“Perhaps more than anything else, the discussion between theology and science today is concerned with the presumption of naturalism; where it is not, it perhaps ought to be.”

Philip Clayton (1997, 172)

Introduction

How does the world really function, in its most fundamental way? And what is God’s role in it?

These are two “big questions”, among the biggest that there are, and one may wonder whether we

humans could possibly reach any satisfactory and consistent answers that would not just be “sophisticated views” but have solid ground underlying them. After all, humans deciding what God’s role is supposed to be, what He can and cannot do, will certainly seem presumptuous, as one may recall the well-known Qur’anic verse: “He cannot be questioned concerning what He does, and they shall be questioned (for theirs).”[1] (Q 21:23)

The first question, however, about how the world functions, seems much more within reach of human effort and purview, and indeed, on one level at least, that is what science has been doing, to greater and greater success. Science has identified many (most?) of the essential processes underlying phenomena in nature. Most importantly, it has identified “laws of nature”, or at least “laws of science”[2], that seem to regulate the observed order and regularity in the world. And the huge progress that humans have made on that first question is indicative of the validity of that quest. This then lends encouragement to the pursuit of the second one.

Critics or skeptics might promptly retort that this line of thinking is tantamount to “jumping the gun”, for it implies that nature follows some “laws”, that the latter are “real”, that in the previous paragraph God was not even mentioned or been given any place or role in the scheme of things other than perhaps to have created the world and its laws. Thus the two questions above are actually intimately related: we won’t be able to describe how the world really functions without deciding what God’s role is, and vice versa.

Moreover, looking down into our agenda, we won’t be able to say something about divine action and miracles without having addressed the concept of naturalism, as presupposed by modern science. We thus understand why Philip Clayton (in the above quote) regards this as the central issue in the mutual dialogue and quest for harmony between theology and science.

Methodological Naturalism

The concept of methodological naturalism (MN) is a crucial and largely under-appreciated pillar of modern science, one which explicitly or implicitly leads to conflicts, or at least to difficulties, in the “harmonization” with Islam/Religion. It is important to distinguish it from “philosophical” or “metaphysical” naturalism, which is the atheistic claim of non-existence of supernatural entities altogether, what is often referred to as “materialism.” The latter is a position that many philosophers and scientists adopt, but it is not a principle of Science.

As Phil Stilwell explains, “MN is a provisional epistemology and ontology that provides a framework upon which to do science… MN [entails] that science begin each particular inquiry with the assumption that any explanation will fall within the existing matrix of established material definitions and laws… MN also implies that, if a natural explanation does not immediately emerge from the inquiry, we do not default to a declaration of a supernatural cause.” (Stilwell, 2009, 229)

MN has become a pillar of modern science for reasons of pragmatism and efficacy: MN has proved itself efficient in advancing scientific exploration and discoveries, and it is a reasonable, minimalist assumption, in accord with “Occam’s razor”, which then makes it superfluous to call upon supernatural agents when material causes can explain the phenomenon. Indeed, supernatural explanations were soon identified as “science stoppers”, an end to the explanatory process, thus a non-productive or even counter-productive approach for progress in finding further truths about nature and devising useful applications.[3]

Clearly such a framework for Science poses a challenge to at least some Islamic conceptions of the world and nature, as Muslims often claim and insist that God acts physically and directly in the world, in cases of miracles or in everyday events, either at large scales (earthquakes, floods, etc.) or small, individual, personal scales (in responses to prayers, in particular). More generally, methodological naturalism keeps God “out of the picture”, looking at the world and nature as if God does not exist or does not act. This “cutting off of God’s hands” is indeed the main issue that Seyyed Hossein Nasr has regularly brought forward in rejecting the current naturalistic philosophy of modern science.

Other thinkers, however, from Ibn Rushd to Polkinghorne, have insisted on the regularity that God has put in the world (God’s “faithfulness”, or “reliability” or “consistency”), without which we cannot make predictions, nor even trust any knowledge we construct.

Even opponents of methodological naturalism, most notably Alvin Plantinga, have seen in its universality an important advantage for science (common to all, regardless of anyone’s beliefs, thus permitting more progress). None of the critics and opponents of methodological naturalism propose its full rejection. Draper (2005, 296) tells us that “even William Dembski (1994, 132), a leading critic of methodological naturalism, claims that one should appeal to the supernatural only when one has [very strong] reason to believe that what he calls one’s ‘empirical resources’ are exhausted.”

It thus becomes clear that Muslims, in attempts to harmonize Islamic theology today with modern science, must either fully take methodological naturalism onboard or present solid proposals that go beyond it. I, for one, have made the first choice – with its consequences.

Indeed, is there a contradiction between adopting both a theistic worldview and a thoroughly naturalistic methodology for science? I believe not. Methodological naturalism, as explained above, is a neutral standpoint and approach, and it has proven to be fruitful, appearing to correspond to how the world functions. Theologies that are fully consistent with modern science and methodological naturalism are far from trivial and require some sophisticated work. But they can be constructed.

Divine Action

The question of divine action is essentially another side of the same issue: does God act in the world if we claim that all phenomena in the world have natural explanations? Critics often retort that only deists believe that God’s role is limited to the creation of the world, and that theists believe that God does act… somehow. But if God does indeed act in the physical world, does He do so only through the normal processes of nature or, at least sometimes, by some direct interventions, going beyond the laws of nature?

Indeed, many thinkers make the important distinction between “direct” and “indirect” divine action (Draper 2005, 281), the former being ones where God “acts outside of the ordinary course of nature” (i.e. “without using natural causes to do so”), and the latter being ones where God “uses natural causes to bring about an effect.” Thinkers also make the distinction between “General Divine Action” (GDA) and “Special Divine Action” (SDA), the former being God’s general “sustaining” of the universe (laws and phenomena only working through His presence and permission)[4], and the latter representing actions at specific points/moments, whether directly (“interventions”, suspending the normal laws) or “indirectly” (by using “openings” in the laws of nature). (See Saunders 2002, for detailed and lengthy discussions of various ways to consider GDA and SDA, particularly the latter.)

I should note that SDA, particularly of the direct type, has elicited critiques of capriciousness or uncaringness on the part of God: why didn’t He stop the holocaust and other genocides if he can and does sometime intervene, why does He favor some people over others, etc. (Wiles 1999, 16-17).

