r/CritiqueIslam • u/4hmadhasan • 16d ago
Does a creator exist..??
Muslim here.. I've argued this on Muslim subs where the pushback is soft.. I want it where the pushback isn't.. So here's the case, in premises, with what I'm conceding stated first so nobody wastes time on it.. Attack a premise, name it by number, and I'll answer every serious one..
What I'm not arguing, so you don't have to..
I'm not arguing from scientific miracles in the Quran.. I think that genre overclaims and I don't use it.. I'm not arguing Paley.. Evolution killed the watchmaker and I'm fine with that.. I'm not claiming any of this proves Islam.. It's a case for a creator with a will.. Which creator is a second question, and I'll only touch it at the end..
I'm also conceding three things upfront coz they're true.. One, the physics of the early universe is unfinished, so any argument from a beginning is an inference from where the evidence currently points, not a proof.. Two, there is no agreed probability measure over the space of possible physical constants, so fine tuning can't be stated as a clean number.. Three, "the universe is a brute fact" is a coherent thing to say.. My claim is that it's the null, not a competitor, and I'll argue that below..
Argument one.. the beginning..
P1.. Whatever begins to exist has a cause..
P2.. The universe began to exist..
C1.. The universe has a cause..
P1 is the principle every experiment you've ever run assumes.. If you deny it you're saying things can pop into existence from nothing, with no cause, and then we need an account of why it only happens once, at the start, and never on your desk.. Quantum fluctuations don't help, they happen in a pre existing field governed by pre existing laws.. That's not nothing, that's a very specific something..
P2 is the one you'll attack, so here's the evidence as it stands.. Borde, Guth and Vilenkin 2003 showed that any universe that has on average been expanding cannot be past complete.. Vilenkin's own line.. "all the evidence we have says the universe had a beginning".. Mithani and Vilenkin 2012 went through the three escape routes, eternal inflation, cyclic models, emergent static universe, and showed each is either past incomplete or unstable.. Garcia Saenz, Hua and Zhao, Physical Review D, September 2024, tightened it further.. They proved kinematically, no general relativity assumed, that a geodesically complete cosmology must go through a bounce, a loitering phase, or an emergent phase.. Those are exactly the three families Mithani and Vilenkin already found unstable.. So the escape from a beginning has been narrowed to three doors and all three have known problems..
Concession restated.. The 2024 paper is kinematic, not a demonstration that eternal models are impossible.. So P2 isn't certain.. But "the universe began" is currently better supported than "the universe is past eternal", and if you're going to lean on the eternal option you should say which of the three unstable families you're betting on and why..
C1 gives you a cause.. Not a god yet.. Just a cause, and by what it caused, one that's not in space, not in time, not material.. That's it.. Now the second argument, which is the one that actually does the work..
Argument two.. why the cause has a will..
This takes C1 as its input..
P3.. A cause that is timeless and sufficient in itself for its effect produces that effect timelessly.. If every condition is met, nothing holds the effect back, and the conditions are met timelessly, there is no gap in which the effect fails to exist.. Effect and cause are co eternal..
P4.. The universe is not co eternal with its cause.. It has a finite past.. That's C1's territory..
C2.. So the cause of the universe is not a timeless cause that is sufficient in itself..
P5.. A cause not sufficient in itself for its effect produces it either indeterministically or by selecting to..
P6.. Indeterministic production requires time to be indeterministic in.. A probability per interval, a system evolving.. No time, no interval, no roll..
C3.. So the cause produced the universe by selecting to.. Selecting is what a will is..
That's where "personal" comes from.. Not from liking the idea.. From the fact that a timeless sufficient cause would have an eternal effect, and the effect isn't eternal, and the only remaining mode of causation without time is agency.. If you think a timeless sufficient cause can sit there with its effect not obtaining, say why, that's denying P3.. If you think there's a third mode of causation that isn't deterministic, indeterministic, or agential, name it, that's denying P5.. If you have an indeterministic process that works without time, show me, that's denying P6..
Standard objection.. "Will is a time bound concept, you're smuggling time back in".. No.. An event is time bound.. A state isn't.. "Seven is prime" is a state with content and no time index.. An eternal intention to create a universe with a beginning is a state, and its content includes the beginning.. The act and the effect are simultaneous at the first moment.. If you want to say intention can't be like that, argue it, don't assert it..
Argument three.. contingency..
Independent of whether the universe began..
P7.. Everything we observe depends on something else for its existence..
P8.. A chain where every member depends on another, with no member that doesn't, has no explanation for why the chain exists rather than not, however long it is, even infinitely..
P9.. Either there's a member that doesn't depend on anything, or the chain is a brute fact..
C4.. If there's such a member, it's necessary, meaning it exists by its own nature, and everything else exists through it..
Now the brute fact.. Here's why I called it the null.. "The universe just exists, no reason" isn't an explanation that competes with a necessary being.. It's the statement that there is no explanation.. Every other field you'd stop me in if I said "this just happens, no reason".. You'd say that's not science, that's giving up.. I'm saying the same thing here.. You're free to give up.. But giving up isn't a rival theory that wins on parsimony.. It's the absence of a theory..
