Re: Miracles & Magic
Dear brother psyah, no doubt the being who has created this vast universe and sent a book like the quran is highly capable of doing things. His power and abilities are not in question but his purpose is.
What mostly people do is imagine God as a being like silly senseless attention seeking kids. Likewise they think God is like a bad mother who makes her kids lazy and crazy so that each time they need something they do not bother doing it themselves instead they run to their mother to do it for them. That is where they trap themselves.
Allah as I understand the quran is a very different being. To try to understand this being we need to stand back and imagine things in a different way.
We are told in the quran that Allah is alpha and omega ie ever living and self sustaining intelligent being. The question is what do living and lively intelligent beings do? They have urge to express themselves. How do they express themselves? Through doing something to show they are alive and intelligent.
In case of Allah the acts of his creation and revelation give clues to his being lively and intelligent. It is fine that Allah expresses himself but what use is that expression which goes unappreciated? Had Allah not created anything it would not have mattered he existed or not and had Allah not created something to appreciate him again it would not have mattered whether Allah existed or not.
It is precisely because Allah was lively and intelligent he had the urge to express himself and it was necessary that he created something in such a way that it showed he was intelligent so that his intelligence is appreciated.
Had Allah created a fully programmed robot like creature then that creature could not truly appreciate him. Also had Allah created a creature that was not intelligent enough to make sense of things all by himself it would again not be able to appreciate Allah’s existence and his works. This is why a creature was necessary that was nether fully programmed not totally unable to learn. This creature is human being. A human being is a self programming robot with independent mind and ability to learn. However to learn man needed stimulation ie something to tickle his intelligence into action. So man is not just given brain but senses to go with it as well. Not only that but a precise body mechanism to go with his brain and senses.
So man is born knowing nothing and begins to learn by looking at other things which Allah has created fully programmed and almost fully programmed eg non-living things and living things other than man. As a baby looks at things his brain gets signals and starts processing information it receive through senses. As time passes the collection of experiences increases. Man becomes self aware and aware of universal realities as much as he makes efforts to make sense of them. Once a man becomes highly learned he starts questioning things as to their origin, purpose and how things fulfil their purposes. This is the stage whereat man starts looking for answers for his questions because he realises he cannot go beyond that stage all by himself. This is when revelation of Allah plays its part to guide man a little. If we read the quran, it is therefore full of verses telling man to observe things in the universe and see if it makes sense exactly as explained by Allah in his revelation. Not only that but also that by observing universal realities man ought to copy them and then become skilled in doing things himself. What is the point in this exercise? So that by becoming a creative being man could appreciate intelligence and creativity of Allah. Thus man meets the purpose of his creation by his creator.
The idea of Allah being all powerful and he can do this and that is all mullahs’ nonsense. Why? Because no matter what kind of being you are you only do things purposefully not haphazardly like a kid plays with his toys. Before Allah created things he had to decide and precisely program things for functioning in such a way that they fulfilled his purpose of creating things.
So Allah had to control and direct his power of creativity. You do not get a building build by throwing about bricks randomly all over the place. There has to be a decision what you want to do and plan for it and make sure the plan has no mistakes. After all creation of universe is a huge project even for God because that is the best he could come up with. God is unlimited in existence but not in every sense because whatever he does he limited himself to that project by his own choice. All other possibilities no longer remain there as God himself makes choices about things. For example Allah chose to create this world so now he lost the choice of not to create this world because he has already created it. Although God is beyond time in his existence but he is bound by events he himself causes one after the other. This is why his sifaate afaaliya= capabilities for doing things are permanent but his afaal=actions are haadas=non-permanent. When it comes to defining time, it is define as per context of definition eg we have time definition for daily time eg 24 hours a day. The time as defined due to big-bang which only moves forward from the time it went bang. Likewise there was time before the creation of the world which is God’s own time in which he acts. In short there is no single fit all definition of time.
All this should show that God of religion is not God of the quran, the quranic God is defined by quran itself. God of religions is God of philosophers and God of quran is God as per his own revelations or revealed scriptures. There is a god as imagine by people and there is a god explained by his own revealed scriptures.
Coming to man and his world and divine guidance, the purpose of divine revelation is to act as stimulus for mankind so that man keeps going in the right direction because if mankind go off the track then purpose of Allah could never come to fruition. So man is given guidance but if he fails to follow it then there is correction mechanism in operation. The set-up systems and laws ensure that man works within given range of spectrum or if you like freedom.
The questions you have raised need a lot of explaining which I can only offer on basis of as and when I have the time. Even this much explanation will tell you how different is my understanding of the quran from your understanding of it. This is why the quran tells us man is best creation of Allah because he has given man the most powerful, brain, senses and body to go with it so that man is fit for fulfilling his purpose or his set goals for man. If man was not given the senses he is given or not the body he is given then could not have the ability to do things he was created to do.
Meanswhile regards and all the best.