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The language barrier between God and mankind
It is very important for mankind to become aware of the fact that there is a language problem between God and human beings. It is because God knows everything he needs to know about his plan and purpose for creating his universe and mankind but a human is born as a baby not knowing anything at all. The question that faces God and human beings is, how can God make humanity understand what he wants of them and how can mankind try to make sense of what God says to ensure they have understood the message of God properly before they act upon it faithfully so that plan and purpose of God could become fulfilled? People evolved their human language gradually over a very long period of time and the human babies still take years to learn their human language through their direct interaction with things and with each other in this environment called the world or the universe. The main point in this respect to realise is that God could not tell humanity anything at all in human language till people had invented and developed a human language. Even after having inventing and developed human language people could still not understand message of God till people developed a mechanism whereby they could make sense of what God intended to convey. It is because people can only know what they communicate to each other because they interact with each other but human beings do not interact with God at all as they do with each other so they could not understand message of God unless they developed a mechanism for understanding the message of God in their language. In other words God even if he uses a human language to communicate his message to them still will be conveying his own thoughts not human thoughts, so he will be using same words but not the very same meanings of words as people mean for each other when they talk to each other. Moreover people cannot know words they have not invented yet nor the meanings of words which they have not realised yet because they have not yet arrived at that stage of learning and knowing things. So God when he reveals his message become limited by what people at the time know. This makes very difficult for mankind to see point of view of God about things ie they cannot put themselves in shoes of God. This is why unless there is found a way around this difficulty the language barrier between God and humanity cannot be broken down. This is where my work on the Quran can be found very helpful by mankind because it begins from this point. It shows limits of philosophers and scientists as well as of people who claim to know deen of Islam regardless they claim to be Muslims or nonMuslims.
The problem of communication between God and human beings could be understood through realising the situation of a highly educated father with his newly born child. How can such a father convey his message to his newly born child? Father has to understand how his baby understands things and try to convey his thoughts to baby using baby language because baby does not know any other language. For conveying a highly complex and sophisticated message in baby language father has to wait till baby develops and grows to the stage where at he could make sense of message of his father in some way. This is why God had to give people time to develop and grow in knowledge before they could be sent his message. This is why human beings were given brains and senses as well as bodies and things to interact with in this universe in order to learn things just like we human beings give our children toys to play with and learn from their interaction with toys. The other main question people must ask themselves is why God created people as babies instead of fully knowledgeable grown up people? It is because God is a living being so as a living being he had the urge to express himself and to express himself he could only use his power of creativity so he ended up creating his creation and sending his revelation for human beings because he wanted someone with ability to appreciate his creativity out of choice and that is why he gave mankind ability to learn things by themselves so that interference from God remained to a bear necessity otherwise human beings could not appreciate God freely as too much intervention by God could undermine his plan and purpose for creating mankind. This is why message of God is the way it is. It is not a huge book containing detail of everything because human beings could not carry around a huge book or read it due to their very limited life span. This is why God had to do his best for sending people his message and people had to do their best to make sense of whatever they are given by God as his message. So it is a compromise between the best God could do and the best mankind could do. The idea that God can do anything because he has the power to do so therefore he has done this and that and the other is a nonsense. It is because no matter who does anything one is limited by one’s own plan and purpose. If one does not follow through one’s plan in order to fulfil one’s purpose than all falls apart and one fails in one’s objectivity. This is why even though God is powerful he cannot do things which ruin his plan and purpose. This is why a lot of things people say about God or attribute to God are nothing more than their self invented nonsense because it does not take into account plan and purpose fo9 God in context of real world realities. This nonsense is called make beliefs or different versions of religion and secularism. All this will be explained in detail as we go along and things will start making sense to those who wish to learn.
The next thing one has to ask oneself is, how can human beings overcome the language barrier between God and human beings? Before God could communicate his message to people they had to have a language in which God could communicate to them his thoughts. Since a human language is just words and meanings the question is, where did the words and their meanings come from? To understand the answer of this question one has to observe creation and see what God has brought about in this world. Long before he created people he created other things. He started with nonliving things and from that he brought forth or evolved living things and from the living things he brought about or evolved human beings. God created things and things were given certain properties by God for his plan and purpose. This is why we can see nonliving things are fully programmed but living things are partly programmed though some more than the others. The least programmed creatures are human beings who needed guidance of God to give them basis for their future development and progress. This is why people are created to self program themselves by way of explorations and discoveries with a little bit of guidance from God that gives them the basis or foundation to develop and grow from where they are ie from their natural state or stage of existence as human beings. Human beings have been endowed with great potential for development by God in order to be capable of serving his intended plan and purpose. The plan and purpose of God will become obvious when humanity studies the message in the Quran in detail. As for knowledge people learn things by observing and copying already programmed things as to what they do and how they do it and that way they learn how things interact with each other and fit in with each other which helps human beings develop rationally by reasoning things that are self evident as to how they are interlinked or interconnected or fit in with each other. This is how from obvious world people can become capable of looking into hidden realities in the real world and deduce things rationally and that way arrive at the right conclusions about things.