Searching for ways by which God could act using natural causes, observers have long noted that the intrinsic indeterminism of quantum mechanics could be a doorway for God’s action in nature, since one would normally assume that God (the Omniscient and Omnipotent) is able to set the outcome of the “wave function collapse process” to any preferred choice from among those that the physics of the situation allows. God could then “steer” events in one direction or another, provided that He acts on each and every particle/atom/molecule in a “coordinated” manner. However, acting in this way, God would look too much like the infamous ‘God of the gaps’.[5]

The second proposal of physical divine action is through the non-linear processes that lead to chaos: tiny effects in the initial conditions of a system, whether microscopic or macroscopic leading to hugely amplified results. Here again, since tiny interventions and changes are essentially impossible to notice, God could take such an approach for His actions, but he would still be a ‘God of the gaps’. Saunders (2002, 177) notes that the “underlying deterministic nature of chaos theory raises insurmountable problems for non-interventionist action.” A perfect application of this chaos effect would be the parting of the Red Sea by the “strong east wind” (the Bible’s words). However, this would also be grounds for believing in God’s intervention in natural catastrophes, which many lay people believe are God’s punishing acts, but a viewpoint which raises concerns.

On the Muslim side, there have been very few, if any, fully argued proposals for viewing God’s action in the world, perhaps due to its high sensitivity. One article that has tackled the subject is Abdelhakim Al-Khalifi’s “Divine Action between Necessity and Choice” (1998), exploring the views of key classical philosophers (Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina) and theological schools of Islam (Mu`tazilism and Ash`arism). The author contrasts the Ash`arites’ views that God’s action is totally free and unconstrained with the Mu`tazilites’ position that God’s act of creation was free but that God has constrained himself by being Just and Good and rewarding/punishing for following/disobeying divine directives to us to be just and good.

Indeed, the Islamic heritage can be constructively tapped in; for instance, the old rationalist Mu`tazilite theology, which insists on the concept of divine laws, could be revived to help resolve this area of tension. Similarly, M. Basil Altaie has found in Ghazali’s views some richness and fruitfulness that could be exploited (Bigliardi 2014, 72-76), and it would be very useful to see those ideas unpacked (using Ghazali or other sources).

I had previously suggested an alternative viewpoint: that God acts only on minds/spirits, but I have not elaborated on this idea. In the western world, this idea has been expressed and elaborated upon, whether one adopts a dualistic or a monistic conception of mind and body (see Polkinghorne 1998, 54-5). In the Islamic tradition, there is a general understanding that the spirit is the communication channel and connection between God and humans as well as the fundamental “driving force” that God infused in humans. More recently, with debates of reductionism in relation to mind and consciousness, the idea that a top-down causation from mind/spirit to the brain, leading from ideas to physical acts which carry on into nature, has become quite reasonably acceptable. George Ellis (1995) has also supported this approach, adding that top-down causation from mind/spirit to the brain could be envisioned via the afore-mentioned quantum processes.

Miracles

Miracles constitute one of the most contentious issues in the debates of Religion and Science. Miracles are not as fundamental to some religions as to others, but in their direct connection to the more important issue of divine action in the world, they are essential to address.

One must start with fundamental questions to define and delineate the concept of miracles and the extent of their manifestation: 1) Are miracles “violations of the laws of nature”, or are they simply striking events that may point to God or supernatural agents but are scientifically only improbable? 2) Do miracles occur only at the hands of prophets, or do they also happen with saints and even with ordinary people (today)? 3) Did Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) perform physical miracles? What about those that the Qur’an relates for other prophets (Abraham, Moses, Jesus)?

A number of thinkers have proposed interesting ideas w.r.t. miracles. Terrence Nichols (2002) views them as events that are “consistent with, but transcend, natural processes.” He suggests two approaches for dealing with miracles: a) the phenomenon may be an extreme, singular case of natural processes, akin to black holes (with gravity) and superconductivity (with electricity); b) the event can only be explained by divine action/intervention, and for this he invokes processes from quantum mechanics or chaos theory. Nichols speculates that “in some extreme circumstances, such as the presence of great faith, the laws of nature, while not changed, behave differently from the way they do in ordinary contexts.”

Keith Ward (2002) adopts a similar position. He suggests that “laws of nature… are best seen not as exceptionless rules but as context-dependent realizations of natural powers.” But he leaves open the possibility that miracles may not “fall under formulable scientific laws”; he adds that “there is every reason for a theist to think that there are higher principles than laws of nature.” He concedes, however, that “it is for competent scientists in the appropriate field to say whether a given event transcends the normal operation of the laws of nature. If it does not, however statistically improbable the event may be, it is not a miracle.”

Indeed, the question of miracles cannot be addressed without full reference to modern science. One must be totally cognizant of conservation principles (energy, electric charge) and other principles, as well as of the (in)determinism of various theories of science, all assuming that causality is fully upheld.

In modern times, several famous Muslim scholars and thinkers have adopted rationalistic or even naturalistic views w.r.t. miracles. Muhammad Abduh’s modernist exegesis of the Qur’an is famous for presenting naturalistic explanations to events that were often considered direct interventions by God; Shibli Nu`mani proposed scientific interpretations of miracles; Sir Seyyed Ahmad Khan is famous for having rejected miracles (as violations of natural laws) because God has established a covenant (or “trust”) with human by having set up laws in the entire universe; Muhammad Asad’s commentary on the Qur’an coherently included rationalistic reinterpretation of miracles; etc.

Recently, a few Muslim thinkers have also expressed interesting views on the question of miracles.

Mehdi Golshani (Bigliardi 2014, 57-60) considers “miracles” as only specific occurrences that fall under different laws, or a combination of laws (a magnetic field cancelling out gravity and making an object float in the air, in the example he gives). There is no violation or the laws of nature. However, even though he regards “miracles” as not central to our religiosity, he does not advocate metaphorical interpretations of any of the Qur’anic miracle stories, keeping open the possibility of their being explained in the future by new knowledge about nature.

A similar view is adopted by Altaie, who first insists that “God does not rule this world miraculously but according to well-defined laws” (Bigliardi 2014, 81), but further stresses that the quantum world has shown that extraordinary events (a person going through a door without opening it) can happen albeit exceedingly rarely. He thus considers “miracles” are extremely rare events that fall under the laws of nature, even though in some cases we may not yet have the knowledge to explain them.

Bruno Abd-al-Haqq Guiderdoni distinguishes between “divine providence”, events that are extraordinary coincidences but violate no laws, and which Muslims consider as divine “intervention”, a “small miracle”, so to speak, and between the events that are described in the Qur’an as apparently supernatural (e.g. a clay bird becoming alive and flying off), and which he proposes to interpret spiritually (Bigliardi 2014, 145-146). For instance, the famous splitting of the moon he interprets as “the splitting of the heart of the believer”, the unveiling of the secrets hidden in one’s heart on Doomsday. He concludes that “the laws of nature are constantly valid” because seeing God as an actor simply “lowers our idea of God.”

I think that one important element in dealing with Qur’anic miracle stories is the full consideration that the Book, as Ibn Rushd (and others) had (have) stressed, speaks differently to people of different intellectual capabilities and different eras. Thus the idea of “real” miracles may (or must) be upheld for the commoners, while the philosophers and the scientists must ensure that causality and the laws of nature are never violated, lest we lose our ability to understand the world and to ascertain knowledge.

