society to create laws and punish offenders in order to reduce future crime.

All of these things can occur within a causal chain.

But the same justification does not seem to apply to God.

According to the law of causation, God Himself designed and created the conditions through which person A came to have certain inner desires and, apparently by his own will, performed certain good actions.

Yet that person's entire life—including those inner desires—ultimately came into existence through the will of the source of existence.

Person B, meanwhile, was placed on another path in life and came to have inner desires that led him to perform certain bad actions.

But his entire life—including those desires—was likewise ultimately created by the same source.

This means that God did not merely know in advance what every person He created would do.

He also designed and created all of that person's desires, actions, nature, appearance, inner characteristics, environment, and, in short, every phenomenon involved in that person's life.

If so, Heaven and Hell, as people commonly understand them—as instruments through which God's justice is carried out—would become the very opposite of justice.

This problem becomes even more serious in religions in which some people are said to remain in Hell forever.

In fact, this is the familiar philosophical problem of determinism and free will.

According to this argument, once the argument from causation establishes God as the ultimate cause, the determinism of human actions and desires seems to follow automatically.

“But I Feel That I Am Free”

Religious scholars and believers who have studied philosophy have responded to this problem in different ways.

The first and most common response to the conclusion that human desires are determined has been this:

Many scholars and believers say that they directly experience their own actions as voluntary.

They clearly feel that they are not being forced to act.

Therefore, they conclude that they are free and must one day answer before God for what they have done.

Although these scholars may be familiar with philosophy, in this particular case they seem not to have fully understood what causation means.

The determinism that follows from the law of causation is not something that a person is supposed to feel.

Divine determinism does not mean that a person wants to choose one option but is then forced by external pressure to do something else.

Rather, it means that the person's desire and choice themselves are events.

Earlier events caused that desire and that choice to arise.

Those earlier events were themselves effects of still earlier causes.

And so the chain continues backward until it reaches the ultimate cause of the universe, which, according to this framework, is ultimately the designer and source of all these events—including the person's own desires.

The person therefore does not need to feel any force, pressure, or compulsion when acting, deciding, choosing, or refusing to choose.

The feeling that “I chose freely” does not by itself show that the causes of that choice began with me.

Another group of religious scholars and believers have understood the law of causation more deeply. In some cases, their own religious texts have even helped them understand it better.

In the Quran, although many verses emphasize human choice and personal responsibility—especially in the Meccan surahs—there are also many passages that speak in ways that suggest human choices are determined, and this appears more often in the Medinan surahs.

For example, Quran 2:272 says:

“God guides whomever He wills.”

Quran 57:22 says:

“No suffering or calamity occurs on the earth or in yourselves except that it is written in a Book before We bring it into existence.”

And Quran 4:143 says:

“Whoever God leads astray, you will never find a way to guide.”

Verses like these, together with the argument from causation, have pushed some religious thinkers to search for another way to preserve Heaven and Hell within their understanding of God.

These scholars can themselves be divided into several groups.

“Neither Determinism nor Free Will, but Something in Between”

One group has said that our actions and desires are neither completely determined nor completely free.

They are something in between.

If I am a religious scholar or believer and this answer occurs to me—or if I hear it from a respected religious authority—I will probably feel relieved.

Simply knowing that an answer exists may be enough to calm me, and I may no longer continue examining the problem.

In fact, this is a common human tendency.

When we are attached to a belief and want to preserve it, we usually do not begin by raising many doubts about it.

Then, if a critic raises a question about that belief, we often accept the first answer that comes to mind—or the first answer we hear—as the final answer.

Just as we did not begin by seriously doubting the belief, we also do not continue the doubt afterward.

We do not carefully analyze the answer we have received.

After some time, we may even forget what that answer was.

If the same question is later raised again in our presence, we may say:

“I do not remember the answer right now, but I know I once heard a very strong and convincing answer to this question.”

And then we stop thinking about it again.

In this case, the phrase “something in between” gives the impression that the entire problem has been solved.

We have apparently managed to think philosophically and prove the existence of God through causation, while also thinking religiously and preserving the need for an afterlife.

But we have forgotten the very concept of existence that was introduced at the beginning of metaphysical reasoning and at the beginning of the argument from causation.

