FROM MAULANA’S DESK
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, born in 1925, in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, is an Islamic spiritual scholar who is well-versed in both classical Islamic learning and modern disciplines. The mission of his life has been the establishment of worldwide peace. He has received the Padma Bhushan, the Demiurgus Peace International Award and Sayyidina Imam Al Hassan Peace award for promoting peace in Muslim societies. He has been called ’Islam’s spiritual ambassador to the world’ and is recognized as one of its most influential Muslims . His books have been translated into sixteen languages and are part of university curricula in six countries. He is the founder of the Centre for Peace and Spirituality based in New Delhi.
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
IT IS STRANGE to believe that there is a God, but not to believe in God is even stranger. Therefore, I prefer the less strange to the more strange.
Believing in God is so obvious that the application of simple logic is enough for one to believe that there is a God. The French philosopher Rene Descartes, considered the father of modern philosophy, applied simple logic to his own existence when he said, “I think, therefore, I am.”
By applying the same logic, one can say, ‘I am, therefore, God is.’ That is, one can say that when a creature exists, the application of simple logic is enough for one to believe that there is a Creator.
Einstein when asked, “Are you an atheist?” He said, “No, I am a skeptic.” When a scientist like Einstein says ‘I am not an atheist, but rather a skeptic’, I think it means he is trying to say that belief in God is a matter of 50-50: if there is 50% chance that God does not exist, then there is 50% chance that He does exist.
Einstein believed in the relativity model of the truth. Quantum physics took this concept further to the concept of probability. In the language of quantum physics, it can be said that ‘probably’ there is a God. By the Einsteinian model, one did not know whether there was a God or not, but quantum physics made it possible to say that there probably is a God. Now it is an established fact that probability weighs less than certainty, but is more than just saying perhaps.
Scientific studies took knowledge even further ahead. It went beyond the stage of knowing that when the child is in the mother’s womb, all those things the child needs are supplied to it. This supply continues for a full nine months, then the child is born, and comes into the external world, where there is a complete life-support system.
Human studies progressed as far as the micro-world where the strange discovery was made that it is not only the immediate world that the child finds totally favourable to him, but that right from the microworld to the macro-world, the universe is exactly what is required for the continued existence of human beings.
A human being and the world outside of him are totally compatible. Compatibility between man and the mother’s womb, compatibility between man and the solar system, then compatibility between man and the entire universe—the strangeness of this reality is such that it motivates one to seek an explanation for it. The British astronomer Fred Hoyle says that, ‘Our world is a well-designed world’. It is not a random world, but rather a well-planned and well-managed world. This fact again necessitates belief in ‘pair-creation’, that is, one who has created the universe has also created human beings. If you analyze these realities, it will lead to the belief that the Creator who created human beings also created the universe. Had this not been so, both would not have been so inextricably linked with one another.
The argument used by philosophers to support the concept of the existence of God was the same as the argument from design: where there is a design, there is a Designer. But this question remained to be answered: when God is unseen, how can one believe in His existence? This controversy has been put to end by studies about the fundamental particles of the material world, also known as subatomic particles. A subatomic particle, although not visible, does exist. This shows that for something to exist, it is not necessary that it should be visible.
This discovery has brought about a revolutionary change in the theory of knowledge: probability is also an authentic source of argument, because probability, although less than certainty is greater than possibility.
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
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