Conclusion

Modern science has forced us to reconsider some aspects of theology. We cannot ignore new, important results and robust understanding of the world/nature and keep to old-style theology. Occasionalism, while dominating Islamic mainstream theology for many centuries, now seems like a strange conception to most people, so ingrained has the regularity and law-like nature of the world become. Indeed, Murphy (1995, 332) rejects occasionalism because it makes God the “sole actor” in creation and turns the natural causation that everyone unconsciously takes for granted into nothing but an illusion…

The concepts of methodological naturalism and causation, and their consequences on one’s consideration of divine action and miracles, are key theological issues that Muslim thinkers must address squarely today. Hopefully the rich intellectual tradition of Islam will provide us with much valuable material to work with, along with the extraordinary knowledge that modern science and philosophy have developed.

[1] Of course, this verse has been interpreted in various ways…

[2] A distinction is often made between “laws of nature” and “laws of science”, for science can only hope to approach (as closely as possible) the “real” or “ontological” laws that regulate nature, but at no point, certainly not now, can humans claim that the laws they have “discovered”, or actually “formulated”, are identical to the actual ones of nature (or what Muslims sometimes call “the laws of God”).

[3] For example, if a doctor explains some mental disorder as the work of demons, s/he will not be able to understand the deeper brain processes at work there, nor will any medication be found, one which will alleviate the troubles of the patient…

[4] This is most clearly expressed in Q35:41:  It is Allah Who sustains the heavens and the earth, lest they cease (to function): and if they should fail, there is none – not one – can sustain them thereafter: Verily He is Most Forbearing, Oft-Forgiving.

[5] Divine action through quantum processes became a favorite of a number of western thinkers, most notably the physicist-theologian Robert J. Russell (1997, 2006, 2009).

References

Al-Khalaifi, Abdelhakim. 1998. “Al-Fi`l al-Ilahi bain al-Wujub wal-Ikhtiyar” (‘Divine Action between Necessity and Choice’). Proc. of the Third International Conference on Islamic Philosophy, Cairo: Cairo University.

Bigliardi, Stefano. 2014. Islam and the Quest for Modern Science: Conversations with Adnan Oktar, Mehdi Golshani, Mohammed Basil Altaie, Zaghloul El Naggar, Bruno Guiderdoni and Nidhal Guessoum. Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul.

Clayton, Philip. 1997. God and Contemporary Science. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans.

Dembski, William. 1994. “On the Very Possibility of Intelligent Design.” In The Creation Hypothesis. Ed. J. P. Moreland. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press. Pp. 113-38.

Draper, Paul. 2005. “God, Science, and Naturalism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion. Ed. William J. Wainwright, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 272-303.

Ellis, George FR 1995, Ordinary and Extraordinary Divine Action: the nexus of interaction, in R. Russell, N. Murphy and A. Peacocke, eds. Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. Vatican: Vatican Observatory and Berkeley: The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.

Murphy, Nancey, 1995, Divine Action in the Natural Order: Buridan’s Ass and Schrodinger’s Cat, in R. Russell, N. Murphy and A. Peacocke, eds. Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. Vatican: Vatican Observatory and Berkeley: The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.

Nichols, Terence L. 2002. “Miracles in Science and Theology.” Zygon. Vol. 37(3):703-716.

Polkinghorne, John, 1998, Science and Theology: an introduction, London: SPCK.

Russell, Robert J., 1997. Does ‘the God who Acts’ Really Act? New Approaches to Divine Action in the Light of Science. Theology Today, 54:1, 43-65.

Russell, Robert J., 2006. Quantum Physics and the Theology of Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action, in Philip Clayton (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science. OUP Oxford. 579-595.

Russell, Robert J., 2009. Divine action and quantum mechanics : a fresh assessment, in F. LeRon Shults, Nancey C. Murphy & Robert J. Russell (eds.), Philosophy, Science and Divine Action. Brill.

Saunders, Nicholas, 2002, Divine Action and Modern Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stilwell, Paul. 2009. “The status of methodological naturalism as justified by precedent.” Studies in Liberal Arts and Sciences. Vol. 41: 229-247.

Ward, Keith. 2002. “Believing in Miracles.”  Zygon. Vol. 37(3):741-750.

Wiles, Maurice. 1999, Reason to Believe, London: SCM Press.

Nidhal Guessoum M.Sc, P.hD. is an Algerian astrophysicist. He is a professor at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

1.0          Introduction

In this paper I will deal with the question of science and religion, with reference to Islamic perspectives and frameworks.  The paper will be divided into five sections:

• introduction
• a critique of the Barbour(Barbour, 2000) typology
• a review of the discourse on science and Islam as presented by selected Muslim thinkers, and a characterization of their approaches
• the relevance and use of history in the discourse on science and Islam
• concluding remarks.

I will begin by briefly looking at the discourse on science and religion in the West, using the typology proposed by Ian Barbour, and suggesting that although it might serve as a useful starting point, its application to the issue of science and religion in the Islamic world is problematic, thus necessitating a different framework.

In section two of the paper, I will review the discourse on science and religion/Islam as presented by several selected Muslim thinkers, namely Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Syed Naguib al-Attas, Ziauddin Sardar, Pervez Hoodbhoy and Ismail Faruqi. Although no systematic framework has been developed in the discourse on science and religion in Islam, contemporary Muslim thinkers have developed their own intellectual responses to the issue of science and Islam which can serve as a useful point of reference.  I will classify their responses into three categories, viz.:

• the metaphysical approach: Nasr and Naguib
• the value-ethics approach: Ziauddin Sardar
• the scientific autonomy approach: Hoodbhoy and Abdus Salam

In section three, I will take up the question of the relevance and use of history (of science) in dealing with the question of science and religion in Islam.  The relationship between science and religion in the Muslim world cannot be understood outside of its historical and cultural context, and therefore reference to history is essential in dealing with the issue. Some of the issues dealt with here are:

• misconceptions in the use of history of science in dealing with the question of science and religion
• the historical sociology of science in Islam
• the influence of colonialism on science in the Muslim world
• lessons to be drawn from history, and its relevance to the contemporary world of science in Islam

Finally, I will end the paper with concluding remarks on the following:

• the epistemology of science and religion
• the use of science and technology for development in Islam
• the relevance and use of history

Since the issue is multidimensional, the various salient dimensions as outlined above have to be dealt with, with a view to getting a good grasp of the issues involved in the relationship between science and religion in Islam, and suggesting the way forward.