It should be clear to a person that unless people had a language and they developed it to a stage where at God could send his message to them they could not benefit from the revelation of God this is why God had to wait till people evolved from animal stage to human stage of existence. However even then God had to wait till people could make proper sense of his message in order to benefit from it. This is like some grown up person instils in mind of a young child some message to remember which can only make sense to the child when he has grown up and has reached the stage of knowledge required for its proper understanding. This is why human progress has been very slow due to interaction between people and other living and nonliving things as well as between people themselves. People have real problem in trying to make proper sense of message of God because it takes them a lot of time to learn sense of making proper sense of things provided they have had a deep and wide life experience about things about which message of God talks. If not then such people are little better than animals who have not yet developed to stage of humanity. This is why knowing how words came about and how they got their meanings becomes of vital importance to know because without knowing that mechanism people cannot develop a possible vocabulary which could introduce them to meanings of words which are used by God therefore people cannot develop a proper context of message of God without knowing such meanings of words used in the message of God. Unless human beings come to this stage of awareness about problem of language between God and mankind this problem cannot be solved. This shows how God is limited by being a God and how humanity is limited by being human beings in context of use of language. Since people cannot know anything beyond their time of development and progress and God talks about realities of things as they are so there is a huge gap between knowledge of God and knowledge of people. This is why people cannot be sure what the message of God actually means unless they come to know some basic rules of understanding the text of the message of God. Once they come to know the rules then they can be reasonably sure about understanding the message of God properly just like knowing formulas for mathematical expressions for solving the mathematical problems. Though people talk about detail of message of God but no matter how detailed message of God is it is still up to people to make proper sense of it and different people need different amount of detail for understanding it properly. Moreover God can only detail message up to a stage otherwise that will interfere with God given freedom of humanity due to God having a plan and an purpose for his creation that stops God from over doing things which could ruin his own plan and purpose for things. However some people being more able to make proper sense of message of God can detail his message for others to help them understand the message of God as it ought to be understood, though most people only try to confuse each other more and more due to being ignorant or illiterate or uneducated or untrained or unskilled or being unable to think properly themselves.
The idea of human language is of such importance to understand that without it even an atheist is unable to answer to himself any serious questions about existence of God in a logically consistent way. For example if one asks oneself is there a God, one cannot say there is no God because one cannot prove so no matter how hard one tries. Moreover it is impossible to prove a negative. This is why the real question becomes if there is a God then what is the proof? This question can only be answered by those who know the answer by saying God does exist and the proof is his creation and his revelation. However the question then becomes how do the creation and the revelation prove existence of God to mankind? They prove existence of God to mankind by people studying them both in detail in light of each other. This is where in comes idea of research and exploration and discovery. This is why people who are not interested in idea of studying things in depth and in width cannot know anything much about anything be it the universe or God or his revelation. In order to study the universe people must learn language to the best of their God given abilities. Likewise in order to make sense of revelation of God they must learn language of message of God which is very different from what people use with each other for communicating their ideas to each other. This is why they need to develop a dictionary that could help them understand message of God. So far all dictionaries written by people are only collection of some words that are brought about by people and their meanings used by people. This is not sufficient for understanding of message of God by people. So people who do not understand this problem of language between God and mankind their opinions are nothing more than their wishful thoughts that have no basis in reality. So those who dismiss the idea of existence of God unless they can explain logically consistently how they came to their conclusion of nonexistence of God they are simply talking nonsense. It is because they have no choice but to accept possibility of existence of God but if one accepts the possibility of existence of God then on ends up with a huge problem on one’s hands which is one has to explain reason for creation and revelation of God in light of what mankind can clearly observe in this real world with their own senses. Not only that but one also has to explain how God could communicate his message to mankind in this world the way it exists and ensure his message was understood by mankind properly if thye chose to study it properly. So people who have no idea about such important questions and their relationship to each other whatever they say about God cannot be taken just on its face value. It is because if people cannot find a way or accept it whereby God could communicate his message to people then their acceptance of possibility of existence of God falls flat on its face due to break down in their logical consistency in their explanation, therefore whatever such people say about God cannot be trusted. All this will be discussed in great detail as things develop in this study of the Quranic message.
The difference between facts, theories and laws.
First of all words fact and theory both have various meanings which depend upon the context of their use or purpose. However in one respect facts are objects or things that are detectable with human senses either directly or with help of instruments ie real world realities are facts be they within our own reach or not. In this context theory means explanation that helps make sense of the things or facts or real world realities or objects. In the same context laws are those observed realities which repeatedly happen the same way or are made to happen the same way. It is a matter of if, then and always. Law means a way of doing something or a way of making something happen the same way. For example, if water is poured on the ground then it will flow downhill due to gravity. Since this will happen always therefore we can take it as a rule. If anything consumable is put in the fire then it will burn. Since this will happen always therefore we can take it as a rule.
