Although Belief can be attained through a formulation of inferential processes, partly as described already, in the rest of this section, we will take another deductive step into understanding what Belief truly is and be strictly deductive to follow only what is a direct consequence of us being in reality as we are, substituting the notion of existence or existing things as dependently from God with only the self evident affirmation of our own reasoning and consciousness as part of existence and Being, evaluating if it necessitates acceptance or rejection of God through meta-analysis of Ego, Reason, and what is available for us to make sound judgement. Part of this has already been done in Part 1 as we discussed how metaphysics necessarily implicates that for Being to have originated, something must be beyond the constraints of Being, without which, one might think of it as existence being trapped in time and nonexistence due to its own inability to Be independently by itself. Regardless, moving forward, we will return to our beginnings again and only in a posteriori fashion analyze reason and move towards a strictly deductive conclusion thereby again, but in a slightly different approach that seeks to harmonize the abstract conclusions of metaphysics with our physical reality. The bridge between these two understandings – Belief and Disbelief – is what we might consider to be the explicit physical signifier, or overt metaphysical proof affirming through Reason that God, who is the Creator of Being, exists. Reason is one half, and the other half, as we will find, is Islam and the Quran. However, we will not simply assume things, but as mentioned, return to analyzing the necessity of an explicit signifier to confirm what can inherently be grasped through metaphysical understanding. To illustrate our foundation further, let us ask questions on the metaphysical nature of consciousness and God.
If we were not conscious, would God exist? This question is based on the false premise that consciousness is a determinant of the existence or nonexistence of God. Consciousness entails the assessment of God’s existence. Being unconscious eliminates both propositions of acceptance and rejection from an individual perspective.
How does consciousness relate to the actual existence of God then? This question is posed from the assumed premise that consciousness is related to the actual existence or nonexistence of God at all, and cannot be soundly answered from reason since the answer could only be from conjecture when already given one of the two realities as it ties to the conclusion. The premise of being in relation to God’s existence disqualifies the entry of any strictly deductible answer. The answers would otherwise be that consciousness is necessarily dependent on God or that consciousness is independent of God. Neither proposition is a deductible standalone statement.
Finally then, how can we know if God exists or does not exist? Reason is the only individual faculty a consciousness has to determine Truth. Therefore, we must use reason.
We question ourselves, what is possible to firmly, certainly, and deductively conclude about God given the nature of consciousness and reason existing in reality and in relation to what is a part of reality?
This firmly roots the foundation of our reasoning in reality, and forms a methodology distinct from assessing God through conjectured premises reliant on God already existing or not existing a priori. In this way, this is not only the purely naturalistic approach to understanding God, but the explicit approach to understanding God. With what relates consciousness to reality and reality to God, we will reject everything that is not from reason to see what by necessity remains by deduction.
This model assumes that reason and inference entails the traditional structure of induction, abduction, and deduction. While we can observe reality through the lens of reason and thereby contextualize the act of understanding within this framework, there may yet be broader concepts to fill in the gaps of what the whole picture to our experience is outside of these parsed contextualizations, for example, within the very nature of subjective experience from which the meaning and nature of reason can be ambiguously congruous in the singular driving force that is reason as a whole. The Reason of Man in a broader understanding such as this sufficiently keeps room to draw reference to the guidance from God factoring into human experience and acceptance of faith, and other such understandings that complete the whole picture, and which mark distinctions between why individuals may initially think about this in different ways. But, more towards the human experience in capturing a broad foundation from our perspectives, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf aptly describes reality and the entire natural world, for Muslims and as is considered throughout this document, as being a “divine theater” from which we as the audience observe the nature of God in the theophany born from life imbued with reason, consciousness, and the potential for reflection upon the world1. The natural world that has Reason within itself is God’s presentation of Himself to us that we may learn about Him in contrast to other metaphysical models such as Christianity which utilizes Immanence and the manifestation of God through direct material form (which binds God to the hierarchy of Being).
The Islamic model and the Quran call upon the listener to reflect on all the world in a harmonious natural and transcendental sense, as an evident presentation from which we remember God as being entirely separate from our understanding of Being rather than the direct hypostatic union of the material and divine as found in Christianity or other, often polytheistic, belief systems in which gods are manifest within their cosmology. In contrast to having direct manifestations of God, Muslims reflect on the Quran and utilize the very act of remembering God in prayer or dhikr. This is the Muslims’ way of appreciating God truly, beyond reflecting and contemplating upon the world.
