Opposing Views On Al-Ghazali's Incoherence

For Schleiermacher, in particular, and, additionally, the Islamic mystic Al-Ghazali, true religion was completely experiential and it should therefore be felt rather than thought. He believed that logic destroys religious experience because religious experience is a matter of intuitive knowledge, not processed knowledge. Intuition is belief, where as logic creates doubts. In many spiritual systems (religious or independent of religion) the human instinct is held in high regard. It was for this reason that Iqbal, the late Islamic philosopher of the modern era, disagreed with Al-Ghazali.

Categories are used to place people or objects together based on characteristics; using this system brings comfort because of people’s need for normalcy and consistency. When someone refuses to be categorized they are perceived as an outcast, a rebel, and a renegade. “Broken Ghazal in the Voice of My Brother Jacob” by Aaron Samuels and “Everybody” written by Logic share a very evident connection of being biracial; however, what might not be so blatant is how one should not let categories act as restraints. Each piece seeks to convey individuality and put to an end of stereotyping.

Therefore, this something must have caused. It would however be insufficient to just give an explanation which contradicts itself because it then becomes falsifiable. God has been the result of many of these inquiries however the reasoning to this answer follows many various roots. One occurring principle

Clarify what is causing what by discussing if the effect would have occurred without the cause and if something else

Have you ever wondered about the world beyond its original state? How we know that electricity produces a light bulb to light up or causes the sort of energy necessary to produce heat? But in the first place, what is electricity? Nor have we seen it and not we encountered it; however, we know what it can do, hence its effects. To help us better understand the notion of cause and effect, David Hume, an empiricist and skepticist philosopher, proposed the that there is no such thing as causation. In his theory, he explained the deliberate relationship between the cause and effect, and how the two factors are not interrelated. Think of it this way: sometimes we end up failing to light a match even though it was struck. The previous day, it lit up, but today it did not. Why? Hume’s theory regarding causation helps us comprehend matters of cause and effect, and how we encounter the effects in our daily lives, without the cause being necessary. According to Hume, since we never experience the cause of something, we cannot use inductive reasoning to conclude that one event causes another. In other words, causal necessity (the cause and effect being related in some way or another) seems to be subjective, as if it solely exists in our minds and not in the object itself.

As discussed in class, modern scientific research provides alternatives to Aquinas’s presumed necessities. An infinite series of causes no longer seems impossible. This research disproves Aquinas 's third premise (P3), and his argument for God as the first cause is consequently unnecessary. Furthermore, the fourth premise still has a logical gap between the first cause and God. Aquinas offers no explanation as to why the first cause must be God or a supernatural being at all. The first cause may just as easily be a spontaneous event, or a first cause may not exist at all in an infinite universal cycle.

Every action cannot be a cause and effect if there is a choice to change from one belief to another.

However, we do use the term ‘causal relationship’ or cause and effect relationship’, where the cause has to precede the effect and the relationship cannot be explained by any other factors that are being considered.

In the critique of pure reason, Kant states, “All alternations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect.”1 This statement is interpreted in two different ways: weak readings and strong readings. The weak readings basically suggest that Kant's statement only refer to “All events have a cause”; however, the strong readings suggest that “the Second Analogy is committed not just to causes, but to causal laws as well.”2 To understand the difference between the readings, it is helpful to notice Kant's distinction between empirical laws of nature and universal transcendental principles. Empirical laws have an empirical element that universal transcendental principles cannot imply. On the other hand, empirical experiences require necessity to become a law, accordingly, “the transcendental laws “ground” the empirical laws by supplying them with their necessity.”3In this paper, according to this distinction, I first, argue that the second analogy supports the weak reading, second, show how in Prolegomena he uses the concept of causation in a way that is compatible to the strong reading, and third, investigate whether this incongruity is solvable.

Although it appears irrational to deny the first premise, some scholars have challenged the causal principle on philosophical grounds. Deriving arguments from David Hume, philosophers (such as J.L. Mackie) have sought to refute the first premise by contending there is no reason to believe the causal principle is a priori true. Contrary to their assertion, the principle of causation appears to be a synthetic a priori proposition, as it is a universal and necessary feature of both cognition and reality, providing the precondition of thought itself. Nonetheless, challenging the causal principle because it is not a priori true does nothing to invalidate the premise since the assertion does not indicate the premise is false, nor does it compel us to think the antithesis is plausible—that something can truly originate from uncaused. Undeterred, such opponents further maintain that an infinite chain of contingent events could provide a sufficient explanation for the existence of the universe, even if it were void a

The opinion that God solely causes everything is known as occasionalism. Occasionalism is a version of Cartesian metaphysics, that thrived in the last half of the 17th century, based on the belief that all communication between mind and body is arbitrated by God. Occasionalism suggests that mind and body do not interact directly, however, the impression of direct communication is sustained by God, who drives the body on the mind’s urging and who places suggestions in the mind when the body meets other material provocations (Swinburne,

The Holy Qur’an accuses the Jews of altering the scriptures of God. Far from being Islamic “anti-Semitism” this fact is recorded history. John H. Hayes, a professor of the Old Testament at Candler School of Theology in his book An Introduction to Old Testament Study observes “Rabbinical references provide evidence that the pre-Masoretic scribes not only guarded and preserved the text but at times went so far as to alter the text itself”. This is very important to consider because the purpose of changing these texts were to make it more theologically acceptable by changing expressions that lacked proper reference. The Jewish scribes called these changes tiqqune spherism or “emendations of the scribes. They were made to conceal the true reality

Causality as relates to Free Will, Determinism, and Interdeterminism. Suggest that we don’t always have an explanation for a cause. There can be multiple factors

Within Sufism, Al-Ghazali defined the difference between Ilham (inspiration) and Ta’allum (reasoning or learning). He believes that inspiration and revelation in union with religion hold a superior position than reasoning that originates from philosophy. Rational knowledge, according to Al-Ghazali, is always relative to the senses. The knowledge of the senses, however, cannot be trusted as valid. True knowledge, known as the Truth, only comes through inspiration and revelation (McCarthy 378). Al-Ghazali introduces the aspect of God, or Allah, in the acquisition of perfect knowledge. “Inspiration can bring one closer to Allah than philosophical learning alone” (Inglis). Ultimately, this idea of Ilham brings with it the Supreme Reality which is equivalent to Truth (McCarthy 378). In practical terms, Al-Ghazali believes that the necessary Truths of the intellect begin from “a light which God most high cast into my breast. That light is the key to the greater part of knowledge” (Al-Ghazali 25). An individual can only experience this light of God if he or she has reached the “state.”

Ibn Abī Jumhūr in the Kitāb Mujlī mirʾāt al-munjī departs from the aforementioned standard view offered by Ṭūsī and Ḥillī to reconcile the philosophical doctrine of necessitation with that of the theologians. Kitāb al-Mujlī is written toward the end of the fifteenth century and discusses a wide range of philosophical, theological and Sufi themes with the intention of bringing together the views which until then were considered incompatible. This work is a three-layered commentarial text. The author first wrote the Kitāb Masālik al-afhām fī ʿilm al-Kalām, then commented upon it under the title of the Kitāb al-Nūr al-munjī min al-ẓalām, and eventually wrote an extensive commentary on the later under the title of Kitāb Mujlī mirʾāt al-munjī.