Coming to theory of evolution. It is not a fact in the sense explained above because it is not a real world reality or an object but an explanation of some observed realities or objects. Whether this explanation is complete or incomplete depends upon facts or objects used in the explanation. The more the number of facts there are the better the explanation of the facts is because the increased quantity of things in the sample helps understand something better just like quality control sampling. The higher the sampling frequency the more likely it is that faulty goods will be caught and less likely that faulty goods will escape detection.
Since for Godless explanation of evolution samples so far collected or are available are not sufficient in numbers therefore it is not as good an explanation as is necessary or needed therefore to take it as a something water tight is not right. There are far too many gaps between things which clearly show they do not transform into each other smoothly enough rather they need more and more intermediary things to go between them. This shows steps or breaks or irregularities which lend support to God based idea of evolution rather than the Godless based idea of evolution. For example, big bang seems to be a controlled inflation of the universe or expansion of the time and space for serving some purpose rather than a random explosion which could have led to chaos instead of the fully functioning universe.
As for evolution based upon divine intervention there is more than sufficient evidence. For example, so many variations in each and every kind of things in ways that cannot be explained any other way than external intervention due to gaps between species of things. More than that the origin of things which did not exist is better explained that way only. That is, a thing which we accept has come into existence had to have a parent or originator otherwise it could not come into being. I am here due to my parents and the chain goes back but it has to stop at some point in time. If this does not stop then that leads us into infinity which is impossible for things that come into existence because before a child thing could come into existence its parent must first have to be there and if parents of parents are not there then how could their children come into existence? This being the case we have no choice but to except that ultimately there is something there which was always there which did not need a creator which brought the non-existing thing or things into being eg the universe and things in it. Since things need to be functional that come about otherwise they cannot survive this means they need designing and planning because allowing things to happen randomly is not going to produce any results regardless of length of time. You can break a glass bottle and let the pieces lie on the ground they will never become a bottle again regardless how long they are left lying there. This is why saying Godless evolution is a fact is wrong. It is not only about first cause but planning and designing as well. Unless there is some planning and designing involved in a project just a random knock or cause does not turn something into a perfect working model. If we say matter or energy is ever existing and has ability of intelligent designing then we are replacing one thing with another ie God for identical qualities of matter so where is sense in that? If God evolved things it still needs a lot of explanation eg what was purpose of God for creating things? How did he create them? How do they work to fulfill his objective? Etc etc. Idea of God can only be eliminated once we have better explanation than the one offered by the allegedly revealed scripture. However first we need to learn enough to understand this scripture that is said to be from God ie the Quran.
I blame our human ignorance for lack of our understanding of the allegedly divine scripture because I have my reasons to believe so. For example, to begin with we humans depend upon external physical realities for learning by interacting with them directly. It is because our minds create images of things or models which we see. As things are or they interact with each other we try to figure them out. Through this learning process we learn simple reasoning which becomes more and more complex and sophisticated as we learn more and more about things. This is why those who have wider and deeper life experiences have better understanding of things than those who have narrow and shallow life experiences. This is why people with wider and deeper life experiences can easily see logical connections and disconnections between things. This helps people to see what goes together and what does not. This is how we gradually become rational thinkers. However to think about abstracts is still another world to learn about and anyone who is not good at learning reasoning about real world realities certainly cannot be good in learning about abstract concepts because in that case one has to rely entirely upon reasoning to try and understand things.
Let me try and explain this in another way. Let say our bike has broken down and we need to repair it. Since bike is basically a physical thing with almost all parts visible to us we can easily find most of the faults in it just by physical visual examination of it which involves simple reasoning. The same cannot be said about our tv set when that breaks down. This time there are many more parts involved and a lot of things in it involve electricity which means electrons are not visible to us to see where they are going and how the fault is preventing them from working. It is easy for a mother to put on anti septic cream when her child slightly injures himself while playing in the playground, however if a person has internal pain due to something gone wrong inside then that cannot be easily diagnosed due to being invisible to the eye. So one has to arrive at a conclusion by reasoning things out, so we can see how visible things help us learn about invisible things. Therefore first stage of learning is to learn about what is visible and within our reach. Without first going through this stage of reasoning we cannot develop to go to the next stage of process of learning reasoning.
This is why just because we have managed to understand a little bit about real world realities it does not mean we can understand the scripture attributed to God. That is because to understand the scripture people need to especially prepare themselves as it needs a higher stage of learning reasoning by human beings. That is because it is word of God but in human language and the problem is in decoding it accordingly.