And the necessary being isn't a "who made God" problem.. A necessary being by definition doesn't begin and doesn't depend, so P1 doesn't apply to it.. That's not special pleading, it's what the word means, and it's what you'd say about the universe if you wanted it to be the necessary thing.. But the universe can't be, coz it began, or at least everything in it does..
Why one rather than many.. Parsimony.. If one necessary being accounts for everything contingent, a second one has nothing to do.. I'll concede this is a parsimony argument, not a proof of uniqueness..
Argument four.. fine tuning, the honest version..
The constants of physics sit in a narrow window that permits chemistry.. Cosmological constant to one part in ten to the hundred and twenty.. Penrose's entropy figure for the initial state, one in ten to the ten to the one hundred and twenty three.. I'm not going to overclaim this coz of the measure problem I conceded.. So here's the weak form..
Given a designer who intends observers, an observer permitting universe is expected.. Given no designer and one universe, it isn't.. That's not circular, it's the same comparison you make in every inference to the best explanation.. You ask what each hypothesis predicts and see which one the data fits.. The objection "you built observers into the hypothesis" applies to every hypothesis ever tested.. Of course the hypothesis specifies what it predicts, that's what makes it a hypothesis..
The multiverse.. I want to be very precise here coz this is where people talk past each other.. The multiverse is not an observation.. It's a postulate introduced to explain the same data.. So the honest comparison isn't design versus science, it's design versus multiverse versus brute fact, and all three are metaphysical answers to a physical question.. None of them is testable in the way a scientific theory is.. If you say design fails coz it can't predict, the multiverse fails the same test.. Pick your unobserved postulate and defend it.. Mine has one entity.. Yours has infinitely many..
Objections I've already had, answered short..
"God of the gaps".. Every argument above runs on what we know, a beginning, dependence, constants, not on what we don't.. A gap argument would be "we can't explain X therefore God".. This is "we can explain X and the explanation has these properties"..
"Evolution".. Irrelevant to all four.. Evolution explains biological arrangement given laws and matter.. Nothing above is about biological arrangement..
"The designer is too flexible, it can explain anything".. So can the multiverse, so can brute fact, that's the nature of ultimate explanations.. The question is which one is coherent and which one is the null.. See argument three..
"You can't observe a cause outside spacetime".. Correct.. You also can't observe a field or fluctuation outside spacetime.. Every candidate cause of the universe is untested in that sense.. The comparison isn't tested versus untested, it's which untested candidate fits the constraints, and a field is in time, so it can't be the timeless cause C1 requires..
"Which god then".. Fair.. The arguments give you a cause with a will, timeless, not material, one.. That rules out nothing that claims those things and everything that doesn't.. From there it becomes a question of which claimed revelation checks out against outside tests.. Mine offers three that anyone can run.. A textual challenge that's been open since the seventh century, 2:23.. A prophecy checkable in its own generation, Rome recovering from total defeat within nine years, 30:2 to 4.. And a preservation claim you can test by comparing manuscripts.. I'm not going to argue those here, it's the wrong post.. I'm saying the handoff exists and isn't arbitrary..
Where to hit..
P2 if you want to argue for an eternal universe, but name your model.. P3 if you think timeless sufficient causes can have non eternal effects.. P5 if you have a third mode of causation.. P8 if you think an infinite chain of dependents explains itself.. Or the multiverse paragraph if you think it isn't a postulate..
I'll concede whatever I can't answer.. I've done it before on this exact argument.. Go..
Simple..
6
u/MagnificientMegaGiga Atheist 16d ago
From the beginning. P1 - what is "begins to exist"? In experiments, stuff just changes forms. The universe exists and always changes. Do you say after every change that "new things exist now"?
And particles do pop into existence and it's not established that fields didn't exist at some point.
P2 - there are still multiple Big Bang models. The only thing we can be sure is that the Big Bang happened. The rest us speculation and I'm not obliged to blindly trust one option.
C - Causality is a property of the universe. If time and causality exist outside of universe then we can consider the bigger picture, including the outside space to be the universe.
A cause must be in time and space. Outside time and space equals non-existing.
-1
u/4hmadhasan 16d ago
This is the first reply that actually goes at the premises, so thank you, properly..
P1, "begins to exist".. i mean it in the plain sense, there's a time at which the thing exists and no earlier time at which it did.. You're right that in the lab everything is rearrangement, a chair begins but the wood didn't.. Fine.. Now push that all the way down.. If the universe is rearrangement too, rearrangement of what.. If the answer is "matter and energy that always existed", you haven't objected to P1, you've denied P2.. You're saying there was no beginning.. So the rearrangement point folds into the P2 fight, it doesn't touch P1 on its own..
Particles popping.. They pop out of a quantum field, which has energy, structure, and obeys equations.. That's a something producing a something.. And you said yourself it's not established that fields didn't exist at some point.. Read that back.. If the field began, then P1 applies to the field.. If it didn't, you're back at an eternal something, which is P2 again.. Either way the fluctuation example doesn't get you a thing from nothing, it gets you a thing from a field, and then we ask about the field..
