(A helpful analogy and description of belief and disbelief in the Self)
On the nature of doubt, it is actually critical to understand that without doubt, we would not have this harmony we find in Islam. The continous reminder that the Quran and Islam become serve as that which continuously clears doubt and further increases our inward and conscious understanding that it is the truth, while doubt moves to the subconscious but healthily remains.
Let us perhaps answer how would anyone deny in the first place? Or how might disbelief propagate in contrast to belief? How does disbelief aid in understanding belief?
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And even Prophet Ibrahim (as), the Khaleel (Intimate Friend) of God [4:125], needed to ask:
“And [mention] when Abraham said, ‘My Lord, show me how You give life to the dead.’ [Allah] said, ‘Have you not believed?’ He said, ‘Yes, but [I ask] only that my heart may be satisfied.’ [Allah] said, ‘Take four birds and commit them to yourself. Then [after slaughtering them] put on each hill a portion of them; then call them – they will come [flying] to you in haste. And know that Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise’” [2:260].
And in the hadith, Abu Huraira (ra) narrated that the Prophet (pbuh) said, “We are more liable to be in doubt than Abraham when he said, ‘My Lord, show me how You give life to the dead….”
(https://sunnah.com/bukhari/60/51)
There is an aspect of doubt inherent within us by necessity of pure reason (see the section The Interaction between Belief and Disbelief). And the believers are those that rely on reason, and the example of the believer is to be one who questions oneself. But it is not to question under false presumptions ceaselessly.
Within the Quran, Allah (swt) tells the Prophet (pbuh), “So remind [O Muhammad], for you are not, by the favor of your Lord, a soothsayer or a madman” [52:29]. The Quran repeatedly addresses this soundness of reason and the soundness of the Truth that is the Quran.
A believer believes as the phases of the moon (hadith)
Jinn and others have led much of mankind astray.
We were not created except to worship Allah.
Az zumar, Allah does not need our worship.
Those consumed with Ego are the ones who emphatically deny and who say “how far, how far is that which you are promised.”
Belief becomes healthily self sustaining since disbelief has no credibility in reality [6:81]
6:105
“If you disbelieve – indeed, Allah is Free from need of you. And He does not approve for His servants disbelief. And if you are grateful, He approves it for you; and no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another. Then to your Lord is your return, and He will inform you about what you used to do. Indeed, He is Knowing of that within the breasts” [39:7]
And so, I will provide an extensive biological analogy as a mirror to the workings of our consciousnesses.
Your own Ego is like an enzyme that is an intrinsic and natural competitive inhibitor to the also intrinsic and natural belief in God, Submission. Their site of action is the same, your consciousness and free will, and while the ego changes the site to release critical thinking behaviors and questioning, the belief in God releases an acceptance of the world in a pure monotheistic reasoning. Or we can think of belief and disbelief as neurotransmitters, like glutamate which stimulates belief or GABA which inhibits it.
These competitive substrates both exist in the body but fluctuate. As God says, the believer is like the full moon, where his belief is sometimes at nothing but then it shines. Even Prophet Ibrahim (as) had questioned the existence of God with the example of the birds. And Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said we have more right to question than him. So this critical thinking pathway is a natural thing we are instilled with. And the ability to believe in God is a natural thing we are instilled with. Islam is the natural harmony between the two, and it understands and implements this into the life of a believer in a uniquely perfect way. Think of salah, dhikr, hajj, jumuah, following the Sunnah, and various other acts as natural enzymatic inducers of the belief substrate. Meanwhile, the world is the natural inducer of the critical reasoning substrate, which importantly, does not by itself conflict and have the opposite effects of the Submission substrate. Both are necessary for Islam, as the Quran repeatedly calls upon us to reflect upon the world and ourselves to induce the critical thinking capacity, which itself leads to the production of the belief quality and vice versa in a sound cycle of reasoning and the preponderance of credibility.
However, these days, disbelievers are all too consumed by the world and they are deficient in the proper release and experiencing of true belief and what it implies (a true answer to our lives), and have thereby disproportionately produced the critical and now overly questioning reasoning, polluted by an abundance of ego and misleading notions to distract from Submission and feed into the Ego.
We are meant to live in this world with our ego and submission cycling through and through until we reach a healthy steady state of having a minority ego to support the healthy preponderance of a majority submission and belief in God, as this is the clear model of reality.
This is at once both the Islamic and naturalistic explanation for why we question in the way that we do with regards to belief.
Regarding this analogy, keep in mind that the reasoning of something like an example, an analogy, or abstract does not necessarily mean it is true, because a logical internal reasoning does not make it an absolute truth. That is the mistake of the disbelievers who are trapped by the internal logic of ego and assumptions. That is the example of false rhetoric, which is as the shaytan uses to propagate lies as in his example, I am better than Adam because I am made from Fire and him of Clay. Using logic that seems correct does not substantiate it being reality or actually correct, and oftentimes this logic is self serving and recognizably driven by ego as is the case with the shaytan. Rather, as when Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) observed an eclipse at the time of his baby’s death, realize that just because something can fall into a sensible reasoning and Allah made the moon eclipse the sun for the death of his son, that does not make it true, and like our Prophet (pbuh) we reject the usage of half truths or reasoning to accredit something false. This is another indicator and helpful reference for us to see past the limited and assumed framework of exclusive naturalism. And this analogy was drawn as only a helpful mirror to one what might experience in giving thought to the interaction and functions of the ability to disbelieve and believe through free will.
Disbelief is our mechanism against falsely adopting unsound belief. But unhinged from the evaluation of belief, one asks, what then is disbelief? We know belief is reason (see True Finality), and thereby we can draw from reason the characteristics of belief. However, disbelief is not from reason, and therefore, we cannot from reason define its characteristics. So upon this contingency, one can upon meta-evaluation cross out reason and conjecture that disbelief is that from Ego which is in captivation of its own experiential being, such that what directly crosses into its experience is responded to by its Practical Reason, but what does not directly cross into its experience is abandoned of Pure Reason.
As a note, a great source for furthering one’s understanding about anything is fiction. We learn a great deal from fiction, and can apply the reality of what is shown through fictitious interactions and contemplating into our reality. This is an inductive adoption from understanding what applies from fiction to our reality, and so by what is explored in fiction, we gain knowledge through reflection (eg. on how people can reasonably interact). However, fiction must be understood to be fiction. The limit of why fiction mostly does not address the reality of one God is because the ontology of fiction is based on inherently false, or unreal premises. Our society gains a lot of its understanding from reflection into hypotheticals, and can without realizing it fall into the trap of overusing hypotheticals or what-ifs based upon what are actually unreal premises. An interesting consideration we might need to consciously make is that there is only one reality. One must understand that the nature of our reality is the only such configuration of actual reality. That is the conscious reality we live, and the one from which true understanding by Pure Reason definitively applies.
Islam is the bastion of Truth.
[Work in Progress]
Muslim Lad 