Why do we need higher stage of learning reasoning to understand the scripture? It is because without scripture there is nothing to tell us with reasonable certainty regarding origin of the universe and ourselves, how things came to be what they are, what is purpose of all this and how things are supposed to work to fulfill any purpose if there is one? Such things are beyond our senses that is why the need for guidance. However just because we can read a scripture does not mean we can understand it properly or we can follow it faithfully. This needs knowledge about things that a scripture talks about otherwise we cannot understand it. What sense can a baby get when a politician starts talking to him about politics? Absolutely none. Since scripture is mainly for peace and harmony between people at its basic level so that they could then together concentrate on higher objectives rather than fighting with each other and losing the sight of higher goals therefore it needs full attention for our proper understanding of it to benefit from it.
This is why we cannot be right in dismissing things out of hand till we have done our bit properly regarding the scripture. Divine scriptures were not needed if we were already fully programmed like robots. Scriptures are needed because we have been programmed a bit and a bit we must program ourselves like self learning robots. In short God has designed us to find out God but by our own sense of creativity and effort that is why we must discover the scripture and the creation for ourselves.
As for the objective of deen of Islam, it is to fulfill the purpose for which Allah has created this universe and mankind in it. I have yet to explain in detail what that purpose is or why Allah bothered to create the universe and us human beings in it. So anyone interested in detail study of the scripture should carry on reading what I am going to explain about it so that one could come to know it.
Just to help people keep in mind, Allah created things because he being a living being decided to express his existence and that he did by way of creation and revelation. Why revelation? Because he wanted to create a creature called human with a limited free will so that it could appreciate his existence and ability of creativity out of choice with a little helping hand from God himself through his guidance. This means deen of Islam is not something that is fully worked out set of instructions like a flow chart for each and every person rather it only gives guidelines to use for figuring out rest of it by ourselves in light of those guidelines and real world realities. This si the main reason for people consulting each other regarding matters of deen of Islam.
To appreciate God to that degree humanity has to reach a level of knowledge all by itself to be able to understand the scripture properly because it has been created knowing nothing at all but with brains and senses and bodies that can help it achieve that objective with help of God's revelation and creation by interacting with them.
This is the starting point of deen of Islam ie the purpose why God created things including human beings and why human beings have been left on their own by God to learn things by themselves through direct interaction with things after being created knowing nothing at all. This is why God advises a way of life for mankind that could help them fulfill the purpose for which God created human beings.
What is deen of Islam? It is a way of life which if understood properly and followed faithfully by mankind can lead them to blissful, dignified and secure life in this world and any effort by anyone made in that direction will be rewarded both in this life as well as in the life to come. Any people who will reject and oppose that way of life will end up in painful suffering in this life by hands of each other as well as in hereafter because whatever way of life people will invent and adopt by themselves will never lead them to blissful, dignified and secure existence instead it will always lead them into conflicts and wars with each other because no way of life people will ever be able to invent and follow that could be free of concept of personal gains at the expense of each other. This is why deen of Islam will take over humanity in due course completely ie after a lot of conflicts and fights with each other people will gradually come to realise that they have no way of life to live by other than the way of life whereby they could live with each other as a united, peaceful, progressive and prosper human community ie an ummah.
What is the way of life about whereby Allah wants people to live? It is about living for each other and not living at the expense of each other. It is because personal vested interests at the expense of each other lead people into all sorts of harmful and destructive divisions and conflicts with each other sooner or later. That is how comes about rivalry and animosity which leads to hatred between people that turns into conflicts which lead to unending wars between people.
Why must people live for each other? It is because they have been created to depend upon each other. Some have been created with much more advantages as compared to others only to work together as one single human family ie they have been created for purpose of complementing each other and not for taking undue advantages of each other. Why must anyone work for anyone else instead of oneself? It is because all human beings belong to God and everything also belongs to God so all things must be used according to his guidance so that his purpose could become fulfilled. If people will not do so then because all people are not created equal therefore those better off will try and take undue advantage of the disadvantaged and so the conflicts will start which cannot be ended till people do what God says ie use his provisions according to his wishes to ensure well being of all people. This is why in deen of Islam there is no right for anyone to rule over others or to buy or sell anything because nothing belongs to anyone to do so. People have right of use of things from God but only if they use them according to guidance of God not otherwise. This is why there is no ruling class or money lending business elite or priestly class in actual deen of Islam. All these are tricks and mechanisms for using masses abusively by cleverest among them.
The objective of deen of Islam is very clear which is to unite mankind for their own good to ensure well being of mankind. Now when you want to unite people you not only need goals and guidelines but a program as well. This is why the Quran not only gives a program for accomplishing the stated goals but also guidelines for formation of a constitution and laws to go with it so that people could organise and regulate themselves as a proper human community according to them for accomplishing the stated objectives. This is why goals, guidelines, program, constitution and laws all have to be consistent with each other so that the whole thing could work smoothly like a machine. This is what deen of Islam basically is in a nut shell.
All human invented ideologies are based upon pyramid scheme for power through manpower or wealth or fooling people in the name of God through various versions of religion or secularism which present a very odd and twisted concept about God over which people waste a lot of time in arguing with each other endlessly as is very much obvious from the debates on various discussion forums.