P2.. Agreed there are multiple models and agreed the Big Bang happened.. i conceded this in the post, it's not certain.. But look at what "i'm not obliged to trust one option" actually is.. It's agnosticism about the beginning.. That's a legitimate place to stand, but it's not a rebuttal.. The argument was comparative, "beginning" is currently better supported than "eternal", and the 2024 paper narrows eternal to three families with known instabilities.. If you want to stay agnostic, fine, but then you're not saying P2 is false, you're saying you're not sure, and "not sure" doesn't defeat "better supported".. If you think one of the eternal models actually works, name it and we'll look at it..
C1, and this is the interesting one.. "Outside time and space equals non existing".. That's a definition, not an argument.. You've defined "exists" as "located in spacetime".. Two problems.. One, on that definition the sentence "spacetime began to exist" is incoherent, coz nothing can be located in spacetime before spacetime.. So you've made the question unaskable rather than answered it.. Two, on that definition numbers don't exist, laws don't exist, the field you just appealed to before spacetime doesn't exist.. i don't think you believe that..
"Then call the bigger picture the universe".. Sure, relabel.. Now ask the same question of the bigger picture.. Either it began, and the argument runs again one level up, or it didn't, and you're back at P2 asserting an eternal something.. The contingency argument, three, doesn't even need the beginning, it just asks why the bigger picture exists at all rather than not..
And "causality is a property of the universe" cuts against you harder than you think.. If cause and effect only hold inside, then the universe as a whole has no cause and no explanation.. That's the brute fact.. Which is fine to say, i said it's coherent, but it's the null.. It's the position that there is no answer.. You're free to hold it, but it's not a theory that beats a necessary being, it's a decision to stop asking..
So where i'd say we actually are.. P1 stands unless you want to defend things from literally nothing.. P2 you're agnostic on, which i'll take, it's honest.. C1 you've objected to by definition, and i don't think the definition survives your own field example.. Come back on any of those..
Simple..
5
u/MagnificientMegaGiga Atheist 16d ago
"Object" is just a concept in our minds. You can call a dead dog a new object after old dog dies, but the universe is just changing what it already has. The universe is a continuous rearrangement of the universe. If it rearranged from "anything else" then we can call the "anything else" just another rearrangement of the universe.
P2 Are you claming to know what really happened? Otherwise you're agnostic too. The models are still being debated.
"Spacetime began to exist" is stupid because "began" assumes time and causality already exist. Numbers are concepts in oir heads. Human laws too. And fields exist within space and time.
It doesn't make sense to ask why the bigger picture exists, because you can always include the reason in an even bigger picture. And it's a fact that universe just rearranges. You're the one relabeling wood as a chair.
Lol, your response that supposedly cuts throug me only shows that you're just being emotional. And irrational. And I'm not depressed about not answering "Who created eternal universe?" It's a dumb question.
0
u/4hmadhasan 16d ago
Read your own comment in order.. Third line, "it's a fact that the universe just rearranges".. Second line, "are you claiming to know what happened, otherwise you're agnostic".. You can't have both.. Either the total being past eternal is a fact, in which case you know what happened and you owe me the model, or you don't know, in which case "it's a fact" was a slip.. Pick.. Coz right now you're agnostic on P2 and certain of not P2 in the same breath..
Rearrangement.. Yes, inside the universe everything we see is rearrangement.. Extending that to "the whole has always been rearranging" is exactly the eternal universe claim, and that's what BGV and the 2024 paper are about.. You don't get to make it by defining the word.. And "changing what it already has" quietly assumes a conserved total.. In general relativity energy isn't conserved globally in an expanding spacetime, dark energy literally increases as space grows, Sean Carroll has a whole post called "energy is not conserved".. So the picture of a fixed pile of stuff being shuffled forever isn't even the current physics..
"Began assumes time already exists".. No.. Began means there's a first moment and no earlier one.. A ruler starts at zero without needing negative centimetres to exist first.. That's the standard reading in every version of this argument and it's the one physicists use when they say the universe is 13.8 billion years old, they don't mean 13.8 billion years since some earlier time.. Meanwhile your "always been rearranging" assumes time runs back infinitly.. That's a claim about time too, and a bigger one..
Numbers and laws are concepts in heads.. Ok.. So before there were heads, what made the field obey its equations.. Either the regularities are real independant of us, in which case something exists that isn't located in spacetime, and your definition of exists just broke.. Or they're not real, and matter before humans obeyed nothing, and the field you keep leaning on had no equations to fluctuate by.. You need the laws to be real for your own story to run..
"You can always include the reason in a bigger picture".. That's P8, and you just conceded it instead of answering it.. An infinite stack of pictures where each one is explained by the next never explains why any of them exist.. Every IOU is paid with another IOU.. Leibniz asked this about an eternal universe on purpose, coz eternity doesn't answer it, it just makes the chain longer.. So no, it's not a dumb question, it's the one question your position has to refuse to ask to stay standing..
