Response to a blog comment: Indisputable Sources and God's Attributes

Question:
Dr. Zaheer:
In your helpful post, you said

“Our religion is based on the teachings of the Qur’an and sunnah which have both been transmitted to us through undisputable sources.”

By “sources” here I guess you mean Muhammad and the generations of Muslims that followed him. I don’t know any other sources “through” which the Qur’an has been “transmitted.” Perhaps you include also the angel Gabriel.

If you were indicating Muhammad and the later transmitters of the Qur’an, then in what sense do you mean those sources are “undisputable”? You might mean that no one who has full knowledge of the facts and a sound mind would dispute those sources. Do you mean something else? Because clearly countless people around the world dispute all these things, so in the strictest sense of the word, they are disputable.

But if you meant that no one who knew all the facts would dispute the infallibility of the sources of transmission, then I would ask how you could know that, unless you yourself knew all the facts and were thus in a position to know what is indisputable to one in such a position? I’m sure you do not claim to know all the facts. Therefore I must assume you do not intend to claim that someone who knows all the facts would not want to dispute the sources of which you speak. The world contains an infinity in a grain of sand, as the saying goes. At any moment there are an infinity of facts within facts, all in some mode of transformation. No mortal man can know them all. And even God, according to some conceptions of God, is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. I’m thinking of the process philosophers whose leader was Alfred North Whitehead, the great mathematician. Charles Hartshorne was an American process philosopher who held that taking human freedom seriously meant accepting that God is not omnipotent. If men are really free, then their actions are not determined by God. God would in that case not be omnipotent. Nor, for Hartshorne, is God omniscient, because if human beings really do possess free will, God cannot know or determine in advance what human beings will do. If God knew in advance, then the human decision-making process would be an illusion. Human beings would not really be “deciding” between possible courses of action. Rather some entirely pre-determined process would be unfolding in their minds, and they would have merely the illusion that life at every moment is a crossroads that can lead to a different outcome than one had been aiming at previously.

But I don’t wish to push these discussions of theology and freedom. I merely mention them since many people assume without question that God must be omnipotent. Why do they assume that? Because that is how most people think of God. But many people thinking something doesn’t by any means make it true.

There is no need to answer the above questions of course. I am just thinking outloud and might think differently tomorrow.

Thanks for your thoughtful blog.

Response:
By indisputable sources of knowledge I meant the two sources on which all serious-minded Muslims of all times have agreed. Of course, when such generalizations are made you don't include in them the insignificant disagreements attempted by some people whose interest in the subject was only casual. The two sources are the Qur'an and the sunnah.

There can be many disputes amongst the Muslims about what the correct interpretation of the Qur'anic text is. However, all agree that the Qur'anic text we have today is the very same that was given to us by the prophet, may Allah's mercy be on him. Similar is the case with sunnah. All Muslims agree that there are certain religious acts that have become a part of the religious and social life of all practising Muslims, like prayers, fasting, hajj, burying the dead, saying salam to greet etc. In matters where there is found a serious dispute amongst Muslims it cannot be sunnah. Hadith is, on some occasions, only a record of that sunnah but not the most significant source leading to it. That source is the unbroken chain of practise amongst Muslims from the first generation to date.

As for the question of God's omnipotence and man's free will, the philosophers have got the issue wrong because they are imagining God through the narrow range of possibilities humans possess. God, by definition, has to be superior to the best possible humans one can imagine of. God is simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, absolutely fair, and much more. It is therefore possible for Him to allow people to move about freely in a limited domain of their lives, know everything from before, and be absolutely fair in deciding about the fate on their freely done acts which were not influenced by His omniscience. He allows things to happen against His wishes despite being omnipotent because he has decided that this worldly life is to be a trial. In order for the trial to be genuine, He had to allow humans to have freedom, which they do have despite His omnipotence and omniscience.

To help us understand how all this could be simultaneously possible, He enables some of us to have dreams of the future, which materialize exactly as seen in the dreams, despite the fact that what actually happens becomes a reality only through the interaction of many people who did things on their own volition.

[This is Dr. Khalid Zaheer's response to a blog comment.]

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