Posts

Featured Post

The Natural Laws Manifest Divine Programming

By Sajid Mahmood Ansari
Image
In the Name of Allah---the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. The Natural Laws Manifest Divine Programming Introduction Modern science is built upon one of the most remarkable assumptions about reality: the universe is intelligible because it operates according to consistent laws . Gravity behaves according to recognizable mathematical relationships; electromagnetic phenomena follow precise rules; matter interacts according to reproducible physical and chemical principles; biological organisms function through extraordinarily complex systems; and celestial bodies move according to predictable patterns. Science does not create these laws. It discovers, describes, and mathematically formulates the regularities already present in nature. This raises a deeper philosophical question: Why does the universe possess laws at all? Why is nature orderly, measurable, mathematically intelligible, and sufficiently stable for rational beings to discover its structure? From the Islamic perspective, t...
Read more

The Dynamic Cosmos and Moral Purpose: Unpacking Ibn Taymiyyah’s Causal Realism and Moral Rationalism

By Sajid Mahmood Ansari
Image
In the Name of Allah---the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. The Dynamic Cosmos and Moral Purpose: Unpacking Ibn Taymiyyah’s Causal Realism and Moral Rationalism The intellectual history of classical Islam is often framed around the dramatic clash between the Hellenistic philosophers ( Falasifa )—such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and al-Farabi—and the speculative theologians ( Mutakallimun ) of the Ash'arite and Mu'tazilite schools. While the Falasifa posited a cosmos governed by deterministic, necessary natural laws that constrained divine intervention, late Ash'arite theologians, exemplified by Imam al-Ghazali, responded by adopting radical occasionalism . In their effort to protect divine omnipotence ( Qudrah ), the Ash'arites stripped created things of all inherent efficacy, asserting that God directly creates every atom, motion, and event out of nothing in each micro-moment. In the 14th century, the Syrian polymath Imam Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728 AH / 1328 CE) mounted a p...
Read more

Categories of Topics

Show more