God, Modern Science and our understanding

Another debate happened about God, in which Omid, in order to show our weakness in understanding the God's nature, referenced to a famous example: Box example.

• Imagine you are in a box. You want to believe there is something outside the box. You do believe it... But all your conclusions and theories are based off what you know, and all of what you know is based on your experiences in the box. So the tools you use to quantify something outside the box are inherently futile.

Appatently, the above comment has something to do with science... and here is my comment to that of Omid:

• I enjoy the way you get into discussion; it bears an evidence of your academic thinking. About your comment: with regards to the famous example of Box, you are to an extent true and to another extent wrong.Firstly, you are right. Modern science, following its very essence which takes into account just observable phenomena, has nothing to do with those possible objects which may do exist outside of Box. Pay attention that ‘observable’ is equal to ‘measurable’ in this sense, and when a thing is not measurable, that is out of the league of practical sciences. ‘Pain’ is a good example: very observable, but not subject to a quality measurement. (Reference: “Developing Nursing Knowledge: Philosophical Traditions and Influences” by Beth Rodgers => Chapter 5)Secondly: you are wrong. Before going a step further, pay attention to the fact that there are 2 general grounds of results derived from science: Synthetic and Analytic. Without getting into the complicated glossary of philosophers, let’s suppose that some of these results are based on experience and some of them are not based on experience.About that part of the results which are based on our experience, there is an extensive debate that whether they do apply to objects outside of the Box or not. Following the skepticism of Hume (which reduces Causality to a daily habit, not a rule; etc.) leads to an even worse condition: we may not apply these results to the objects inside of the Box.For those results which are not based on experience and do not bear any limitation, they will apply to any object, whether inside of the Box or outside of it. For an example, check the Incompleteness Theorem of Kurt Gödel.Now, a very important question arises: is modern science capable of setting some limitations on the nature of God? Or, on the other hand, on our understanding of God? That’s the mark, try to hit it!

Divine Will (II)

A very busy week I had, sorry for delay. Let’s go a bit further with the current point.
Lord is a believer in “an omnipotent God” who “can do whatever acts he desires”, but unfortunately it is not likely to solve the problem. Remember the main point which fueled our whole debate: existence of different, inconsistent and even contradictory understandings of that Divine Will. How can we justify such a thing? Lord gives his own view: “God did his best to tell us his Divine Will, and if there are different views and understanding, he wanted so.” Then, the main point is left untouched; Hurray!
Let me paraphrase the case: Indeed, I was aimed to find a reference authenticated by God as the original understanding of His Divine Will. Here, Lord proposes another alternative: if there are different views and understandings, it is possible that God wanted it so.
Therefore, with regards to the fact that God sent us his messengers and revealed many verses in order to make a religious structure for our lives, first of all we should find out if God prescribes a sole definite code for our lives, or just gives us some clues and then wants us to act based on our understanding of that clues which may make many different or even contradictory structures? In other words, there are two possible maps:
(I) There is a precise Code which God and Religion means it and we should try to find it, though some times we may misunderstand it (if this misunderstanding happens while we do our best to find out that Divine Will, God may forgive us); and God's code includes instructions for every simple task of human's life, i.e., in any certain time and place, God has a Will which is Unique and we have to find it.
(II) God has ordered some principles on which we should build our understanding, and from which we should try to derive a kind of Code, and different people may conclude differently, i.e. God has not (meant) a Unique Determined Code.
A simple example may show the difference between above maps more precisely: somebody concludes that right now, ‘A’ (an act, behavior, etc.) is allowed, while the other finds it forbidden. Map (I) tells us that not both of them are true, for God’s code is unique and covers all aspects of human's life: one of them is true, and the other is wrong. Map (II) tells us that it is possible that both of them are true at the same time, on the basis that God has probably not determined a definite Code for A and has left it for people to decide which is true themselves. You know the idea behind ‘Straights Paths’ of Dr. Soroush which is somehow based upon this ideology.
Let me clarify the stand of advocates of Map (II) a bit more: they say that God has a determined code for just few things like Prayers, Fast, etc. In other areas (especially when it comes to some features of contemporary life like economy, geography, etc.), God has left it to the Wisdom of Crowd. People should make trial and errors and step by step develop their own systems of life.