And nobody asked "who created the eternal universe".. The post asks two seperate things.. Is it eternal, that's P2, and you've told me you don't know.. And why does it exist at all, that's argument three, which runs whether it's eternal or not.. You answered a question that isn't in the thread and called it dumb.. It is.. It's also not mine..
Emotional and irrational, where.. Quote the line.. Everything above is your sentences and what follows from them..
Simple..
5
u/MagnificientMegaGiga Atheist 16d ago
It's a fact that the universe as we know it rearranges in our time. We know the universe to be like that. We never observed anything actually begin created. We just observe the changed forms and call them new.
"Began means there's a first moment and no earlier one" - So if I begin to run, time didn't exist before that?
"A ruler starts at zero without needing negative centimetres to exist first" - there are negative centimetres on the other side of 0. Are you ignoring them just because they're not labelled?
"13.8 billion years" is just a time distance between the Big Bang and now.
"what made the field obey its equations" - equations are in our heads. Equations are just our way of understanding what happens.
I don't ask "what caused everything", because "what" can always be re-included in everything. The question is dumb. And I am smart. But of course you can always keep crying about me not answering the non-sensical question.
1
u/4hmadhasan 16d ago
Look at what changed between your last comment and this one.. Last time, "it's a fact that the universe just rearranges".. This time, "as we know it", "in our time".. You added the two qualifiers that were my entire point.. Inside the universe, in the time we can see, yes, rearrangement.. Whether the whole thing always did is the question, and you've now told me twice you don't know.. So we agree.. P2 is where the evidence leans, not where certainty is.. I said that in the post..
"If I begin to run, time didn't exist before".. You beginning to run is a thing beginning inside time.. Time beginning is time beginning.. Those aren't the same and you know they aren't, coz you'd never say the number line began when you started counting.. And the ruler.. There are negative centimetres on a ruler coz someone drew them.. Show me the negative seconds.. That's not a rhetorical move, that's the request.. If there's a t less than zero you have an eternal model, name it, and we're back at P2 with something to look at.. If there isn't, the zero stands..
Equations are in our heads, ok.. What they describe isn't.. Electrons repelled each other before anyone wrote Coulomb's law.. Either that regularity is real independant of us, and something exists that isn't a lump in spacetime, or it isn't, and nothing constrained matter before we showed up.. You need it to be real, your own field example runs on it..
And then the actual ending.. "I don't ask what caused everything, because what can always be re included".. That's the brute fact.. You've decided the whole has no explanation and re labelled the decision as the question being dumb.. Which is a position, I said so in the post, and it's the null.. It's the seat where you stop asking.. You're in it.. That's fine.. It just isn't a refutation of anything, and calling yourself smart at the end doesn't turn it into one..
We're done I think.. You don't know if it began, you won't ask why it exists, and you've narrowed "fact" to exactly the part nobody disputed.. That's the thread..
Simple..
1
u/MagnificientMegaGiga Atheist 16d ago
My second comment explained what I meant in the first one.
If time has a beginning then we should take it as it is. "Creation of time" would assume time outside time. If time was not, then it was created, then it assumes time and causality outside of time.
I didn't say that the things that we're trying to understand with math don't exist. I only said that numbers are concepts in our head.
"the whole has no explanation" - no, I'm asking that it's stupid to ask for an explanation for the whole, because that explanation would already be a part of the whole. And you're still not getting it.
You lost the debate, now go home and cry.
5
u/Interficient4real 16d ago
This unmoved mover cannot be Allah (meaning the god of Islam). Because he is dependent upon something other than himself.
To start I’ll ask a question. Is Allah the most loving?
2
u/Organic-University-2 16d ago
Allah does not love the unbelievers while Christ died for everyone including unbelievers. Simple as that. If sacrifice isn't the ultimate expression of love for others, I don't know what is but it sure isn't a master merely tolerating slaves and telling them he will never consider them his children.
Sad as hell.
2
u/4hmadhasan 16d ago
Different argument to the one above you.. He was arguing dependence, you're arguing character.. Lopsided called that switch three comments before you made it.. Ok, character then..
"Allah doesn't love unbelievers".. The Quran's word there is hubb, which in that usage means approval, it's said about actions, He doesn't love the wrongdoers, the transgressors, the arrogant.. Your bible says the same thing in stronger words, Psalm 5:5, "you hate all who do wrong", Romans 9:13, "Esau I hated".. So if "doesn't love" disqualifies a God, yours went first.. What the Quran says about everyone, believer or not, is 7:156, "My mercy encompasses all things".. Rain on all of them, food for all of them, the door open till the last breath, 39:53, "do not despair of Allah's mercy, He forgives all sins".. And the hadith, Allah is more merciful to His servants than this mother to her child, Bukhari 5999.. That's not tolerating slaves.. That's a mercy He wrote over Himself before He wrote anything else, Bukhari 7404, "My mercy prevails over My wrath"..
Sacrifice as the ultimate love.. Sacrifice to who.. In your system God demands blood before He'll forgive, and then supplies the blood Himself, and then accepts it from Himself.. In mine He forgives coz you asked.. No third party, no torture required first.. Tell me which father loves more, the one who forgives his kid, or the one who says i'd love to forgive you but somebody has to be flogged first, so i've arranged it.. A forgiveness that needs a corpse isn't bigger love than one that doesn't, it's a smaller mercy with a bigger story attached..