2.0          Is Ian Barbour’s Typology of the Relationship between Science and Religion Applicable to the Islamic World?

Barbour’s typology, being more sociological rather than historical, cannot be straightforwardly applied to the analysis of the relationship between science and religion in the Islamic world. This is because of the different historical and cultural contexts that existed between science in the western world as compared to science in the Islamic world.  For example, in Barbour’s typology conflict appears as a rather dominant theme; given the history of conflict between Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church in the 17^th century, and between Christian theologians and Darwinists in the 19^th century, this makes sense. Thus the metaphor of “warfare” and “battle” used to describe the relationship between science and religion in the west, seems appropriate, given such a background.  Also the victory of the scientists over the theologians/religionists in those two episodes, seemed to seal the fate of religion in its battle with science in the West. This, coupled with the history of increasing secularisation of western society, therefore prompted at least two of the categories postulated by Barbour, namely: (i) conflict and (ii) independence.  The victory of science over religion, and the autonomy of science from religious authority, seems to imply ‘conflict’ and ‘independence’.  However, in Islam no such drastic episodes took place in the relationship between Islam and science in its history.  Although this does not necessarily suggest the total compatibility between Islam and science, with there being no conflict at all, either potentially or in actuality, the ‘disagreement’ or ‘incompatibility’ between the two is of a different nature, and should be approached with a more nuanced analysis that is sensitive to the subtleties of Islamic history.  For instance, instead of a direct conflict between science and Islam, it was suggested that science was ‘marginal’ in medieval Islamic culture and education, i.e. the so-called ‘marginality thesis’ put forward by Von Grunebaum (Lindberg, 1992, p. 173).  This marginality did not entail conflict, but only reflects the priorities in Islamic culture, where religious sciences prevail over the natural sciences.  Also, the rise of science in Islamic civilisation was partly attributed to the Muta’zilite Caliphs such as al-Ma’mun, with their rationalist tendencies. Although it is tempting to draw parallels with the influence of Protestantism on science in the west, such a comparison is flawed in view of the fact that the Muta’zilah was not really a separate religious sect in Islam, unlike Protestantism in Christianity.  What this suggests is that “Patronage” was an important factor in the development, rise and fall of science in Islamic culture, where this patronage is connected to ‘religious ideology’.  This ‘power factor’ in determining the fate of science in Islamic society is something which cannot be analysed using Barbour’s typology.  Also, Barbour’s typology, like Merton’s norms, assumes the distinct identity of science as an autonomous form of knowledge which is not ‘socially constructed’.  Recent literature in the history and sociology of science, however, have shown how the development of science was shaped and influenced by its social and cultural contexts.  Thus, my suggestion is that we work from the historical ground upwards, rather than impose neat sociological categories and impose on the (‘mismatched’?) historical realities.

3.0          Existing Views on the Relationship between Science and Islam by Muslim Writers

The relationship between science and religion has been discussed by both Muslim and non-Muslim writers.  Western scholars have discussed the issue mainly through Ian Barbour’s four-fold typology, and drawing on the works of historians, philosophers and sociologists of science.  In the Islamic world, the discourse on science and Islam have been influenced and dominated by the works of a few Muslim intellectuals namely Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Syed Muhammad Naguib al-Attas, Ziauddin Sardar, Pervez Hoodbhoy, and more generally the late Ismail Faruqi (Shah, 2001).  Any attempt to formulate an Islamic approach to the relationship between science and Islam must therefore begin by acknowledging and discussing the contributions made by these thinkers to the question of the relationship between science and Islam. I have selected the thinkers above because apart from their influence in shaping the discourse, they can also be regarded as representing the major positions in contemporary Islamic thought on science and Islam. I will begin by briefly outlining their respective positions, giving brief commentaries on each one of them, and suggesting how the discourse as a whole can be carried further or whether any policy implications can be drawn from them.

3.1          The Metaphysical/Traditionalist Approach: Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Syed Naguib al-Attas

Both Nasr (Nasr, 1981) and Naguib (al-Attas, 1989) priviledge Islamic philosophy and metaphysics when dealing with knowledge, including scientific knowledge.  Nasr is more familiar with modern science compared to Naguib, having been educated in physics and geophysics at Harvard in the 1950s.

However, the epistemological position they took when discussing scientific knowledge, is almost similar. This is because of their commitment to Islamic metaphysics and cosmology, through which they view scientific knowledge. They can be considered as ‘globalists’ in their approach to scientific knowledge because they conduct their analysis mainly at the general epistemological level rather than dealing with specific issues in science, or with any specific scientific theory. Even when Nasr deals with the biological theory of evolution, the arguments made are philosophical rather than scientific, unlike the approach taken by someone like Harun Yahya for instance.  Thus both of them consider science as a ‘lower form of knowledge’ based on rational and empirical sources only, in contrast to the ‘higher forms of knowledge’ accessible through religious intuition, gnosis or Irfan. Therefore, the knowledge of the Prophets and the Saints would be of a higher order compared to that of scientists.

Nasr calls himself a ‘Traditionalist’ on this account because he would not accede to the claim that modern science has advanced beyond religion in giving us ultimate truths about the world, including the natural world. Instead, Nasr sticks to his guns and preserve the authority of the Qur’an and the Hadith (as he interprets them) even in the face of modern challenges from science and technology. His uncompromising and unapologetic position against the theory of evolution in the face of scientific orthodoxy can be understood against this background.  The upshot of their metaphysical approach to knowledge is that they are able to preserve traditional beliefs in the ‘supernatural’ or Unseen worlds such as the world of angels and jinn, which modern science has written off or suspended belief in.  Instead, they returned to traditional sources and traditional interpretations of reality as understood by earlier Muslim thinkers especially the Sufis, instead of ‘going with the times’.  Unlike the approach taken by some writers such as Frithoj Capra (Capra, 1976), who attempted to engage with both modern science (quantum physics) and traditional cosmologies such as Taoism, and in a sense ‘updating’ the traditional cosmology through a modern scientific interpretation, Nasr chose to opt for a ‘Traditionalist’ (Jahanbegloo & Nasr, 2010) approach and avoided such engagements. His own autobiography revealed the conscious decision he took in this matter, when he was a physics student at Harvard.  Now, the question is: is there an unbridgeable gulf between the two or is a rapprochement possible?  For Nasr a rapprochement does not seem possible because science and religion are based on different premises regarding the nature of reality.  In science reality is ultimately physical, and that the only sources of valid knowledge are the rational and the empirical. In western thought, this issue has been more or less clinched by Immanuel Kant in the 18^th century, when he rejected the possibility of metaphysical knowledge in his Critique of Pure Reason.  Since then, western thought has imposed boundaries on genuine or valid knowledge, more or less along the lines set out by Kant and later revised by the Logical Positivists.  Even when Wittgenstein in his later work, tried to rescue non-scientific discourse from being consigned to the flames and the realm of the ‘meaningless’, he ended up by giving a secular humanistic account in terms of ‘language games’.  In other words, the west has not been able to re-assign the realm of the spiritual back into mainstream intellectual discourse (note the writings of Rorty (1999) for instance), while in the Islamic world following Al-Ghazali, the spiritual and metaphysical realm has remained cognitively respectable even today.