The difference between deen of Islam and mazhab
To understand the Quran one has to know the difference between the mazhab and deen of Islam and the way to understand the Quran properly. Why? Because till people realise what mazhab is and why it is what it is they cannot have the idea of what deen of Islam is and why it is what it is.
Mazhab is basically result of natural human thought processor. As we know we human beings are born not knowing anything about the real world and its realities. All we are born with is brain and senses and body to make sense of the world in which we are born and things in it including ourselves. In my writings I explain why God has created us the way he did or the way we are. When we start struggling in this word from our births till our deaths we find out many things about this world that we knew nothing at all about. All this leads some of us who have paid enough attention to things to question our origin and purpose and functioning etc etc. This is where at we get stuck because we cannot go any further from here. This is human thought and that is called mazhab=religion ie we think there has to be a creator of all this we see before us. Whether there actually is a creator or not we have no way to find out for sure so we turn to various practices to find out the best we can. This is what we call spiritualism. As people want to know if there is a God or not and if there is one how to reach God to ask him questions we have in our minds so this leads mankind into different directions so people do all sorts of things in order to get near to God as they think better for themselves. This gives birth to many different ideas and practices which we call religions or versions of religion. However no matter what people think and do in the name of God they cannot know anything about God for sure because God is not within their reach through their brains and senses. At this stage people who wish to take undue advantage of each other in the name of God do so therefore people end up divided into many religions and sects within those religions. This is all a mazhab or religion is from the beginning to the end.
Now the deen of Islam aspect of this equation is God getting in touch with humanity. Since people cannot get in touch with God but God can so he gets in touch with mankind through his revelation eg in this era it is the Quran that is God's revelation. This is the fundamental difference between deen of Islam and mazhab. It is a case of people looking for God and God looking for people and when the two meet that is when the connection becomes complete. Think it as if you want to get to the top of a mountain but you cannot on your own so someone drops you a rope from there to help you get there but you can only use that rope if you could rise to the height needed for you to see and catch the rope. However to get to the top of the mountain one has to be able to use the provided rope properly otherwise one is in danger of falling off and breaking one's neck.
The rope itself does not do anything to get you on the top of the mountain, it is because your creator and sustainer has a purpose in mind for creating you and that purpose does not allow him to make the rope do everything for you to get you to the top of the mountain instead he wants you to make your own effort as well in getting to the rope and using it properly. It is God and man working together that can help humanity succeed in accomplishing the purpose of God that is assigned to humanity by God. This is the main reason mazhab is very different from deen of Islam. This explains what is going on around the world in the name of mazhab and deen of Islam ie why there are soofies and mullahs and this and that and all claim to have something to do with Islam. This is like you have to travel from one place to another but you have to use various modes of transport to get there. You may start walking then take a bus and then get into a ship and then into a plan etc etc to reach your destination. What is going to help you make your journey without problems is your best preparation for it. If you think you can get from a to b without needing any preparations then you will be prone to losing your way at many point along the way either by sticking to a particular mode of transport not knowing when to get off one thing to get onto another. This is what religions and sects are about and that is why people are lost in them because they get into this journey without making necessary preparations ie without educating themselves about finding out the truth in this regard. This is why confused people have so many make beliefs and do all sorts of ritual acts in order to please God as they think. This is why it is very important to understand proper concepts about God so that we do not have wrong expectations about God and from God. This is the main reason getting to the revelation of God and making proper sense of it becomes vitally important otherwise we could end up believing all sorts of wrong things and doing all sorts of wrong things in the very name of God thinking them to be right and proper. Such a thing then could become a barrier in our path when it comes to searching for guidance from God.
Let us suppose a person has made necessary preparations and he gets to the revelation of God ie you have the Quran in your hands which claims to be a guidance from God for mankind. From here on another journey starts and that is how to make sense of the text of the Quran or Hadith or any written text be it about history or anything else. This again needs a lot of preparation and the foundation for this purpose is to know what is the original human language, how words came about and how they got their meanings. Why is all this important to know? It is because if we do not know these things then we cannot be sure about human language itself never mind any message of anyone for anyone in any language. It is because without knowing these facts about language we could accuse each other about making up things by ourselves as we go along. To make sure this does not happen these facts are absolutely necessary to know. Since the Quran is merely a text or a collection of written words and nothing more unless we agree its words have a firm foundation and certain concretely established meanings by way of various mechanisms we cannot talk about it or anything else for that matter. This should make absolutely clear to a person looking for guidance from God why such a person has to know certain basic facts about human language clearly before sitting down with the scriopture to make sense of its text.
