God!

When I was in school, most adults were people who were born and lived, at least briefly, during the period of Soviet Union. We, as young pupils, were told that Soviet’s education system was better, strict and even that poor-performing students at that time were better than bright students in Independent Uzbekistan. I don’t know whether this is true or not but I know for sure that Soviets taught what they were beneficial for them and their agenda.

One great example of this is how we were taught about our great ancestors who lived during the Islamic Golden Age. We all know that Al-Khwarezmi was great mathematician, Farabi was great philosopher and Ibn Sina was known for his contributions to medicine. That’s all. We know very little about why they were great. In addition, they didn’t teach us about other fields in which our ancestors excelled really well, beyond these their cliche, mainstream fields.

I thought Amir Temur was as our greatest ancestor because of what he accomplished. However, this year I have fell in love with Avicenna and his philosophy. Avicenna wasn’t just a medical guy; indeed, we could say that it was more of a hobby for him. He was great philosopher. Soviets knew this at that time and probably have said, “Well, it could cause trouble if we teach his philosophy, so let’s just introduce him as a medical guy”. Why might he or his works cause problems? Because he proposed a damn well argument for the existence of God (which Soviets were against).Four hours before writing this post, I haven’t understood anything about his argument (and I think I didn’t understand well his argument, yet). Still, I try to explain it easily, firstly, for myself and for you. I hope you find this useful. (It is dangerous topic since it involves God. All the correct parts are by God's grace, and the errors are mine, and for this I ask God's mercy and forgiveness for our errors and sins. Ameen)

Firstly, Avicenna says his argument as the “Proof of Truthful” and reasons from first principles. Before diving into the argument, we should clarify two terms:

- A contingent thing - anything that exists and its existence was caused by external factors. (For instance, in order human to be born, there must be a cause involving two other human beings)

- A necessary existent (vojib-ul-vujud in Arabic) - a thing that causes everything else to exist. Its essence is existence and the qualities that makes it a necessary existence are uniqueness and self-sufficiency (uncaused, eternally existing).

Avicenna begins from first principles  and says “in order for X to exist, it must be caused by Y or by Y and Z”. This idea was proposed even before him in ancient times by cosmological theories . This causes infinite regression of things, because “X was caused by Y, Y was caused by Z, Z was caused by Q and so on”.

Avicenna wondered whether there is an “A” that is uncaused but is the cause of everything. Avicenna put all existents (humans, books, animals anything you can think of, or whole universe) as “entire collection of contingents” that had existed, exists and will exist. Then, he proposed that the whole “collection of contingents” must be caused by some external cause. There are two possible options: whether it also should be “contingent existent" or some completely “different” cause. If it was contingent, then it should have been added to the collection contingent so it is not contingent. Then it must be something different.  It must be “necessary existent”.

We have agreed that there must be cause for everything that exists (past, present and future). However, there is a problem. Avicenna didn’t want to prove existence of necessary existent, he wanted to prove necessary existent which matches or associated with the God that Islam identifies. Why is this essential? Because if he says, “there is necessary existent, that’s all”, then atheists can agree with him because universe itself can be necessary existent. Avicenna was aware of this and justified the Islamic doctrine (tawheed) for existence of God.

He suggests that necessary existent must be unique and simple. He used  proof by contradiction (reductio), to prove his point.

According to proof by contradiction, there are two possible ways: there are two necessary existents and distinction between necessary existents externally. Firstly, let’s say there are A and B necessary existents (or can be understood as God) and A is all-knowing while B is all-powerful. However, according to Islamic belief about God, uniqueness and oneness are essence of God (necessary existent), then A and B must share uniqueness, if they share uniqueness, then they are not distinct but fundamentally same in their nature so which means necessary existent can’t be two but one, unique existent. This contradicts the idea of two necessary existents and proves Avicenna right. Secondly, A and B are distinct by external factor, not by features of necessary existents (unique, self-sufficient, eternal, all-knowing, etc). A is all knowing while B is powerful because B can control the weather but if B loses the ability of “controlling the weather”, he becomes powerful no more. It contradicts the idea of necessary existent because it mustn’t depend on any external source to be necessary existent but be self-sufficient. (Here, from my understanding, Avicenna is rejecting idea of ‘Gods’ in ancient Greek and Buddhism). This also proves Avicenna’s point right. From this logic, Avicenna proposed and proved his argument of “proof of the Truthful”. It was groundbreaking idea for his time and until 18th century. Medieval Christian Philosophy mostly based on this idea to form its own philosophy.

However, we are all human beings who have tons of errors and mistakes.  Avicenna was also criticized for his point from two different perspectives by significant Islamic scientists and philosophers during Islamic Golden Age. Ibn Rushd (Averroes, was considered as strong Aristotelian) criticized him for using “metaphysical method” instead of physics like Aristotle. Al-Ghazali, on the other hand, criticized him for his attributes of God, not his method of reasoning. Avicenna has stated that God has no choice but to create the universe since He is necessary existent, He must have created the universe (many people, even now, think him as kafeer for his this perspective about God, I don’t have enough knowledge to determine whether he was or not, and I don’t think it is useful too). Al-Ghazali has stated that this perspective limits God’s free will and makes contradiction about God. God has untrammeled free will and He chose to create the universe. To prove his point, he gave the specifics of the universe like the size of planets, time the universe was created, etc.

I don’t know whether Ghazali or Ibn Sina was right. The thing I wanted to know was to learn more about theory of proof of God by Avicenna. I think I have achieved my goal. It is better for ourselves if we learn more about our ancestors and the legacy that they have left for us. I was just curious and wanted to know better. I hope it was useful for you. Thanks, peace!

Seoul, Korea

22/11/2024