SIGNS WITHIN OURSELVES
53-We will show Our signs to them in the horizons, and within themselves, until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth. Is it not sufficient that your Lord witnesses all things.
41-Elucidated,53
The Quran uses ‘self’ to express consciousness, the quintessence of our personality. This ‘self’ is not contained in the sleeping body. (See the sura The Throngs verse 42). And yet ‘Self’ is integrated with our physical body, the author of all good and bad acts, is our personality, the consciousness we call ‘Self’.
The fact that the atoms of our physical body, deprived of all consciousness – of which 99% is vacuum – performs such conscious acts like seeing, hearing, and thinking, cannot be explained by a personality (Self, Soul) exterior to our physical existence, will form the subject matter of another book we are intending to write, in which this issue will be tackled within a larger framework, stretching from the philosophy of mind to the quantum theory wherein many scientific branches will find room. Bearing this in mind, we dispense from taking up this issue in our present work.
The point we should like to dwell upon now is the Verse’s allusion to signs and further horizons. By the expression in the further horizons the Quran refers to the existence while separating our Self from material objects around us. The signs to which philosophy alludes are ontological arguments; these are a priori knowledge that the mind is constitutionally endowed with, concepts or ideas that it has not derived from experience. These are referred to in the Quran as signs our self is endowed with. The miraculous statements and predictions we spoke of in this chapter is not based on the findings obtained through satellites, telescopes, submarines and on the recent developments in physics, chemistry and biology. Here we find ourselves surrounded by the available data of a rich philosophical background. The tribe to which the Prophet belonged dealt in trade and husbandry. The Prophet himself was not brought up in a milieu like Plato’s Academy or in a milieu where the colorful and lively schools of philosophy like Cartesianism flourished. Therefore, the fact that Quran made a distinction between the outward signs and the signs immanent in man’s soul is noteworthy.
ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
The basic message transmitted by all the religions revealed by God is the fact that He is a perfect being. This becomes all the more apparent when we witness every entity created by God. In the ontological argument, attainment of God is achieved not through exterior means, but from the idea of “Perfection” or “Perfect being” inherent in each of us.
Farabi and Avicenna were among the first philosophers to refer to the initial arguments of ontology. Farabi analyses the ontological argument together with the cosmological argument. According to these, God must be self-existent, assuming that He does not exist would be a contradiction in terms. All other creatures are possible creatures; both their existence and nonexistence can be a topic of discussion. If the possible entities are not resolved in the Self-existent, there would be a contradiction in terms. Given the fact that Farabi’s conclusion is a combination of ontological and cosmological arguments, many thinkers believed to have found traces of this for the first time in the works of Avicenna.
Nevertheless, this argument is, more often than not, associated with Descartes. To avoid committing error, he sets out, in his philosophical quest, by considering all the past knowledge as if non-existent. He begins that many of the preconceived opinions he has accepted since childhood have turned out to be unreliable; so it is necessary ‘once in a lifetime’ to ‘demolish everything and start again right from the foundations’. There follows a systematic critique of previous beliefs. Anything based on senses is potentially suspect, since ‘I have found by experience that the senses sometimes deceive and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.’
Elsewhere Descartes expresses this cogito argument in the famous phrase cogito ergo sum (‘I am thinking, therefore I exist). He derives from this argument that he exists incontestably and that thinking can never be confuted. (Descartes’s acceptance of the entity as he, is the concept of personality that the Quran refers as ‘Self’ and not the physical body). Later he realizes that knowing is superior to perfection compared to doubting and explains how this idea of perfection leads him to the most perfect, to the idea of a supremely perfect being.
He reasons that the representational content (or ‘objective reality’) of this idea is so great that it cannot have originated from inside his own (imperfect) mind, but must have been planted in him by an actual perfect being – God. It was easy for him to know the origin of a great many things outside him like the sky, the earth, the light and the heat and a thousand other things, all these things contained nothing that would surpass him. If they were real he might have concluded that he had acquired them from the void. However, this could not hold true for a being more perfect that He was. He could not have acquired it from nothingness.
Descartes concluded the existence of God after having examined the evidences inherent in the Self. He said that this conclusion was not an invention of his imagination, and that to add or subtract anything to or from it was beyond him. He had to accept the fact that he had come to the world with this sign. Like the initials that an artist imprints on his work, God had implanted this idea as He created him.
God, for Spinoza, is a self-existent being, a quintessence. He claims that His non-existence would be a logical contradiction of terms. While Leibniz contends that Descartes’s views need to be supplemented and formulates the ontological argument bearing similarities with Avicenna.
KANT’S TIME AND SPACE CATEGORIES
The Quran speaks of signs in our ‘Self’. So far, we have gone over the idea of ‘existence of God’ innate in us, as propounded by Descartes and other thinkers like him. We believe that the verse that refers to signs in our ‘Self’ meant much more. We are of the opinion that the ‘Self’ considered as an a priori entity and all the characteristics innate in us come within the scope of this verse.
