(Source: adopted from the research paper “Ash’arite’s atomistic conception of the physical world: A restatement”, with some clarifications added.)
Modern philosophy has become the interpreter of science, it organizes the results of the natural and social sciences into a world view. This interpretation in turn determines direction which science is to take in its study of nature. It is this interpretation of the statements and general conclusions of science, and the direction of science along these lines suggested by the interpretation, that must be subjected to critical evaluation, as they pose for us today the most profound problems that have confronted us generally in the course of our religious and intellectual history.
Science is not value-free (opinion free), instead it is value-laden, thus, it is critical to examine modern science’s premises, general conclusions and the interpretation based on that conclusion so that the problems faced by modern science are not being imported to the minds of Muslims.
Generally there are at least three main different views of the world throughout the history of Western Science, through which each of these views arrived at different outlook on the nature and existence of God. Those views belong to: (i) Aristotelian physics, (ii) modern philosophy and classical physics and (iii) the contemporary physics drawn from the theory of relativity and quantum theory.
It should be stated that the body of knowledge concerned with the ultimate reality of things is called Ontology, the body of knowledge concerned with the nature of the Universe is called Cosmology, and the existence of God is called Theology.
In Aristotelian physics, God still has a place in his theory of motion. He is the unmoved mover or primary and final cause that causes motion in anything. However, Aristotle’s God is like a craftsman, all motion He causes are eternal. Therefore, the world is eternal, there is no beginning and end, it had always existed and would always exist.
Next is modern philosophy which is the interpreter of science and one of the most important figures who has contributed to the modern philosophical discourse was René Descartes (d. 1650). In his Discours de la Méthode (1637), Descartes declared that he had found the “laws which God has put into nature”. God has impressed the ideas of them on the human mind in such a way, that their universal validity cannot be doubted. He also explained that God, after the creation of matter, let nature develop from chaos in accordance to these laws (he set the ball in motion, as apposed to Islam where He is a constant agent in the universe). Even if God had created several worlds the “laws of nature” would be valid in all of them.
As for classical physics, it can be seen from the works of Isaac Newton (d.1727) especially on the laws of gravitation and motion in which he believed that the discovery by extracting phenomena and reformulating it into the mathematical structure is the way of knowing the creation of cosmos by God. These laws which are immutable and became the laws of nature before the advent of quantum mechanics. For Newton, the world of matter was a world possessing mathematical characteristics fundamentally. It was composed ultimately of absolutely hard, indestructible particles, equipped with the same characteristics which had now become familiar under the category of primary qualities. He also asserts that all changes in nature are to regarded as separations, associations and motions of these permanent atoms
The last one is contemporary physics that was influenced by the birth of quantum theory and the theory of relativity. Quantum theory considers the nature of the subatomic particles. There are many interpretations when it comes to the nature of the subatomic world in quantum theory and the most well- accepted interpretation among the physicist is the Copenhagen interpretation. The thing to be most concerned about in Quantum Theory is the question regarding the nature of reality which can be understood in the following statements; 1) “there is no reality”, 2) “that the physicist “creates” the reality”, 3) “that there are many realities”, 4) “that the reality is spiritual” and so forth. Briefly, the Copenhagen interpretation is bound to the view that there is no reality behind quantum phenomena, meaning the observations and data. All that is required according to this view is (i) a set of mathematical formulae and (ii) a set of experimental data obtained in the laboratory.
On the question of the nature of reality, the Copenhagen interpretation neglects the understanding of the nature of reality, it limits what is possible to what is conceived and verified in a Laboratory, which is a fine safety net scientifically but not when results are expressed in the real world where “value” and philosophy is added to them, then this restrictions set upon the value of these results is forgotten.
The external world is real and independent of what the mind can conceive in a laboratory. In fact, existence itself has many levels which (from what we have understood) can be explained by relativity of objects in the subatomic world and this physical world is one of the many levels of existence (we don’t mean dimensions) and this world has a connection with the higher order of existence.
(For example Light has higher and lower spectrums which we don’t see, Angels are created from Light which is an electromagnetic wave and they are larger in size than Humans so they are not quantum themselves even though they are made of quantum matter in that state, meaning like the molecules and compounds our bodies are made of, they move at the speed of light or slower or faster, the Theory of Relativity, Time Dilation and Quantum Theory explains much about them. We should add that the Islamic understanding of there nature is far more complex and detailed than other religious traditions, regarding which, academically the historicity of these texts can not be established and is in question).