3.2          The Ethical Approach by Ziauddin Sardar

Unlike Nasr and Naguib, who chose to view science through Islamic metaphysics, Sardar (Sardar, 1977) instead looks at science through Islamic ethics.  Familiar with western critiques of science, Sardar adds to the growing dissenting voices against science in the west, but by bringing in his own Islamic background and perspective into the picture.  In the 1970s, critics of science—apart from philosophical critiques by Kuhn, Feyerabend and the Edinburgh School—point to the damage caused by science and technology to the environment though industrial pollution, to human security through the nuclear arms race, and the dangers of a ‘brave new world’ brought about by advances such as ‘human cloning’.

Sardar’s diagnosis is that the ills of modern science results from the fact that it is a by- product of a secular western civilisation that has abandoned religion and religious values in the transition from medievalism to modernity.  The solution therefore, is not to reject science but to envelop it within an Islamic value-system, so that science can be practised according to Islamic values and hence be of benefit to humanity.  Sardar begins by criticising the notion that science and technology are ‘value-free’.  To him, science and technology are not value-free but are infused by values adopted throughout western history and civilisation such as the Enlightenment, Capitalism etc.  These values which are ‘man-made’, in contrast to a divinely-inspired value-system, could not deliver men out of his ills.  Thus despite the promise heralded in the Baconian vison of the 17^th century of human salvation on earth through advances in science and technology, and the Enlightenment ideal of a rational approach to life and thought, we have not seen a better world despite advances in scientific knowledge and modern technology.  Sardar’s argument and solution is that since science is not value-free (both in a descriptive and a normative sense), it is best if science is practised according to Islamic ethics which is universal since Islam is a universal religion for the whole of mankind. He outlined several of these ethical principles such as justice, conservation, balance, avoidance of wastage etc, which could act as guiding ethical principles in the practice of science and technology.  The advantage of Sardar’s approach for Muslims is that he does not advocate turning away from modern science and technology, which the metaphysical approach indirectly does.  Although critical of science like his other western colleague, Jerome Ravetz, Sardar still entertains the hope that science re-directed can be harnessed for a better world.

In so doing, his approach also helps Muslims to cope with modernity by accommodating science within the Islamic value-system.  Although Sardar’s approach remains programmatic and lacking in details (eg. ‘what does an Islamic science policy look like?’), it is hopeful in that it allows for the retention of an Islamic identity in the attempt made by Muslim societies to modernise through science and technology. In fact he was quite critical of Nasr’s approach to modern science and technology, which he regarded as not quite useful in practical terms given the backwardness of Muslim countries in science and technology in relation to the West, and how this has hampered the Muslim Ummah and was partly responsible for its history of being colonised.

3.3          The Scientific Autonomy Approach: Pervez Hoodbhoy and Abdus Salam

If Zia Sardar was considered a radical by some, it is more so with Pervez Hoodbhoy (Hoodbhoy, 1992), who in his book Science and Islam, advocated for autonomy of science from control by Islamic religious authority.  Hoodbhoy drew his inspiration from the history of science in western civilisation, although he was equally aware of the history of science in Islamic civilisation.

In the west, science and scientists had to go through a long history of struggle against religious authority, before it finally became independent from religious control. This was symbolised and epitomised by the conflict between Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church in the 17^th century. Although this was not the whole story, since religion was also a factor in the rise of modern science in the west as shown in the Merton thesis and in the institutionalisation of science in religiously-controlled medieval European universities, it cannot be denied that the advancement of science took place amidst a secularising European society, where the support from the secular state enabled science to operate quite freely, though now under the control of a secular state authority. In Islam, because of its all-encompassing nature, secularisation has never really taken root in Islamic society.  Thus no sphere of modern life, be it political, economic, legal, educational, or even cultural, can be totally free of religious injunction or authority.

Hoodbhoy himself when writing his book, personally experienced this when there was an attempt to revive “Islamic Science” and to “Islamise” science, when Pakistan was ruled by the Islamist General Zia ul-Haq.  Hoodbhoy regarded any attempt at what he considered as ‘religious interference’ in the development of science, as unwarranted and even detrimental to the Muslim cause.  To him the problem is not that science is “un-Islamic”, or at odds with Islam in certain respects. The problem rather, is contemporary Muslim backwardness in science and technology in relation to the west and other advanced countries such as Japan and South Korea.  This sentiment is shared by his mentor, ironically the rather religious Abdus Salam (Salam, 1984), and I believe most aspiring modern Muslim governments today.  But Hoodbhoy does not want to cut himself off totally from his Islamic roots, citing the pre-eminence of Muslim science in the past in support of the argument that science and Islam are not necessarily incompatible.  However, he was aware of the rationalist ideology of the Mu’tazilah, whom he credited for the support they gave to science in Islamic civilisation that led to its pre-eminence. That same spirit, he believed, should be exercised in our age.

Thus it is not Islam per se that is to be blamed for the decline of science in Islam, but instead the attitude adopted by certain Muslim thinkers and leaders, that have been responsible for the current malaise. What is needed therefore, is an ‘enlightened’ Islamic approach to modernity, including science and technology. It smacks of a ‘missed Protestantism’ in Islamic history, and suggests remedial action along those lines.

4.0          Science and Islam and the Challenge of History: The Social and Cultural Context of Science in Islam

The relationship between science and Islam cannot be properly understood outside of its historical and cultural context (Dallal, 2010).  Even then, the history of science in Islam needs to be properly interpreted in order to draw the right lessons, thus making history relevant for contemporary science policy in the Muslim world.  Science and technology policy in the contemporary world is heavily influenced by western models, such as the OECD models, namely the so-called Oslo and Frascati Manuals, which in turn is based on a different historical experience, and tied to a certain view of economic growth. It is more relevant to western countries that have achieved a high level of economic growth based on the K-Economy with substantial inputs from R&D.  Muslim countries would do well to reflect on their own historical experience in the relation between science and Islam, instead of slavishly imitating the west.

Even if Muslim countries succeed in achieving similar success by adopting those models, it might be at the expense of cultural stability and authenticity based on Islamic values.  Thus it is important for Muslims to understand the historical challenge in charting their own paths towards modernity, through the incorporation or assimilation of science and technology.  In this regard, we cannot strictly separate the thematic from the historical/chronological, the synchronic from the diachronic, because the past is still very much with us. We carry a greater historical and cultural baggage as compared to the west, which has discarded much of that baggage throughout its history.