But for us, as we walk through the differences between abstract Belief and Disbelief – we must fill in the gaps of subjective experience, even subjective variations in the reasoning process, with something explicit.
Nature and all existence as we know it is distinct from God in Islam, as God never appears in the form of created existence and is entirely unique and one. This is Tawhid in Islam, that God is entirely Transcendent, although we know that through the clear evidence of cause and majesty that pervades the world in what He has created, He is clearly known in all aspects of life, nature, and existence by being Transcendent to, and encompassing of, everything. This is what was discussed in the previous section, with reason and the understanding of the hierarchy of existence making God apparent in all things simply by reason being as it is with the recognition of existence’s and Being’s conditional nature. This was how God is not bounded by or within construction or Being, as we uncovered how any material construction will necessarily be in an organizational hierarchy whereby perhaps only the contradictory nonexistence of time could isolate an ultimately singularly physical law or construct as independent.
God’s names include both Az-Zahir (The Manifest, The Evident) and Al-Batin (The Hidden). The calls to reflect upon the world in what may appear to be a call to induction in observation of natural phenomena and its significations in abductive processes to verify God is also actually a broader call to deductive inference in realizing that one finds himself in the divine theater which requires, at once, all faculties of reason integrated into a single instinctual drive to transcendent understanding. This is what we ought to consider the true way to approach belief, a cohesive unison of reason and morality, with the championed sense of objective reality guarding the sacred subjective experience we go through in our observation of the world, as the element of sincerity is also made to be a recognized and essential component to reason in the uncompromising, impartial yet compassionate discernment of truth and what ultimately is reality.
But looking towards explicit physical signifiers like the Quran, and to simplify our methodology in terms tethered enough to directly convey the underlying message — that is, on the nature of the Self and God’s existence — we can defer ourselves to our more specific model of reason and on the nature of deduction vs. induction, with a preference for deduction which is what we will hypothetically consider the only level of inference from which we might derive certainty and convey it (eg. we will not accept here that one must believe in Islam with any leap of faith, but only through certainty from reason). This model is entirely to render the subjective or transcendent experience on one level plane for the sake of rigor and the demonstration of what, to the absolute, one can or cannot affirm or deny about reality.
Still, by tracing reason to these modes and meta-analyzing their properties in the prioritization of deduction, we see throughout the next section, actually, the necessary drive towards a necessary transcendence and acceptance of the Quran as we come to understand how reason, as might be understood to be the meta-guide of the very paradigms induction, abduction, and deduction itself, leads in the ultimate transcendental sense to either belief or disbelief in what must be congruent to our subjective nature if properly, sincerely followed. As is described in Part 3 and the section The Truth. The Quran. Islam., God’s transcendence further presents itself to the reader or listener if he himself is willing to be sincere with the Quran, as it creates a strong foundation to capture the sincerity of the potential believer in what ultimately converges into the larger transcendental drive. Ultimately, the meta-analysis and deductive process outlined should hopefully play a key part to stirring ourselves to sincere reflection and acceptance of Islam. All technical explanations and disclaimers aside, deduction, for the purposes of clear demonstration, will be the clear mainstay of Part 3.
As such, one should firmly note that we immediately start this section with the statement “Atheism has no ontological or metaphysical soundness….” We cannot deductively assert Atheism. This statement is sound due to the metaphysical impossibility of proving the nonexistence of God, which is the main assertion and definition of Atheism. Atheism is not a valid contention on the premise of there being inference from observation enough to negate the existence of God since the nature of this argument is metaphysical in reference to God and necessarily requires metaphysical inferences and proof outside of what would otherwise be an invalid and circular naturalistic framework of assessment (see the sections Disbelievers Reason Against Proof, A Glance at Our World, Pearls to Reflect Upon, and Denial, Questions, and Elucidation). Moreover, supposed claims on God as a reality being impossible based upon presumed limitations to the nature of God is a fallacious act of circular reasoning embedded in one’s own imagined premises (see Disbelievers Reason Against Proof and Denial, Questions, and Elucidation). We discussed in Part 1 how God is without contingency, but to reiterate the point, it is not valid reason in pointing to a lack of apparent supernatural influence from God in the world to form a substantial inference suggesting that God is nonexistent, because metaphysically, one can also simply understand that everything in the world is actively from God, making everything equally a proof for God’s existence.