The other main reason for knowing the very first human language is because without it God could never communicate his message to mankind. In fact one can try and communicate a message to someone else without using any form of human language, one will soon realise what I am talking about. One can try and disagree with me on any of the points I have explained here so far but I do not think one can. Human languages are human inventions but God wanted to use human language to communicate his message, which means he meant to convey his own ideas as they were about things because he knows them in reality. For example, there is a big difference in God using word human and a human being using word human. It is because God knows each and everything about a human being but not a human being despite being a human being oneself. This is why a language that has ability to accommodate message of God has to be used therefore God becomes limited by this fact just like a grown up becomes limited by talking to a baby in baby language. A baby cannot use a higher math’s book. So there arises need for God to wait till baby has become a gown up human being and has a lot of experience with real world realities by interacting with them directly which help him learn things. This is why we provide our kids with toys because we think they will help them learn things by playing with them. God has created a lot of things in this universe for the very same reason that people interact with them to learn from experience with them and then once they have enough knowledge then they sit down with book of God and try and make proper sense of it and once they have it then work according to its guidance.
This is why God needed to use an original human language to express his message for mankind which could not be mistaken by learned people in the human world for anything that did not fit his purpose. Any period bound language could not express message of God because no human generation was ever capable of knowing all at any point in time in human history. This is why a language had to be chosen by God that was flexible enough to be understood by all for ever after the message of God was revealed to mankind. Such a book in this era is only and only the Quran as we shall see when we get into detailed study of the Quranic text.
The Quran explains throughout itself what deen of Islam actually is and what it is not. Moreover the Quran is an interactive book because it is for human beings who have been created with ability to self program themselves just like self programming robots. So people who have prepared themselves well should have little problem in understanding its message properly. So people who think God should spoon feed them or do all the work and leave nothing for people to do need to think what they are asking for and why or is there any sense in it at all, because whoever does anything does it for himself so does God. We cannot force our will on God because it is his will that is supreme. Therefore we should not ask God for things that make no sense in the context in which we ask if we sit and think over it. Can one therefore see how the Quran proves to be a book of science and philosophy, society, politics and economics? It is because it is book of guidance and not a book of complete instructions for each and every person to each and every minute detail. It contains only and only what was essential for mankind to know so that they could find their way to purpose of God for creating them. The foundation of deen of Islam is its name ie a way of life which is capable of leading mankind to blissful, dignified and secure existence in this very world which will be rewarded in hereafter as well. Word ISLAAM is from root SEEN, LAAM and MEEM. These letters are same as in Hebrew. Word Islam means same thing both in Arabic and Hebrew and various other ancient languages as well.
Why is it of vital importance to know about origin and development of human language?
It is because to know the message of God properly is not possible without knowing such facts. If people did not invent ways of communicating with each other then they could not explain anything about anything to anyone because they had no way to communicate with each other. The original human language was body language which gave rise to sign language or gestures. The sign language was coded with sounds and pictures and that is how people came to speak, read and write what they wanted to convey to each other. This was the origin and development of human language which became more and more complex with time due to people discovering many things generation after generation. Why knowing this information is of vital importance for people in order to make sense of message of God? It is because message of God is communicated through words and words have meanings. How did the words come about and how did they get their meanings is therefore very important to know for proper understanding of the message of God.
The other main reason for which knowing such information is of vital importance is because God knows things as they are as he has brought them about but people do not because they are born into this world knowing nothing at all. Although people are born knowing nothing at all but they have been bestowed with brains, senses, bodies, things to sense and interact with in order to learn. The learning process begins with observations of real things as to what they are and how they work and then questioning about them and then trying to answer those questions. Once people have learned sufficiently through their deep and wide life experiences through interaction with real world realities then they are ready for undertaking study of the message of God. This is why people who do not prepare themselves for understanding the message of God properly remain confused all their lives and they cannot follow the revealed message of God faithfully no matter how hard they try. This is why just reading the book from God without knowing some important facts is a useless exercise because the message is sent for a set purpose and that purpose cannot be fulfilled till the message is first understood properly and then followed faithfully. This is the main reason the Quran forbids people from following each other blindly like sheep. It repeatedly tells mankind do not follow even your own very ancestors if they have not learned things that are of vital importance for humanity as a proper human community. This is how the Quran emphasises importance of intellectual integrity. If one's ancestors did not learn sense to be sensible people then it is better that a person oneself learns sense to be a sensible person and not be like one's ancestors ie a foolish person.
Deen of Islam is therefore not a personality cult as most people assume it to be. It is a program for God set goals for mankind to accomplish according to his provided guidelines. This is why deen of Islam is about organising and regulating humanity into a proper human community otherwise its set goals cannot be accomplished by mankind according to its provided guidelines. The main reason people must not follow anyone blindly is because no one knows all things other than God and people cannot understand message of God unless they go about it the way they should as explained. If people will not try to know message of God as explained then they can never make proper sense of it ever. If people will fail to make proper sense of message of God then they cannot benefit from its presence. This is why people must make a real good effort for knowing the message of God properly so that they could ensure their own well being as well as of each other both in this life as well as in life to come.