In trying to draw positive lessons from history, I will first begin by discussing what I construe as the ‘misinterpretations’ of history, or the ‘wrong’ lessons that have sometimes been drawn from history, in thinking about the role of science in contemporary Muslim society.

1)            Firstly, there is the tendency to ‘glorify’ past Muslim achievements in science and technology, perhaps as a reminder of what Muslims were capable of in the past, and thereby act as a psychological motivator in the attempt to revive science and technology in today’s Muslim world.  However, despite its nobility, it conceals more than it reveals.  It conceals the actual status of science in medieval Islam (marginality thesis), and the role played by rationalist Muta’zilah caliphs such as al-Ma’mun in the propagation of science in Muslim society.  Are contemporary Muslims willing to abandon or change some of its conservatism, to promote science and technology?

2)            Secondly, the glory of Islamic science was achieved through the works of individual scientists such as Ibn Sina, Ibn Haytham, Al-Khwarizmi and others (Nasr, 1968).  Science was not institutionalised in Islam, and thus there was no continuity in the development of science after them.  Also, the ‘great individual scientist’ model is no longer appropriate in today’s “Big Science” which is capital-intensive and based on teamwork.  So what works for science in the Muslim world in the past is not necessarily what works today.

3)            Thirdly, the role of colonialism in Islamic history has not been adequately and properly factored in, when considering the relationship between science and Islam.  The effects of colonization are so deep in the Muslim world so that institutions and scientific activities carried out in the Islamic world today is the extension of the colonial heritage rather than the Islamic.  Scientific institutions in most of the developing world today is a legacy of the colonialists. Although in terms of history, we are proud of the glorious days of science in Islamic civilization, but the fact is that scientific institutions as well as various other institutions that we have inherited after independence are a legacy of colonial rule. Although we cannot turn the clock back and resume from where we had left before colonial rule, it does present a challenge if want to rethink the science-Islam relationship.  Colonial influence is not necessarily intrinsically bad, especially since if we realise that western science owes to Islamic civilization in its revival in the 12^th century through translation works from Arabic to Latin, via Spain and Sicily.  Science in today’s Muslim world has been subjected more to nationalistic concerns, rather than the Islamic, as a result of post-colonialism.  Therefore in order to relate Islam to science in the present Muslim world in practical terms, this has to be done in the context of nation-states rather than in terms of some abstract “Islamic or Muslim world”.  The OIC can perhaps act as a bridge or starting point in this respect, since it is an organization of nation-states with Muslim majorities.

Thus history has to be properly understood and interpreted in order for it to serve as a guiding light in articulating a genuine and authentic Islamic response and science policy for the contemporary Muslim world.  The social and cultural conditions existing then, and how it contributed to past success in Islamic science, must not be assumed as equally valid in today’s world.  The historical colonial experience and its effect on the Muslim world also has to be understood.  Thus while history might serve as an encouragement for Muslims trying to develop their own science and technology in today’s world, they must also learn to draw the right lessons from history if that success were not to remain purely historical.

5.0          Concluding Remarks

My concluding remarks will refer to the following three major points, namely:

• the epistemology of science and religion
• the use of science and technology for development, and
• the relevance and use of history.

The epistemology of science and religion.  Broadly speaking, as forms of knowledge, they are based on different assumptions, methodologies, scope, and purpose.  Their overlap, if any, is partial and may or may not result in conflicting claims.  In areas where they do not overlap, for example in the realm of morals and ethics that is mostly the province of religion rather than science, one turns to religion for guidance rather than science.  However, there are cases where the application of religious principles and moral codes would require an understanding of science if it involves technical issues such as reproductive technology (bioethics).  Claims made by religion with respect to the spiritual realm and the Unseen world, are ontological claims, which cannot be verified by or through science.  However, it is belief in these realities that underwrite the moral and social codes of Islamic societies.  To me, it is best to keep an ‘open dialogue’ regarding these issues, rather than make any dogmatic pronouncements. It could be more enlightening as it could open up more vistas of understanding that is hitherto unknown.  In any case, science is ‘fallible knowledge’ (Popper, 1972) and makes no claim to absolute truth.  The history of science has shown that our scientific understanding of the world has changed over the centuries, with there being no ‘ontological convergence’.  In any case, with regard to knowledge regarding the metaphysical world, science can best be looked at as being ‘agnostic’ rather than ‘antagonistic’ regarding such metaphysical knowledge.  One is therefore entitled to believe in both science and religion without there necessarily being any deep or irreconcilable conflict.  The belief in the reality of the spiritual world however, should not be used as an excuse for rejecting the pursuit of scientific knowledge, given that we have delimited the boundaries of science in relation to religion.  Furthermore, Islam encourages its followers to seek knowledge of the world, conceived as God’s creation.  Here one can draw upon the examples of past Muslim scientists who were at home in both science and Islam.

The Use of Science and Technology for Development.  Muslim thinkers such as Zia Sardar (Sardar, Explorations in Islamic Science, 1988), or even government policy makers in Muslim countries, have correctly pointed out that weaknesses in science and technology have been partly responsible for the current ‘backwardness’ of the Muslim Ummah.  In so agreeing, I am not thereby adopting a totally ‘modernist’ perspective with respect to religion and development, but acknowledging contemporary realities.  Islam was successful and respected in the past because of its political, economic, scientific, and military strength, not weakness.  That strength enabled Islam to flourish throughout the world.  Present-day Muslims therefore, cannot afford to ignore modern science and technology, for its own survival as a Muslim Ummah.  The spiritual strength of the Muslim must be supported and accompanied by its material strength acquired through science and technology.  However, the pursuit of modern science and technology must be guided by Islamic values and ethics to ensure that in the long run, science and technology will serve humanity and the Muslim Ummah, and not lead to its eventual destruction, which is a real possibility looking at the way the west is using its science and technology within the framework of Capitalism.  In fact even the capitalistic world had to resort to ‘regulatory measures’ based ultimately on some moral or ethical values, in order to ensure sustainability.

The Relevance and Use of History.  The question of the relationship between science and Islam should not be viewed in an ahistorical manner, because the relationship has been shaped by history which would therefore require a historical understanding in order to suggest the way forward.  History is also important because it gives a sense of Islamic identity in our attempt to relate science and Islam. Otherwise we would be caught up in existing frameworks of analysis, largely emanating from the west who has managed to universalise their own history, and provincialise the rest.  However, in our attempt to utilise history in order to achieve an accurate understanding of the relationship between science and Islam, we must be cautious not to fall into the trap of nostalgia and jingoism.  We should approach history with a sense of realism, and not as a means of psychological cover for our present weakness and inadequacies.  Knowing where we came from (through historical understanding), we would be in a better position to understand the situation we are currently in, which would then make us better informed when thinking of strategies on how to move ahead.  History is also important for another reason; that the past is still very much in our present—even in a modified form—and dealing with history is in a way dealing with an aspect of contemporary reality.  However, we also have to learn how to move on from the past and chart a new future which is somehow reconciled with its past, and for that we need a new creativity and a new energy. The challenge is therefore for us, contemporary Muslim thinkers, to help chart out that new future for the Islamic world.