According to Kant’s matchless discovery that made him for what he is, time and space are inherent in us before all experience and encounter with the outside world. A little child, who has no notion of distance, moves away from things he dislikes and goes near things that seem pleasant to him. Therefore, man knows whether such things are near or outside his reach as an a priori argument. In other words, the idea of space is already there in his mind without having previously experienced it. The same thing holds true for the time factor. The child has the sense of ‘before’ and ‘after’ prior to all perceptions. Had it not been so, all our perceptions would become chaotic, disordered in disarray. To go into the details of other evidences related to the innateness of the idea of time and space would necessitate longer discussions.
Kant referred to those innate characteristics while analyzing our contacts with the outside world. He said nothing about the fact that these were evidences of God’s existence. Kant pointed to the conformity of these innate data with the outside world. We live in a unique place as ‘Self’. We can liken the space in which we live to an extremely complex gate. Our ‘Self’ along with the categories of time and space we possess from birth is the only key of this gate. We open this gate which is of a complex structure with the key (viz. our ‘Self’). Whoever it was who created this universe, time and space is also the author of the ‘Self.’
Our capacity of learning how to speak is also innate in us, as we saw in the previous chapter. The innateness of this capacity is also an evidence of our perfect creation along with the time and space categories implanted in us. Not only our physical being but also our mental make up is made to fit the outside world.
This a priori capacity innate in us never leads us astray. Kant demonstrated the conformity of a priori intuitions with empirical data. This was the conveyance of a priori intuitions to the realm of experience. Basing on this a priori argument can give us the confidence to carry them beyond the realm of experience. Along with Avicenna and Descartes, we can accept as evidence the innateness of the idea of God.
Had Kant come to know what the Quran had to say about the signs implanted in our Self, he would be astounded! Kant’s statement about the necessity of believing in an afterworld with reference to the existence of morals might form a basis for deductions related to the a priori data implanted in man. Kant stated that to believe in God and in an afterworld was indispensable for the application of the principle of morals. Kant took it as the necessity of the practical reason. Nevertheless, the intelligence, created equipped with well-defined characteristics, that led it to these conclusions were the a priori resources. When we believe in the necessity of morals, we feel compelled to accept as postulates the existence of God and the afterworld thanks to our a priori characteristics. The fact that the morals form a ‘maxim’ in Kant’s own terminology is a consequence of our innate a priori characteristics.
It is our belief that anybody taking up arms against a priori is doomed to perish!
ENCODED
30-Therefore you shall devote yourselves to the monotheistic religion. Sure is the creational instinct placed into the people by God. There is no alternation of God’s creation. This is the right religion, but most people do not know.
30-The Romans, 30
What have been encoded in us as a priori data when we were created, conform to the precepts of the religion revealed by God, this creation being an evidence of the perfect creation of God. If we consider the contents of the verse (41- The Elucidated, 53) that speaks of signs in our ‘Self’ as being in conformity with the Creation, the matter may be understood better. Many people encounters with difficulty in understanding Descartes’s expressions ‘innate ideas’. To have a better insight in Descartes’s arguments, we need to concentrate very attentively on the structure of the mind. It might be better to conceive this as the conformity of our creation with the precepts of religion and can address a larger public. Most of us seek answers to the questions ‘Where I come from?’, ‘What is the purpose of my existence?’, ‘Where am I heading for?’ The reason for our asking such questions is that we are created in such a way as to feel the necessity of asking them. There are many people who evade asking such questions and avoid meditating upon them, people who have inhibited their own impulses. Our creator’s inducing us to put such questions, His creating us disposed to have faith in religion, is indications of a religion that he would reveal. For, there is nothing that can provide an answer to such questions outside religion. The evidence of the existence of religion is our having been made in a way to believe in it.
God that makes us thirsty has also created water to quench it. God that makes us hungry has also created the food we need. Getting thirsty and hungry is something different from the existence of water and food in the outside world. We might feel the need for something that did not exist in the world, rather than water, viz. the molecules whose constituents are hydrogen and oxygen. But the fact is that our body is made to want what it is programmed in him. To be immortal is the thing we desire most than our need for water and meal. Survival is more important than all desires and passions. God made us in a way as to wish the afterworld. Had He thought otherwise, he would have dispensed from doing so. This need we feel is another evidence of the hereafter.
Our creation includes in its scope all His evidences, of the evidences His religion and of the hereafter. I would like to draw your attention to the expression in the above verse: ‘There is no altering of God’s creation, this is the right religion’ This postulate is coeval with man’s creation. The person who can decipher the meaning of these signs believes in God, His religion and the hereafter. The last sentence of the verse in which it is said that the majority or people do not know this, is very meaningful. As a matter of fact, many people fail to appreciate and turn to good account these signs, thereby denying themselves.