As explained, the message of God is mainly a set of goals with a program for mankind to accomplish according to his provided guidelines for a constitution and laws so that people become a proper human community through organising and regulating themselves. As long as there is no purpose there is no need for any constitution or law but if there is one then there arises need for a constitution and laws because then all that is there or is done has to be according to some sort of foundational values or rules or chaos will become inevitable and that means the mission or purpose or objective will remain unaccomplished. It means when there is no law then anyone can do whatever one likes but once there has come about a law then that law has to be followed by all involved or things based on that law will not materialise. This is why even the law giver has to remain consistent with his provided law or all his promises based upon that law will mean nothing at all. This is why when there is a law then there cannot be any personality cults because persons come under the law be it by their own choice. This is why laws of nature are consistent and constant and do not go through changes once God has set them up for set up systems to operate. This is why guidelines given to mankind by God for forming constitution and laws do not go through changes because they are permanent and that is because goals set by God for mankind to accomplish are also permanent. This is why deen of Allah was always the very same from the beginning till the end. Unless people take these like basics as foundation they cannot make proper or complete sense of the scripture sent by God or the real world realities no matter how hard they try.
God, a proven fact or a mere fiction?
People are born knowing nothing at all so generally most of them remain ignorant, illiterate, uneducated, untrained and unskilled therefore are very limited in their thinking and doing things. That results in false interpretations of divine message because people are not used to organised or purposeful thinking that leads to sure results. There is nothing wrong with being ignorant because that is natural state of human existence but man is created with ability or potential to learn so remaining ignorant is a crime against God and humanity. That is because an ignorant person is of no use to himself or for that matter to anyone else. Knowledge is power and if one does not have this power then one is powerless or weak and unable to do anything much.
Courage comes from knowledge and ignorance only breeds fear. It is through fear of the unknown man has taken forces of nature and other powerful things as his gods. However it is all a process of growing up. Man is born a baby and grows biologically, psychologically and sociologically. From the day God brought things to existence all has been evolving and has reached the stage that we observe today. It was a very long journey and it will remain a very, very long journey till we reach the stage that God has chosen for us to reach. A human being though begins as a single cell the potential placed within this cell is so great that man has yet to realise it for so many generations to come. It is like a huge tree that grows from a tiny seed bit by bit over a period of time.
The Quran has nothing to do with religion and blind faith. It is a book which deals with all necessary information that humanity will ever need for its guidance. The Quran is the only book in the world of its kind as a proof of existence of God and his program. A book that acts as guidelines for a manifesto, a constitution and a set of laws or legislation. In order to know all this from the Quran itself one has to educate oneself to the level whereby the Quran begins to make sense. After all no book is written without any purpose in mind of its author nor anyone does anything aimlessly. Anything that just happens without any intent and effort is taken as a mistake not a motivated act to some end. Even if someone kills someone by his mistake it is still a mistake and not a first degree murder.
What is Quran? Centuries back in time an Arab by name of Muhammad claimed he was a messenger from Allah. People asked him for a proof of his claim so he gave them a book namely the Quran as evidence to prove his claim. That is the book we are going to talk about and see if that claim was true or false.
Before we begin examination of the Quran in some detail, it is necessary for people to know the difference between self evident facts and proven facts. Then it is also vital to realise the difference between testimonial proven facts and theoretically proven facts.
God is not a self evident fact, that is because we humans cannot detect God by our senses directly or indirectly through instrumentation etc but the universe is self evident fact and all that which exists in it because it is detectable by human senses even if by use of instrumentation if not today may be at some stage later.
The Quran is testimony of God therefore it needs to be examined as a testimony just as we examine the testimony of a witness in a court of law to see if it is true or false. However before we can properly examine any testimony of any witness we need to understand it properly because without understanding what a witness is saying we cannot judge whether what one is saying is true or false. If a witness only spoke French language and the examiner only spoke Persian language then things will not workout till one of them learns the language of the other, the same goes for subjects under discussion ie if one person talked about biology but other could only understand physics things will still not work out till one of the persons comes to know the subject the other is talking about. Likewise a child or a baby minded person cannot understand grown up or educated person's terminology. Since no one does anything without any purpose in mind neither one testifies without knowing why one is testifying, so knowing the purpose of the Quran also becomes of vital importance. However once testimony is found to be sound ie without contradictions within and with respect to related self evident facts then it has proven reliable or true. This is called testimonial proof ie reliable testimony of a witness. One has to remember that one cannot add anything to the testimony of a witness from oneself nor can one take away anything from it, it has to be examined as it is and a person has to come up with one’s own explanations to accept or reject it depending upon the fact the explanation offered is a sound one are not. So the Quran has to be examined the way it is given to mankind without saying what should or should not be in the Quran. If the Quran is found lacking in anything objectively only then it could be proven false but then we will have to prove that it does lack in necessary information regarding its stated purpose. That is if the Quran states that it is for this or that purpose but when we examine it, it does not serve that purpose then it surely proves itself false but on the other hand if we find that it serves its stated purpose fully then the Quran has proven its worth fully so it cannot be denied what it claims to be ie word of God.