References

Al-Attas, S. M. (1989). Islam and the Philosophy of Science. Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation.

Barbour, I. G. (2000). When Science Meets Religion; Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? New York: Harper Collins.

Capra, F. (1976). The Tao of Physics. Suffolk: Fontana/Collins.

Dallal, A. (2010). Islam, Science, and the Challenge of History. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hoodbhoy, P. (1992). Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality. Kuala Lumpur: S. Abdul Majeed & Co.

Jahanbegloo, R., & Nasr, S. H. (2010). In Search of the Sacred. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger.

Lindberg, D. (1992). The Beginnings of Western Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Nasr, S. H. (1968). Science and Civilisation in Islam. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Nasr, S. H. (1981). Knowledge and the Sacred. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Popper, K. (1972). Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Rorty, R. (1999). Philosophy and Social Hope. London: Penguin Books.

Salam, A. (1984). Ideals and Realities. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.

Sardar, Z. (1977). Science, Technology, and Development in the Muslim World. London: Croom Helm.

Sardar, Z. (1988). Explorations in Islamic Science. London: Mansell.

Shah, M. H. (2001). Contemporary Muslim Intellectuals and Their Responses to Modern Science and Technology. Studies in Contemporary Islam, 3(2), 1-30.

Prof Mohd Hazim Shah began his career as a tutor in History and Philosohy of Science, under the Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Science, University of Malaya in 1977. He is currently the Deputy President of the Malaysian Social Science Association.

In August 1977 I met Steven Hawking during a coffee break of the 8^th conference on General Relativity and Gravitation held at Waterloo University (Canada). I asked him, “Do you think, Professor Hawking, that behind all these equations and mathematical formulations that we are presenting on boards of this conference, there could be something that goes beyond physical and mathematical reality so it cannot be described with mathematical equations?” Hawking paused for a while, turning his head slowly from the left side to the right and said, “If there is something, I believe it has to be logical.” Then I asked, “But does your intuition tell you anything about this?” He replied, “I can only say that I am searching for the answer.”

About ten years later and after  getting a result showing that the universe could have existed for endless imaginary time before its physical existence, Steven Hawking proclaimed: “What place, then,  for a creator?” (Hawking and Mlodinow 2008) In this he is ignoring the fact that imaginary quantities are mathematical entities that cannot be directly measured despite their important role in the mathematical formulations of physics.

Investigating the quantum state of the vacuum, Hawking found that the universe could have been created from nothing by gravity only, accordingly again he claims in his book The Grand Design that there is no need for the creator. Similar claims were made by Lawrence Krauss in his book Something from Nothing.

Both Hawking and Krauss are ignoring the fact that a very strong gravity (or spacetime warp) is needed in fact to convert nothing into something. Virtual particles, which are assumed to be present within the quantum vacuum, cannot spontaneously pop out without the presence of a strong gravitational field. Paul Davies admits this fact but he argues that it could be a matter of semantics (Davies 1984).

Confronted with facts that points to a kind of transcendental existence in a debate with John Polkinghorne during the SSQ conference (2002), Steven Weinberg exclaimed, “My argument can be falsified if a fiery sword will come from nowhere and hit me for my impiety.” In a similar position during a public lecture, Lawrence Krauss agreed that he may believe in God if he finds one evening that the stars are aligned in the sky to read, “I am here.” This implies that both Weinberg and Krauss can see the necessity for God only if the universe is run miraculously. A miraculously-run universe is described by the absence of any order or law that can explain it. In fact such a universe may not need God altogether but a mere force to sustain the chaos. This is what usually one would expect out of blind nature.

When Richard Dawkins tried to stretch the hypothesis of multiverse to refute a pre-setting of a fine-tuned universe and has put the question to Steven Weinberg during an interview, Weinberg remarked that one should not underestimate the fix that atheists are in: that consistent mathematical results cannot be guaranteed to be describing realistic states since there are many consistent mathematical formulations that do not find real presence in nature.

Now we ask: Has science killed the belief in God? This is a delicate question indeed, for it involves several terms that have to be identified and precisely defined first. This question comes in a philosophical as well as theological context and may require serious encounter with scientific knowledge on a specialized level.

The answer could be YES for a certain understanding of the concept God, and could be NO for another understanding of what we mean by God. So, first we need to define what we mean by God. Without such a definition, one may then confuse it with superstition or the idiot’s God. Second, we need to discuss whether the world needs God, and whether this need is psychological, physiological, epistemological, or otherwise practical. On the other hand we need to discuss the question whether this need is temporal due to lack of our information, or is it a fundamental part of the truth of our world. In all cases we should remember that our views are always bounded with the extent of our knowledge at the given time; for no one can claim that science has reached ultimate knowledge.

Who is God?

Apart from the religious concept of God, here I shall first discuss the rather minimal view adopted by Keith Ward which says that “God is a non-physical being of consciousness and intelligence or wisdom, who creates the universe for the sake of distinctive values that the universe generates.” (Ward 2014)

One might consider the terms ‘non-physical’ and ‘consciousness’ as being incompatible, for consciousness might be considered to require physical existence of sensors in order to achieve sensation. Accordingly, this definition of God is embedding the assumption that consciousness might exist in a non-physical form. But what is physical and what is non-physical? From our modern understanding, we can construe that a physical entity is something that can always be addressed in real time with validated causal relationships, and by causal I mean the verifiable relationships in which a cause precedes the effect. A physical object has to be measurable. Complex numbers, for example, are not measurable, thus are to be considered non-physical. However, complex numbers are an essential part of the mathematical formulation by which we understand nature. Therefore, a simple understanding of God perhaps is to say that God is a symbol pointing to a supernatural agency standing behind, but not necessarily limited to, the creation, sustainment and maintenance of the universe. God is an order that validates the laws of nature. Being supernatural, such identity cannot be studied with pure reason alone and might not be fully comprehensible.

Laws of Nature

What other major factor would render the belief in God obsolete other than saying that the world needs no God because the laws of nature are ruling the whole game? But, then, what are the laws of nature and can they stand for the role of God?