Some things do not appear to have a middle state.

Existence is one of them.

Something either exists or it does not.

If it does not exist and then comes into existence, it requires a cause.

If it does exist, then either it is a necessary and eternal being, or it was not eternal and came into existence through a cause.

Human will is not exempt from this rule.

Human will is not some exceptional kind of existence that falls outside the law of causation.

Otherwise, we would have to accept the possibility that many other things might also create themselves, at least partly.

And that would undermine both the law of causation and the reasoning through which we reached it.

It would also place the existence of God itself in serious doubt.

For then we could simply say that perhaps the universe too brought itself into existence at some moment.

In other words, it could be an event that came into existence and yet required no cause.

That would also undermine every science that tries to discover the causes of events.

Psychology is one such science.

It studies the causes of human desires and intentions and tries, by understanding these causes more fully, to predict human behavior.

“Determinism Is True, but God Need Not Be Just”

Another group of religious scholars have paid closer attention to this problem and have rejected the idea that there is something between determinism and free will.

They have concluded that, rationally, determinism is correct.

But they still wanted to preserve both God and the religious afterlife.

So they said that we should not expect justice from God.

God owns everything.

He favors and guides whomever He wishes, and He misguides whomever He wishes and sends them to Hell.

According to this view, human reason has no right to impose duties on God.

Whatever God does is good simply because God does it—even if it appears contrary to reason and justice.

The Islamic theological school known as Ash‘arism is, to some extent, an example of this way of thinking.

Ash‘ari theologians regard God as the ultimate agent behind all human acts, whether good or evil, right or wrong, and they deny that human beings independently create their own actions.

In this view, belief and unbelief ultimately come from God, and human beings do not independently create them.

Yet this is not considered to make God unjust.

The Ash‘aris themselves, however, later used philosophical arguments to criticize philosophy and regard it negatively.
(Islamic Schools of Thought, Dr. Yousefi Fazayi, p. 245.)

This way of thinking presents God as though He Himself is somehow compelled to send some people to Hell and others to Heaven without any reason at all—because every reason would itself ultimately come from Him.

Under this view, the entire religious image of God as a wise being who cares about His servants becomes difficult to preserve.

Even the purpose of religion itself becomes unclear.

Religion was supposed to guide people, and God was supposed to have sent it out of compassion.

But if it has already been determined who will be guided and who will not, what purpose does the guidance serve?

Perhaps this view preserves God, Heaven, and Hell.

But it seems to invalidate many religious descriptions of God and much of what religions say about the wisdom behind divine commands.

People who accept such a philosophy would have to search for a religion that says something different and is more compatible with their philosophy.

Or perhaps they should stop searching for a religion altogether.

Because once a person's final destiny in the afterlife is accepted as having been fixed from eternity, that person should ask, before performing any religious act:

“Is it already determined where I will end up in the afterlife?”

The answer must be:

“Yes.”

Then the person should ask:

“If I perform this religious act—or do not perform it—will my final destination change?”

The answer cannot be anything but:

“No.”

If the answer were “Yes,” then the first answer would no longer be true.

Religious Thinkers Who Change Religion Through Philosophy

Another group of scholars have tried, after studying philosophy, to think less about determinism and free will and simply preserve their belief in the afterlife.

But the God introduced to them through the argument from causation attracts their attention.

They begin to see this God as different from the God described by their religion.

This does not necessarily cause them to abandon religion.

Instead, they may say:

“The descriptions of God found in religion are only metaphors intended to make Him understandable to human beings.”

But their new understanding of God may prevent them from accepting many religious laws as truly coming from God.

Gradually, they may issue rulings for themselves and for others in which some acts that were previously forbidden become permitted, and some acts that were previously permitted become forbidden.

In other words, in addition to religious texts and even their sacred scripture, they begin to include their new philosophical worldview in their religious rulings.

Sometimes they interpret statements in their sacred texts in ways that are completely different from their apparent meaning.

From Religious Belief to Belief in God Outside Religion

Another group of religious scholars and believers, after becoming familiar with philosophy, eventually conclude that the ultimate source of existence must exist but that it could not have sent a religion.