Slaves not children.. Abd means servant, and yes, the Quran refuses "children of God", 5:18, coz every time that phrase has been used it ended with a man being called God.. That's what it's protecting against.. What it says instead, 50:16, closer to you than your jugular vein.. 2:186, "when My servants ask about Me, I am near, I answer".. Not a master down a corridor.. Nearer than your own pulse and you don't need a mediator to reach Him..
And "sad as hell".. You believe in hell too.. Your unbelievers go there for eternity as well, and your God "loves everyone" while sending them.. So whatever tension you think you found, it's sitting in your own book, with extra steps.. Mine at least says out loud that He doesn't approve of what they did, instead of saying He loves them infinitly and then burns them anyway..
Not bitter about this btw.. Isa is a prophet to me, i love him, i just don't think he had to die for God to be able to forgive.. God could always forgive.. That's kind of the point of being God..
Simple..
1
u/Purple-Mud5057 15d ago
Yeah that’s why nonbelievers of Christianity supposedly suffer for eternity, because Christ loves them.
0
u/Lopsided_Moment_2574 16d ago
bro really said the conclusion first and called it an argument 😭 let's break down what actually happened here
OP's literal words "I'm not claiming any of this proves Islam. It's a case for a creator with a will. Which creator is a second question."
so you walked into a thread where NOBODY said the unmoved mover is Allah yet, went "it can't be Allah," and dropped a bait question you refuted a position that doesn't exist in this thread. that's not a counter-argument king, that's punching the air
and I already know where this is going so let's speedrun it
your plan:
- Allah is Al-Wadood, most loving
- love needs an object
- before creation there was nothing
- so Allah had to create to love
- so Allah depends on creation
- so not self-sufficient
- so not the necessary being
cute setup. one massive issue
this is literally covered in Islamic theology Ash'ari and Maturidi kalam, the two biggest schools, both say Allah's attributes like Al-Wadood are ESSENTIAL, meaning they describe what he IS, not relationships that need objects to turn on. "most loving" is his nature, not his activity. the attribute is eternal, its expression in creation is contingent. two different things. your entire argument is built on squishing them together
but it gets funnier
this EXACT argument is what Christians use for the Trinity "God needed someone to love, therefore Father-Son-Spirit." so if you're a non-Muslim theist, congrats, you just argued yourself into Trinitarianism by accident. and if you're an atheist? worse for you you just said a necessary being can't have love as an essential attribute... which means you know exactly what properties necessary beings can and can't have... which means you already have a whole theory of necessary beings... which is literally the thing this thread is trying to figure out , the loop is looping
and if you're about to say "Allah isn't most loving because he doesn't love disbelievers" that's a whole different argument about his moral character, not his ontological dependence. different questions. mixing them is either confusion or a rhetorical move, pick one
so before we keep going
finish it. what is Allah dependent on, and how does that dependency cancel him from being the necessary being?
premises, like the OP did. no more chasing implications around 😼
3
u/Interficient4real 16d ago
- Yes, I stated my position first. Because I am being honest. You are aware this is something done in debates normally right? (I am not saying this is a formal debate)
- He is in the r/critique Islam subreddit, and stated he is a Muslim. His position is very clearly that Allah is the unmoved mover. Even if he isn’t explicitly saying it. Don’t insult our intelligence.
- Yes I am aware you scholars disagree. I don’t really care what scholars say. I care about arguments. So make your own arguments.
Simple question for you, before creation, was Allahs love actual, or potential?
I find it really funny you accuse me of punching the air, then spend half your comment punching the air lol.
Would you like to know a fun fact? You can always tell when Muslims struggle with an argument, because they begin to mock and assert superiority without actually doing the legwork.
0
u/Lopsided_Moment_2574 16d ago
ok point by point
stating your position first is fine. my point was you refuted a claim the OP hadn't made yet. that's not about honesty, that's about target selection
"his position is very clearly X even if he isn't saying it" this is you deciding what his argument is instead of letting him make it. that's not insulting your intelligence, that's basic argumentative discipline. fight what people say, not what you assume they mean
"I don't care what scholars say, I care about arguments" the scholars ARE making arguments. 1400 years of kalam IS arguments. dismissing them wholesale while demanding arguments is just demanding arguments you haven't read yet
now your actual question
before creation was Allah's love actual or potential
the dilemma assumes that actual love necessarily requires an external object. that assumption needs to be defended, not smuggled in as a premise. here's why
Al-Wadood in Islamic theology is a sifa dhātiyya an attribute of essence, not an attribute of action. it describes what Allah IS, not what Allah DOES in relation to something external. the attribute is eternal. its expression toward creation is contingent. those are two different things and your dilemma collapses them
but here's the thing your dilemma also proves too much. if "most loving" requires an eternal object, you've just made the strongest possible argument for the Trinity. Christians solved exactly this problem by positing inner-divine relations. if you're making this argument as an atheist, you've accidentally handed a weapon to Trinitarians
and if your answer is "necessary beings can't have relational attributes" then you need to tell us what properties a necessary being CAN have. because now you're claiming a complete theory of necessary beings, which is exactly what this thread exists to figure out
the dilemma is a real one. but it cuts in directions you probably didn't intend
1
u/Interficient4real 16d ago
1/2. This is r/critiqueIslam. If his post wasn’t about Islam, then he is off topic for the sub.