Coming to theoretical proof, it is a best personal explanation of available evidences or clues. This is needed because something that happened did not happen before our eyes ie it happened in our absence and that there is no any witness to it either upon whom we could rely to tell us about it. That is because we arrived at the scene late and found only whatever clues were left behind to make whatever sense we could from the clues. For example, we are walking along a road and come across a dead body. There is no one there to tell us what happened to this person so all we can do is see whatever clues are there and come up with an explanation. It could be a murder or natural death or suicide or an accidental death etc etc. So whatever clues we find will help us decide what to make of this situation.
So one can see that theoretical proof is not as strong as witness based proof and witness based proof is not as strong as something that happens right before one’s own eyes. That is how far it is possible for humanity to reach the truth about any matter including existence of God.
This also proves the point that if there is a testimonial proof from God then to fall on blind faith is a false idea and is misleading and this idea must have been implanted in human mind by those who wanted to mislead mankind ie the imperial priesthood. It also proves the idea of versions of religion coming from kings and their priests not God to serve their purpose. Islam is deen not religion. Islam is all about brotherhood of mankind based upon testimonial proof whereas religion is a matter of divide and rule using blind faith for following priests and kings. That is how mankind have been used abusively in the name of God and religion. This is why kings and their priests perverted the messages of God to subvert mankind from deen of Allah but they did not succeed in doing that however they succeeded in making fools of ignorant people. The result is a world that we see all around us today. In order to change this situation for the better we all must learn and educate ourselves and each other to save ourselves from abusive use of each other.
So all people must learn the Quran properly to examine it as a manifesto and program from God for mankind to accomplish some goals according his provided guidelines. The basic goals set by the Quran for people to accomplish are unity, peace, progress and prosperity for mankind. The world in which we are born is only a lab for our experimentation to learn through trials and errors till we have become good enough to be one day managers of the universal factory of God. This process needed to be the way it is because we are supposed to learn from working of this universe and make changes to it to make it suitable for our own living in it ie make it compatible with our existence through interactions within this universe. This is why we are provided with all necessary information and raw materials. This will become clearer as I explain the purpose of creation.
It is important to concentrate on logic and evidence as well as consistency and how they combine to prove existence of God positively. If we ignore this relationship between logic, evidences and consistency then we cannot prove anything at all because then we want everything to happen before our very eyes or as far as we are concerned nothing happened at all eg a murder has not taken place just because it has not happened before our own eyes. It shows how flawed is our thinking in that case because we are denying the very principle that is accepted by all wise people in the world whereby they decide all such matters for which there is no direct evidence at all. After all what is TOE about? Yet almost every scientist worth the name accepts it as a theoretically proven fact.
The other way to look at positive proof of existence of God beside testimonial proof is rational proof. It is a self evident fact that this universe is there. This universe was not always there is also an observed reality. This means it was created, why? Because unless something that changes with time is not created by something that does not change with time it cannot come about. Nothing can come out of nothing ie there has to be something that brings about something ie God has brought about this world. How is that possible?
Since we are here and we know that we are not here permanently so something has bought us here but the question is what brought that thing about? The answer is that thing was not brought about by anything because that had to be there always otherwise we end up with an unending chain of creators, which is impossible. Why is it impossible to have an unending chain of creators? It is because then before each creator could create anything the creator himself needs to be created by its creator. Take this chain to infinity and you will see that in that case nothing gets created, we are not supposed to be here in that case. Let me explain it by an example.
I ask you to help me with some money, you tell me that I need to borrow it from someone else to give it to you but that guy tells you the same and so the story goes on for ever and ever, tell me will I ever get the money I asked for? No, never. It is because each guy keeps going to another guy for borrowing the money so this chain of borrowing does not end so that I could get the help I need. Likewise if each creator needed another creator then when will any creator be there to create anything because creation could not be there at all as a result? Since creation is there therefore it had to have a creator that was always there.
Why the creator created this world and sent his revelation? Because creator wanted to express himself. Anything that exists and is lively has the impulse to exert itself ie it wants to be known as a living being. You have urge to be known if you exist and you are a lively being.
Tell me how would you introduce yourselves? Through your actions that show creativity on your part. God could not express himself unless he was being creative because nothing can. The other problem for urge of expression is that you need to be appreciated by something else that is capable of appreciating you as a creative being. In order to express himself God ended up creating this world and to be appreciated by something he created mankind in it. Something that is free to think ie has its own mind and has ability to show its own creativity given the tools and raw materials as well as a chance to prove itself. God has provided all tools and things of need for man to learn in this factory of God through experimentation ie trial and error till man becomes perfect enough to one day manage his universe for his own good. A time when human potential will become fully unfolded before man and that is the time when man will realise how great creator God was that he created such a wonderful thing called man who himself is such great creator as the handy work of God. That is how one day God will be pleased with what he has created and man will also be please with what he has done with his God given abilities and tools and this is how God will praise man and man will praise God in real sense not by paying lip service to God by not doing anything that shows human creativity.