On the question of the importance to hold this atomistic conception of the physical world, we quote the saying of Sa’d al-Din al-Taftazani (d. 1390) (On Islamic scholars studying the quantum universe):
If the question is raised whether there is any benefit resulting from this position
As we have seen, the Aristotelian system has brought us into the idea of the eternity of the world. Islamicly this is a rejected idea because this physical world originated from nothing into something. We have to also disagree with the view that this world is originated but it has it’s own (independent) laws, namely the laws of nature. This is the view of Descartes and Newton that has no room for miracles or extra phenomenal events that happen and everything can be determined by mathematical formulation, some things Allah brings into creation by his command of “Be” and the thing is. Newton has three famous Laws of motion, while accurate these are laws of observation and cant be absolute to all possible situations, his third Law is “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” this cant be necessarily true for everything but is a good “rule of thumb”.
To Descartes and Newton, God is like a watchmaker, His role is confined only to the creation of the universe and then the universe operates according to their own laws like a vast machine. This limits the nature of causality where if we follow the principle of the laws of nature, the connection between cause and effect must be necessary. Islam does not totally reject this principle but has a much broader and comprehensive understanding of causality stated by Imam al-Ghazali when he refuted Ibn Sina on his views regarding the eternity of the world in his treatise Tahafut al- falasifa [The Incoherence of the Philosophers].
He rejected this view while considering the existence of miracles, unexplained events happened in this physical world such as the fire not burning Ibrahim (saws). For instance, if we place cotton near fire, we cannot say that the fire will always cause the cotton to catch fire, for we allow the possibility of the occurrence of contact without burning, and we allow as possible the occurrence of the cotton’s transformation into burnt ashes without contact with the fire. Because of the existence of a possible situation in which fire does not burn when it is supposed to burn, this occurred to Ibrahim (as) when he was thrown into the fire by Nimrod and similarly to his son when the knife would not cut him, Allah did not simply command Ibrahim to stop, Allah stopped the knife from cutting while it was at his throat.
In reality God ultimately creates the ability for fire to burn and for the cotton to be burnt and for the knife to cut and for the thing to be cut. The connection between what is habitually believed to be a cause and what is habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary.
For [in the case of] everything that will happen, its occurrence (like being burnt) is a necessary consequence of its cause (the fire), once the cause is realized. We do not know what will happen in the future only because we do not know all the causes [of the future effects], will Allah always allow the knife to cut. If we were to know all the causes, we would know all the effects. For once we know, for example, that fire has made contact with cotton at a specific time, we would know the burning of the cotton. And once we know that an individual will eat, we would know that he will be satiated but between certainties there is possibility and doubt of the outcome.
In other words, God creates everything in separate existence and He is the one who makes a relation between the one thing and the other. It only seems like their connection is always necessary, like the fire must burn the cotton, because of the limitation of our senses. This is God’s customary way of acting, what we call the sunnat of Allah, that the fire will burn. Thus, Islamicly there is no problem whether the phenomenal events in this world are determinism or indeterminism because we affirm both.
It is important to speak of the view that the world is eternal because this conception is still flowing in the veins of modern cosmology. Even though the form may differ but the premises and conclusion is still the same. For example, the theory of the formation of the universe—big bounce theory which is the combination of the big bang and big crunch theories ultimately creates the endless cycle of universe formation in which the universe expands from the point of singularity until it collapses and this process is repeated infinitely. Instead of the universe being originated and eventually annihilated, the theory views that the universe is the same as the laws of conservation of energy i.e. it cannot be created nor destroyed but it only changes to another new cycle of the universe. This notion is rejected in Islam because once it is destroyed all that will be left is Allah and we will revert to the same manner we where in, in our non existence until Allah brings about a new creation from the same nothing that existed before this universe. Energy can go back into nothing, because the term energy is a generalization, there are different forms of energy in the universe and all can be reduced into there constituent parts the reality is energy comes from motion (expansion of the universe) without it, it cant exist.
Islam also rejects the idea of an infinite universe, infinitely divisible particles cannot exist because ultimately this will compel us to conclude that God has no role in this world. The idea of the infinite is inadmissible for God because he has determined everything according to His measure, thus everything is finite and has limits.