Every religion presents a path that human beings are supposedly free to follow or reject.

It then promises reward to followers and punishment to others.

But this, they conclude, conflicts completely with causation and determinism.

These people become believers in God outside religion.

They believe in the ultimate source of existence but do not believe that this source has sent any religion.

In this way, philosophy—which was supposed to be a source of pride for religions and a way of proving their truth—can, depending on how deeply it penetrates a person's thinking, become one of religion's greatest enemies1.

This is what makes philosophy different from the other standards for proving religion that we have discussed so far.

The other standards do not challenge the very existence of religion with the same degree of force.

Why Some Religious Clerics Oppose Philosophy

The last two groups—the believers and scholars who, because of the philosophy of causation and their new understanding of God, change religious laws and transform religion from its original form, and those who become believers in God outside religion—have helped create a strong opposition to philosophy among many religious clerics.

Throughout history, many religious philosophers who did not even make major changes to religion were nevertheless condemned by other clerics and, in many cases, declared unbelievers.

Avicenna2 and Mulla Sadra of Shiraz3 were among those who faced such hostility.

Philosophy flourished in the Islamic world from approximately the second to the fourth Islamic centuries.

At the same time, opposition to it steadily increased.

After Imam Muhammad al-Ghazali wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifa) in the fifth Islamic century, philosophy lost much of its influence and became regarded negatively by many Islamic scholars.

In general, philosophy tends to be accepted in religious seminaries and schools only as long as those who study it do not reach conclusions that conflict with religion.

One explanation sometimes given by scholars who discourage the study of philosophy is that philosophy is not suitable for everyone.

They say that some people have weak faith and that only those whose faith is strong should study philosophy.

After the discussion above, however, perhaps we can interpret strong faith as a high degree of bias and a low degree of open-mindedness, and weak faith as less bias and more open-mindedness.

In philosophy, open-mindedness is often regarded as a condition for reaching the truth.

Open-mindedness means that, as far as possible, a person should not be committed in advance to one particular conclusion.

The person should not insist on using philosophical arguments only to reach that preferred conclusion.

If the arguments fail to lead there, the person should not simply abandon those arguments or stop following the reasoning.

Someone who begins with a fixed conclusion and searches only for arguments that will lead to it is no longer practicing genuine philosophical reasoning.

He is merely philosophizing in defense of a predetermined conclusion.

In other words, he constructs arguments full of contradictions and fallacies in order to reach the result he already wants.

Of course, being open-minded does not mean having no preferences at all.

An open-minded person may strongly hope for a particular conclusion.

The important point is that fear of reaching a different conclusion must not prevent that person from reasoning logically and carefully.

And if sound reasoning ultimately leads to a conclusion that initially feels unpleasant, an open-minded person must still be willing to accept it.

Open-mindedness does not require having no preferred conclusion. It requires being willing to follow the argument even when it leads somewhere you did not want to go.

When Religious Philosophy Changes Its Standard of Knowledge

It is also worth mentioning that some religious scholars who have taken on the language and appearance of philosophy have tried, after using metaphysics to prove the existence of God, to continue their reasoning and prove the truth of their own religion.

But from this point onward, they often abandon the relatively strong and widely understandable standards of knowledge that they used in metaphysics and that led them to the law of causation.

Instead, they appeal to standards of knowledge that have little philosophical or epistemological validity and that are often accepted only by themselves and by followers of their own religion.

It may be useful here to explain what epistemology means.

Epistemology is the study of the value and reliability of different methods by which we acquire knowledge and justify our beliefs.

For example:

Should our knowledge be based on our senses?

On what other people tell us?

On revelation?

And how much confidence can we place in beliefs reached through each of these methods?

Let us look at some examples.

Beginning With What Cannot Be Doubted

In the kind of philosophy that leads toward the argument from causation, strict philosophers may begin by recognizing the existence of their own being.

At first, they do not depend on the particular qualities of what their senses show them, because their senses may be misleading them.

For example, a strict philosopher may ask:

“Does the world around me really exist?”

If he simply answers “Yes,” that answer might be the result of an error in his mind.

Perhaps everything he sees around him is a dream.

But even then, he can say:

“At least there is a dream.”