Pure inductive inference from pointing to the world is subject to personal bias already forming the conclusion, although it is inherently not equal between Belief and Disbelief (The Truth. The Quran. Islam), similar to how Organization and Disorganization are not direct opposites with how a layer of Organized causative effect still underscores and is encompassing of Disorganization (Part 1). More to the direct subject at hand, one quite literally cannot deductively arrive at the conclusion “God does not exist” from observing or experimenting with the world because it is never an actual suggestion from the natural world, but a claim from oneself first negating God and then arguing from interpretation of observation. This is why everything can equally be said to be proof of God, although this interpretation inherently carries some more weight with it from there simply being a coexisting accrediting source outside of the argument (ie. the Quran) and the already intrinsically stronger inductive inferences (eg. structure/function nature of reality, uncaused cause in hierarchies of existence, foundations of morality, etc), which is valid to accept due to the nature of God and metaphysical proof together with the metaphysical reality of reason simply existing — all of which will be encompassed by our evaluation.
Stepping back, why the discussion does not simply end at Atheism being invalid is because there is contention on what then constitutes proof of God separate from the metaphysical invalidity of Atheism — in other words — what is the independent proof for belief or proof for the metaphysical necessity or reality of God? Following this, what Belief or religion would that be? What is the evidence by an explicit physical signifier doing away with any subjective contention while forming a sound methodology of actualization? For the most robust evaluations, all these questions should be asked and assessed at the same time. A pure ontological proof does not point us in the direction of any single belief or religion in such a way that explicit methodological soundness of belief in God or the Divine might be attained. This is because it is an inward, egocentric process, more logically valid than the naturalistically circular process of disbelief, and in fact, only from pure logic, but an egocentric process which for some may require a greater physical component to complete nonetheless.
Returning to our primary reason for investigation, the lack of a clear linear proof in either direction of Disbelief or a single clear Belief seemingly sets both propositions back as unprovable, in a standstill where Ego may be the deciding factor and both options seem to draw upon inductive reasoning subject to criticism. This will be meta-analyzed. Given our subject of assessment, I acknowledge that someone who chooses so can persistently deny this deductive meta-analysis even after reading this section and everything section throughout due to the nature of maximal proof upon the disjointed nature of ego and free will when not adhering to reason and sincerity. This state of disjointment is the ultimate reality of the Scenario Y in which one might reject God in gnostic atheism, agnostic atheism, agnosticism, or any other imagined denomination of disbelief, including polytheism, its looming presence in Trinitarian Christianity, etc. The disjointed disbeliever ultimately enjoys being atheist, agnostic, etc., or finds it egocentrically empowering, and as such, they will not find it congruent within themselves to sincerely reason or reassess their worldview.
For the sincere, or one who is curious about that assessment, this section is a rigorous examination on the reality of metaphysical being in relation to conclusions on Belief and Disbelief. Part 3 in The Deductive Proof of Islam by Metaphysical Finality will simply be called The Proof of Islam. Metaphysical Finality is the singular, ultimate True nature of reality as it relates conscious being to the concurrent existence and acceptance of God or the concurrent nonexistence and rejection of God, either option being only concurrent as a necessity of the ultimate determination of sound reason being Truth. One should also understand that a position which otherwise does not accept metaphysical conclusions from deductive reason necessarily posits absurdity and the rejection of reason as a determinant of Truth, which is from the contradictory position of Ego in denial of reason. Unfortunately in such cases, reason alone cannot help to remove such misplaced contentions.
This analysis can be fully understood given the context of the other sections of this overall analysis and Islam, especially Disbelievers Reason Against Proof, as it has the bare minimum amount of references to the Quran to begin understanding the inner dimensions of Islam and the Quran as an explicit physical signifier rather than a physical signifier “just” by the commentary about the Quran in Part 3. The more of the Quran one reads, and the more true background knowledge one has about Islam from the Islamic sources, the more complete their understanding will be. But still, this section will stand alone in its own right for those familiar with the rest of this analysis as a refined proof by deduction. And to firmly reemphasize, one must individually understand with sincerity the Quran and Islam for this to be a whole proof, as the latter part of this deduction evaluates Belief through Islam. However, the proof does not require any extensive background knowledge of Islam to soundly follow how it is deduced as simply examining Reason and modes of Disbelief and Belief in comparison to Islam guides one to an acceptance of Islam. This is facilitated thereafter by understanding the compassionate inner nature of Islam through God being Himself the ultimately compassionate and merciful.
“Is the reward for good [anything] but good? So which of the favors of your Lord would you deny?” [55:60-61]
Move on to Part 3: Proof of Islam
References:
- Foundations of Islam Series by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICu3ITHnBoM&list=PL83A449092F8A3CBF
Muslim Lad 