- I do care about the scholars arguments. But just saying that it is covered in islamic theology and by islamic schools, is not presenting those arguments. That is what i am saying.
So before creation, according to you, was Allahs Love actual, was it potential, or was it exclusively self love?
Again, it’s very funny that you accuse me of punching the air, and then proceed to do exactly what you think I am doing. I am not arguing for the Trinity right now. So there is no point in bringing it up.
0
u/Lopsided_Moment_2574 16d ago
fair on point 1, I'll give you that
on point 3 you're right, "scholars covered it" is not an argument. so here it is properly
your trilemma: before creation was Allah's love actual, potential, or self-love only
the trilemma only works if you accept a hidden premise that actual love necessarily requires an external object to be actualized. that premise needs to be defended, not assumed
Islamic theology distinguishes between two categories of divine attributes. sifa dhātiyya attributes of essence, what Allah IS eternally and intrinsically. sifa fi'liyya attributes of action, expressed in relation to creation. Al-Wadood belongs to the first category. it describes Allah's nature, not a relational state that switches from potential to actual depending on whether creation exists
so the answer to your trilemma is: actual, eternally, without requiring an external object because the attribute describes essence not relation
now you need to attack that distinction specifically. either:
argue that love cannot be an attribute of essence by nature that love is structurally relational and cannot exist without an object. that's a defensible position but you need to argue it, not assume it
or argue that the essence/action distinction is incoherent. also defensible, but make the argument
the Trinity point wasn't punching air it was showing your argument has a logical consequence you probably don't want. if "most loving requires eternal object" is true, Trinitarians win. you don't have to be arguing for it for the consequence to follow from your premise 😼
1
u/Interficient4real 16d ago
You are just copy pasting from AI lol.
No one has ever talked like this.
If bad Chat GPT responses if the best Mulsims can offer in response, it is no wonder that so many people are leaving Islam.
0
u/Lopsided_Moment_2574 16d ago
https://reddit.com/link/pcu9f2y/video/oggzvywy3ish1/player
attached the Quillbot AI detector result in the video since you went that route 😭
but think about what you just did you had no answer to the essence/action distinction, no response to the trilemma breakdown, no counter to the sifa dhātiyya argument
so you said "sounds like AI"
that's not a rebuttal bhai. that's a concession with extra steps. if the argument is wrong, show where it's wrong. the source of an argument has nothing to do with whether it's correct
"so many people are leaving Islam" ok and so many people are coming in, net growth actually, but that's also irrelevant to whether the argument holds
you asked for premises. got premises. you asked for arguments not scholar names. got arguments. now it sounds too structured so it must be AI
1
u/Interficient4real 16d ago
Super interesting that you and the other guy on here both use Quillbot to “prove” you aren’t using AI.
You cannot gaslight me. AI detectors are notoriously unreliable. And easily tricked by doing stuff like removing punctuation and em dashes. Like you have done. This is the last time I will say it, if you continue to use AI we are done. I will not argue against a AI, it’s utterly pointless.
Islam grows through high birth rates and execution of apostates. Not conversions.
Love, properly defined, is to will the good of someone or something. Love is always, in every context and meaning directed at something.
2 question that will hopefully get us clarity.
What is the definition of Love.
Who or what did Allah love before creation.
Please actually answer them this time.
0
u/Lopsided_Moment_2574 16d ago
AI detectors are unreliable by your own admission, so name the specific tool you'd actually accept as proof. not quillbot, not quillbot alternative tell me exactly which one you'd trust and I'll run it. otherwise "I can always tell" is just a feeling dressed as a standard 😐
the birth rate/apostasy claim is a separate conversation and a big one drop it here or make it its own post, mixing it in doesn't make it land
0
u/4hmadhasan 16d ago
Essential attribute vs contingent expression, that's the whole answer in five words and you got there before I finished typing.. (I was bout to) Appreciate it.. If you ever want to do this where the pushback is friendlier, r/theislam, door's open..
0
u/Lopsided_Moment_2574 16d ago
appreciate it. and yeah r/theislam i'm already there, been there since the early days, possibly one of the first few members actually 😄
0
-2
u/4hmadhasan 16d ago
Yes.. al Wadud, 85:14, one of His names.. Now let me save us four comments and name the argument you're building, coz i've read it.. "Perfect love needs a beloved, so a single person God either loved creation from eternity, which makes Him dependent on it, or wasn't loving before creation, which makes Him not maximally loving.. therefore God must be multiple persons.." Swinburne, then Craig.. If that's not where you're going, correct me and i'll answer whatever is..