And if a dream must somehow exist in a mind, then at least the philosopher's mind must exist in some form.

From that point onward, the philosopher builds his reasoning on the fact of his own existence—something he believes he can no longer seriously doubt.

You may ask:

“What is the point of being so strict about something as obvious as existence? I already know that the tree I see exists.”

The answer is that, in metaphysical philosophy, the philosopher is trying to reach certainty.

He does not want to base his knowledge on the unreliable common sense discussed earlier.

Religious philosophers may proceed with similar strictness when arguing for causation.

Through careful reasoning, they eventually try to establish causation and the existence of a first cause.

Another result of this strictness is that the basic arguments can potentially be understood and accepted by philosophers from many different backgrounds.

Aristotle could understand them.

Islamic philosophers could understand them.

Christian, Jewish, and other religious philosophers could also engage with them.

They did not necessarily agree about everything, but the arguments themselves could be discussed within a broadly shared philosophical framework.

The Sudden Change in Method

But some religious philosophers suddenly leave this path once they reach the point where they want to prove their own religion.

At this stage, instead of continuing with the same strict standards, they may rely on the common sense of themselves and their fellow believers.

For example, they may say:

“We human beings need someone to teach us the right way to live. God has always shown us kindness and has never ignored our needs. Therefore, He must have sent us a religion.”

But at this point, the person speaking about divine kindness has already accepted a particular religious story of creation.

For example, he may already assume that the universe was created in six days and that human beings were created all at once from clay directly by the same God whose existence was supposedly established through philosophy.

He may then reason:

“If God, when creating human beings, even took into account our need for eyebrows to protect our eyes from light, surely He must also have considered our need for guidance.”

But the philosopher's belief in this particular form of creation and in this creation story has not been established by the philosophical argument itself.

It is a story inherited from ancient people or from the philosopher's own religion.

Today, for example, thousands of pieces of evidence from fossils found around the world lead to a very different account: the evolution of living organisms.

According to this account, organisms that cannot adapt to changing environmental conditions may become extinct.

Only genetic mutations and changes passed on to later generations can sometimes allow descendants to adapt to new conditions—and only if those changes happen to fit those environmental conditions.

Otherwise, that lineage may disappear.

In this view, which is not based on pure imagination but on extensive evidence and is supported by increasing amounts of evidence, there is no obvious sign of “divine favor”—at least not in the sense assumed by the religious philosopher described above.

Having eyebrows, or any other human characteristic, can instead be understood as the result of evolutionary history and the physical laws operating in the world.

And if an individual or a population finds itself in extremely difficult conditions, it may simply die out.

This has happened throughout history and still happens today.

So one cannot simply assume that “divine favor” will always protect living beings.

Returning to Miracles

Some religious philosophers, after assuming that human beings need religion and that the necessary being must surely have taken this need into account, then say:

“Therefore, we must search for a religion that has actually been sent by Him.”

Then they appeal to the miracles reported in their own religion and conclude that their own religion must be the answer provided by the ultimate source of existence.

But as we can see, arguments of this kind no longer even arise from the same common sense used at earlier stages.

The philosopher may sincerely accept this method of knowledge—that is, believing reports of miracles he has never witnessed.

But he cannot necessarily persuade a philosopher from another religion, a nonreligious philosopher, or an ordinary nonreligious person to accept the same method.

He has abandoned the strict standards that he used at the beginning to build a secure foundation for knowledge.

The result is that this philosophy ends up proving the truth of a religion whose God may not resemble the first cause established at the beginning of the philosophy, and whose Heaven and Hell may not fit comfortably with the implications of causation either.

A Problem Not Limited to Religious Philosophers

I should add that this change in philosophical method—beginning with great strictness and strong conclusions, then moving toward common sense, simple assumptions, weak reasoning, and even contradictions—is not something only religious philosophers have done.

Many philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle themselves, and even modern philosophers, have fallen into similar patterns.

At first, they impress their readers with their precision and seriousness in searching for truth.

Later, through carelessness in choosing their methods of knowledge, they may reach strange and sometimes seriously mistaken conclusions that have caused problems for human beings.

Marxist philosophy and communist economics are one clear modern example.