*****

Dear Lord!
In either case, almost all scholars do agree that an ordinary person is not able to find out the path, for he/she first of all should think of all such matters and then decide about them. The only things that Quran has for everybody (and there is no need for an interpreter to find out them), is prescribed principles of Islam, things of this kind:
1- There is a God, who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and unique.
2- There will be a day of doom, the last day, Day of Judgment.
Etc.

Good Luck

Divine Will (intro)

Note: Since our debate about Islam’s position on Jews led to a much broader discussion about Quran itself, this post is named ‘Divine Will (intro)’ to cover the very basis of our later arguments. This post works just as an intro to the subject, and gives some hints on our next posts.

*****

I hope you have read Lord’s new post. Ideas he has developed in his new argument open the door to a very broad discussion about Quran, about which there is an extensive body of different views within Islamic scholars and various schools of thoughts.

Also Fariborz contributed to that post of Lord, though his commentswere taken word by word from a Sunni site. However, those comments also matter.

Let me ask few questions to clarify what subjects are in the root of all the different views about Quran. Read the following questions, contemplate them, and try to find your own answer to them, whether as a Muslim, or just as a believer in God, or as a nonbeliever. Also it should be noted that these arguments, with few modifications, would apply to all holy scriptures, whether Quran, Testaments, or else.

1- When God tried to reveal those verses to Muhammad, there was a Divine Will, but was that will in the form of a human language? How did Muhammad understand that Divine Will? As you well know, while translating a text from source to target language, very often it happens that the will of original author gets lost. Is the process of revelation immune to such failures?

2- Let’s suppose that God revealed some words, and He meant exactly what those words meant. Here another problem arises: Whose understanding of those words is closer to that Divine Will? Indeed you agree that the same words, particularly the words similar to Quran verses (which are full of metaphors, etc.), may mean differently to different people. Even if we suppose that the people of then Arabia must be our reference in this case, did they all have the same understanding of those words? The same problem, again.

3- Is today's Quran equal to the Quran revealed to Muhammad? Indeed there are different versions of Quran, called Qera’at (which means: readings); but some Muslim scholars believe that these differences, believed to be caused by different dialects of the Arabs, are so insignificant that don’t show any difference in the whole meaning of disputed verses. Another point is that some people doubt the way that Quran was gathered and claim that there is a possibility of flaws in that process.

4- Suppose that we solve all the above questions, and finally establish an original understanding of The Divine Will with very simple statements which may mean just in one way to all the people. The next problem rises when we ask of the role of ‘Reason’ in applying those rules to the contemporary society. Indeed this is not a new story of 20th century. Roots of such debates back to few centuries after Holy Prophet’s death (Footnote 1). I have too many things to say about this 4th subject, but leave them all for future.

hope that this intro was useful.

Good Luck

Footnote 1: Let me refer you a simple story of history which helps you get the point better, and leave rest of the matter for later posts. As you well know, Asharite used to believe that reason is incapable of discovering the will of God when this will is not strictly and frankly given to us; and they had some followers in between Shiite. It is said that one of the Shiite Imams wrote on the coffin of his deceased son: “Ismael, rest in God” (Ismael was his son’s name), and an Asharite follower of that Imam, wrote “Ismael, rest in God” on the coffin of his own deceased son, though his son’s name was Muhammad, not Ismael. This was because they did not identify any role for reason in understanding the Will of God.(Note that for Shiite, 12 Imams are supposed to be infallible like the Holy Prophet himself, and their deeds and words provide a source for Shiite Jurisprudence.)