If it is, here's the hole.. It assumes an attribute is only real when it's being exercised on an object.. Islam doesn't grant that, and neither should you.. Allah is al Khaliq without eternally creating, al Ghafur without eternally forgiving somebody, al Razzaq before there was a mouth to feed.. The perfection is in the nature, the exercise is by will.. A surgeon on holiday is still a surgeon.. So "most loving" means the fullness of love belongs to Him, not that He's been running it on someone forever to keep it real..
And look at what your version costs.. If God needs a beloved to be perfect, His perfection depends on the beloved existing.. That's the dependence charge you just made against me, except now it's inside God.. Moving the need from creation to a second person doesn't remove the need, it just makes God's completeness hang on internal relations, and then you owe me a defence of why three, why persons, why that isn't three dependents rather than one independent..
112:2, al Samad.. The one everything needs, who needs nothing.. That's the definition i'm working from.. Not a God who has to love something to stay God..
Your turn.. And when you're done, P1 to P9 are still sitting there..
Simple..
3
u/Interficient4real 16d ago
Yep, definitely using AI. The tone and style is so obvious. The double dots means nothing.
And I’m not arguing for the Trinity right now.
Loving is an action. It is something you do. You are doing a subtle bait and switch, where you swap between “loving” and “able to love”. Here is the question.
Is the title “the most loving” an attribute of action, or is it an attribute of essence.
If it is an attribute of action, like the examples you give, then Allah wasn’t loving anyone before creation. He was only potentially the most loving. So, is Allah only potentially loving?
Or
Is it an Attribute of essence? This would mean he has real love throughout eternity. But the problem is Allah has no partners, and therefore had to be loving himself. Which is weird, and less than love for another.
I’m not interested in responding to the rest of your AI post. And please don’t have AI write a response to this. Use your own words and your own brain.
4
u/Local-Warming 16d ago
The only reasonable answer to "who/what created the universe" is "a bigger telescope might help". Anything else is pseudo-philosophical masturbation.
And none of the "proof of islam" you gave are actually proof. It's just that your personal standards for "proof" is very low.
The textual challenge is an undefined homework with undefined requirements. It's a thought stopper that apologist use on themselves. Trick a muslim that an actual verse of the quran was a made up verse made to answer the challenge, and he will say that it is not like the quran.
The rome thing is not a prophecy at all. It's a prediction (and a disputable one). The difference being that a prediction does not need supernatural intervention.
The preservation claim is just aggressively stupid for two reasons: 1) preservation is the whole point of writing. It's not a miracle that something does as intended. 2) according to islamic texts themselves a page of the quran was lost to a goat.
Honestly, that last part makes me think that you didn't come up with, or at least even process yourself, the whole pseudo-philosophical wall of text of your OP.
0
u/4hmadhasan 16d ago
"A bigger telescope".. Telescopes look at things inside the universe.. The question is about the whole of it.. That's not a bigger instrument problem, it's a different kind of question, and calling every question that isn't instrumental "masturbation" is just a way of not answering it.. Physics itself doesn't agree with you, that's why Vilenkin and Penrose write about this and not about lens sizes..
Now the three things you actually engaged, coz two of your points are fair..
Textual challenge.. i never called it proof, i called it a test the book set itself.. And it's not undefined.. Arabic, a surah's length, judged by ppl who know the language, coz it's a literary claim in a literary language.. You're right it's not a lab test.. Neither is "nobody's written like Shakespeare".. The interesting fact isn't that Muslims won't accept a fake verse.. It's that the poets of Makkah, who had the skill, the language, and every motive on earth, and who were losing a war over it, didn't produce one.. Musaylimah tried, we still have his lines, read them.. Explain that however you like, but it's a real data point, not a thought stopper..
Rome.. "Prediction not prophecy".. Sure, then here's the prediction.. 614, Persia has taken Jerusalem, Rome's emperor is considering abandoning Constantinople, a man in Makkah with no army and no intelligence service says Rome will win within three to nine years.. Rome won in 622 to 628.. The Makkans thought it was so absurd that Ubayy ibn Khalaf bet Abu Bakr camels against it, Tirmidhi 3193.. A prediction that the collapsing side wins inside a stated window, made by someone with no stake and no information, is what a prophecy looks like.. i didn't say it proves God.. i said it's checkable.. It is..
Preservation.. "Preservation is the whole point of writing".. Then why does every other ancient text have a textual criticism industry.. The New Testament has hundreds of thousands of variants across manuscripts and Ehrman has a career on it.. The point isn't that writing preserves.. It's that you can put the Birmingham folios, carbon dated to within a few decades of the Prophet's life, next to a copy printed last year and read the same text.. That's the claim.. Test it..
The goat.. Fair hit, and i'll take it straight.. Ibn Majah 1944, Aisha's report about a page with the stoning and suckling verses being eaten after the Prophet ﷺ died.. The report exists.. Its chain runs through Muhammad ibn Ishaq narrating with 'an, which is why the hadith critics flagged it.. And the tradition's own position is that those verses were abrogated in recitation before his death, which is why they're not in the mushaf, goat or no goat.. You can reject that explanation.. But then you're in a fight about one contested report versus thousands of complete early manuscripts, and that's a different post, not a reason to call the whole thing "aggressively stupid"..
