Our Creed
Allah including personal or communal experiences, the
perfection of the universe’s design, and a cosmological
argument. Each one is a well-trodden path toward
recognizing the Creator.
In this current article, we focus on a cosmological
argument only, and in doing so, come to know
fundamental aspects of the universe and a logical path to
the ma`rifa of the Creator. A cosmological argument is a
strong intellectual argument for the existence of a Creator.
Its structure includes two premises and a conclusion:
P1: The universe is contingent.
P2: Every contingent must have a cause.
C: The universe has a Cause. That Cause is Allah.
The Universe is Contingent
In the broadest of terms, there are two types of existents,
the originated (haadith) and the pre-eternal (qadim). The
originated are the things that are preceded by nonexistence.
In other words, originated things were first nonexistent
and then became existent. The universe, and all it
entails, is originated. As we will learn, all originated things
are dependent on something for their existence.
Contrastingly, pre-eternal refers to a thing that must always
exist, i.e., its nonexistence is inconceivable. The cause of
the universe must be pre-eternal. Unlike originated things,
pre-eternal things cannot be dependent on another for
their existence. This division of originated and pre-eternal
is essential and illustrates the fundamental difference
between the creation and its Creator. With this difference
between originated and pre-eternal existents understood,
we must further understand all originated things as
contingent, or in other words, possible (as opposed to
necessary). The contingency of a thing can be proved in
many ways, but let’s take one, proof by infinite regression.
Imagine you walk into a room and find a lone individual
saying, “… three, two, one, zero. I just finished counting
down from infinity!” You would know instinctively that this
is impossible because the individual would have had to
count an infinite number of numbers to reach zero. Had
this been the case, he would not have reached zero. Only
a fixed starting point would have allowed him to end up
at zero. Likewise, the universe exists as a series of events.
Each event preceded by one and then another and then
another, and so on. The fact that we exist in our current
time means that a finite number of events took place before
us. Had an infinite series of events taken place, we would
not have reached our current point in time (`Ilm al-Kalam:
p. 46). This is called an infinite regression - a theoretical
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