The AI line at the end.. i've answered it twice in this thread already with a screen recording, scroll up.. Not doing it a third time..
You gave me one real hit out of five.. Come back on that one if you want..
Simple..
4
u/Interficient4real 16d ago
So you a just using the unmoved mover argument?
But fed it through an AI first?
-2
u/4hmadhasan 16d ago
I have been engaged in writing since my early teenage years.. 6+ years, two novels of my own and a web novel i'm looking at publishing, and i've been arguing this exact case on Muslim subs for weeks in the same voice.. Having structure in a text doesn't mean a bot wrote it, it means somebody's done it before.. the double dots alone should tell you no AI on earth writes like this.. Still get it through any of your fav detector and post screenshots or whatever..
And it's not the unmoved mover.. Aristotle's argument is about motion and assumes an eternal universe.. Argument one is Kalam, which needs a beginning, argument two is the will argument, which Aristotle never made, three is Leibniz, four is Collins.. Different premises, different conclusions.. i said it upfront, none of it's original, the claim is it hasn't been broken..
So break it.. There's nine premises numbered for you.. pick one..
Simple..
3
u/Interficient4real 16d ago
Yeah, you’re definitely using AI. I just confirmed it as likely with a detector.
Write your own stuff lol.
0
u/4hmadhasan 16d ago
Post screenshot rn.. Actually you would've done this already.. Maybe now you'll take time to edit..
2
u/Interficient4real 16d ago
Nah. It’s self evident.
AI detectors are notoriously unreliable. And there are plenty of things you can do to change their detection.
2
u/ProjectOne2318 16d ago
We've only just created AI in recent years. The light bulb in the last 200. Imagining the 4D is close to impossible for many. But we think that the creator must be god because we *must* have an answer. Maybe the answer is still so beyond us that we can't even imagine it, but the only thing our limited minds can only come up with is god. And when I say limited minds, I mean the primitive minds of people who didn't even know what an electron was, but they knew the answers to the universe.
The answer is that we just aren't there yet and we can't even imagine it. If it make you feel better to say, "Man in the Sky" - fine.
1
u/4hmadhasan 16d ago
"We're not there yet" is a fair place to stand, genuinely.. But notice what it is.. It's agnosticism, not a rebuttal.. Nine premises are sitting in the post and "maybe there's an answer nobody can imagine" doesn't touch any of them, it just says you'd rather wait.. You're allowed.. But waiting isn't an argument, and it's also not neutral, coz "the real answer is beyond us" cuts exactly as hard against "no creator" as it does against "creator".. If we can't imagine it, you can't imagine it's not a mind either..
And the primitive minds line lands on the wrong ppl.. Nothing in the post comes from someone who didn't know what an electron was.. The beginning argument runs on Borde, Guth and Vilenkin, 2003, and a Physical Review paper from 2024.. The fine tuning numbers are Penrose's.. The contingency argument is Leibniz, and the modern versions are defended by ppl like Pruss and Koons who know more physics than either of us.. The seventh century gave us the question.. The evidence in the post is from the last twenty years.. So if the argument's wrong, it's wrong now, with electrons, not back then without them..
"We must have an answer so we invented God".. Or, we followed where the beginning, the dependence and the constants point, wrote it out in premises, and asked ppl to break one.. That's the opposite of needing an answer, that's exposing one.. "Man in the sky" is the version nobody in the thread is defending, and you know it, coz the post spends a paragraph saying the cause isn't in space..
So, pick a premise or take the agnostic seat.. Both are fine.. "We'll know later" isn't a third option, it's the second one with a promise attached..
Simple..
1
u/CaterpillarFluid3674 16d ago
Why should I worship a creator even if there is one? What makes you think want to be worshipped by some small tiny creatures? In the whole universe? Even if it's there a creature he doesn't interact with us Cause we see how nature works otherwise
1
u/4hmadhasan 16d ago
Two questions, both outside the post, but short answers. Why worship: the post argues to a creator with a will, not to an obligation, so you're right that "ought" doesn't fall out of P1-P9 on its own. It comes from a further step, if that being is also the source of your existence, every second, then acknowledgement isn't a favour to it, it's just accuracy about your situation. Gratitude to the thing you depend on entirely isn't servility, refusing it is the odd position. Second, "wants to be worshipped by tiny creatures" assumes worship benefits the creator. On the Islamic account it doesn't, 14:8, "if you and everyone on earth disbelieved, Allah is free of need". Worship is prescribed for the worshipper the way exercise is prescribed by a doctor who gains nothing from your push ups. Whether that's true is another argument, but "needy god wants praise" isn't the claim being defended here.
Simple..
•
u/AutoModerator 16d ago
Hi u/4hmadhasan! Thank you for posting at r/CritiqueIslam. Please make sure to read our rules once to avoid an embarrassing situation. Be Civil and nice to each other. Remember that there is a person sitting at the other end. Don't say anything that you wouldn't say in a normal face to face conversation.
Also, make sure that your submission either contain an argument or ask a question that could lead to debate. You must state your own views on the matter either in body or comment. A post with no commentary will be considered low effort!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.