During the seventeenth century the notion of laws of nature started to crystallize;   Descartes (1596-1650) was perhaps the first in the West to discuss the existence of ‘laws or rules of nature’. In the Principles of Philosophy he stated three laws concerning the natural motion of bodies and a conservation rule for the quantity of motion. Descartes connected laws of nature to the activity of a transcendent immutable God. A very good analysis of the concept of laws of nature in the Cartesian and other philosophies during the seventeenth century can be seen in (Jalobeanu 2001). This claim, and all the other laws, are grounded explicitly in the activity of a transcendent God on his creation. Descartes held a version of the doctrine of continual recreation. Garber tells us that ‘the idea of a law of inanimate nature remains quite distinctively Cartesian throughout much of the seventeenth century.’(Garber 2013) The notion of a law of nature cannot be found, for example, in other reformers of the period such as Francis Bacon (1561-1626) or Galileo Galilei (1564-1642).

In contrast, Hobbes (1588-1679) did not think that God has any role to play in natural philosophy. In order to explain how a law of nature works, he resorted to geometry. The way in which Hobbes explained nature through geometry was to say that a body at rest will remain at rest just because it has the

Thomas Hobbes

possibility to move in any and all directions. Since there is no preferred direction for motion, the body would have to remain at rest. A similar argument applies to a body in constant motion. This kind of understanding is ignoring the need for an active agency to activate the action of such events. The geometrical argument is similar to saying that a free stone falls on the ground just because there is a gravitational force between the stone and the Earth. But here we are ignoring to ask where gravity comes from and who is activating the gravitational force to work? If you are a free rational thinker you would set up such questions no doubts, but if you would like to ignore such a query you would always be able to attribute the action of the gravity to another cause, the existence of mass according to Newton or the presence of a curvature of the spacetime according to Einstein. Hobbes denied divine intervention as he could not understand how the non-physical can affect the physical. This we can see through the following paragraph of Hobbes as cited by (Garber 2013)

The subject of [natural] Philosophy, or the matter it treats of, is every body of which we can conceive any generation, and which we may, by any consideration thereof, compare with other bodies, or which is capable of composition and resolution; that is to say, every body of whose generation or properties we can have any knowledge. [. . .] Therefore, where there is no generation or property, there is no philosophy. Therefore it excludes Theology, I mean the doctrine of God, eternal, ingenerable, incomprehensible, and in whom there is nothing neither to divide nor compound, nor any generation to be conceived.

In fact the question of how a non-physical entity can affect a physical entity is one of the big challenging questions at present in the science and religion debates.

Modern sciences, mainly physics and biology, may have contributed to weaken the belief in God by assuming that the universe can be explained through a collection of self-acting laws that can be expressed in mathematical forms. This eventually means that the universe is logically intelligible on the basis of deterministic causality. Classical celestial mechanics, for example, has verified this deterministic causality to the extent that allowed Pierre Laplace (1747-1827) to claim that once the initial conditions for any system are known then one can predict all the subsequent development of the system without the need to invoke intervention of the divine. He said,

We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes. The perfection that the human mind has been able to give to astronomy affords but a feeble outline of such intelligence. (Laplace 1840)

The view that the world is developing independent of the notion of God was culminated later by the declaration of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) that God is dead. This same belief in deterministic causality may have motivated Albert Einstein to ask if “God had any choice in creating the universe.”

Modern Views

Some intellectuals believe that the advancement of science has kept no place for God. In replying to the big questions of the John Templeton Foundation, Christopher Hitchens, editor of the Portable Atheist, sees no point in claiming that there remains even a little evidence about the existence of God. “To say that there is little ‘scientific’ evidence for the last proposition is to invite a laugh. There is no evidence for it, period.” (Hitchens 2014)

Hitchens asks, “What plan, or planner, determined that millions of humans would die without even a grave marker, for our first 200,000 years of struggling and desperate existence, and that there would only then at last be a “revelation” to save us, about 3,000 years ago, but disclosed only to gaping peasants in remote and violent and illiterate areas of the Middle East?”

But here Hitchens is dealing with the creator as if he is the employer and God is a contractor. This is not the case. One may object to the way the universe is run, and to how things are designed, for example Dawkins considered the long nerve passing all the way through the neck of the Giraffe a sign of bad design, despite the fact that he does not possess all the knowledge of the function of the animal body. Reality suggests that we are spectators in this universe, we should admit this fact and realize that a ruler would not necessarily care to take the discretion of other creatures into his action or plan.

Stuart Kaufmann, the director of the Institute for Bio-complexity and Informatics at the University of Calgary claims that we need to develop our understanding of God. He thinks that we should abandon thinking of a supernatural God and replace that notion with a natural God. In his response to the question posed by the Templeton Foundation, Kaufmann says, “The schism between science and religion can be healed, but it will require a slow evolution from a supernatural, theistic God to a new sense of a  fully natural God as our chosen symbol for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe. This healing may also require a transformation of science to a new scientific worldview with a place for the ceaseless creativity in the universe that we can call God.” (Kaufman 2014)

He calls upon us to ‘re-invent the sacred’ despite admitting that this goal is dangerous as it implies that the sacred is invented. However, he asserts that having our understanding of God being under continuous change over the ages indicates that “It is we who have told our gods what is sacred, not they who have told us.” This means that our comprehension of God has defined his sacred status. Well, one may say that this might be true in the case of Christianity and Judaism, but may not be the case in Islam. Scriptures of the Bible are but the reflections and the understanding of the followers of Moses and Jesus Christ, while the Qur’ān is believed to be the direct word of Allah revealed to Muhammad. Nevertheless, we should admit that as far as the divine attributes are concerned, the Qur’ān presents similar, may be less personal, attributes in Allah. The Qur’ān describes Allah as the creator, the sustainer, the omniscient, the omnipotent who can hear, speaks and see. The point to make here is that along with these personal attributes the Qur’ān also mention that ‘Nothing resembles Him’; meaning that nothing is like Allah and the given attributes are only meant to be exposed examples. For this reason the Muʿtazilites declared that the attributes of Allah are intrinsic part of his character and is not an additional meaning to be added to him. Wolfson (Wolfson 1976) has studied the problem of the denial of the reality of the divine attributes in much details. However, taken within the practical deliberation of these attributes, the popular concept of God in the mind of an average Muslim has more or less, similar patronage to that in the mind of Jews and Christians. This was established since the early centuries of the Islamic era.

The presentation of the divine as a personal agency places many obstacles against achieving a vivid comprehension of God. With this personal deliberation we face many difficult questions concerning the realization of the notion of the divine in his existence, action and purpose.

But would it be serious to think of God who is unphysical to affect our physical world? Michael Shremer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine, approaches this question by reminding us that “Science traffics in the natural, not the supernatural. The only God that science could discover would be a natural being, an entity that exists in space and time and is constrained by the laws of nature. A supernatural God would be so wholly Other that no science could know Him.” (Shremer 2014) On the other side, Keith Ward finds that if we agree on his above definition of God, then “it follows that a non-physical conscious intelligence is possible — so a materialist view that all existent things must be physical, or must have location in space-time and must be subject to the causal laws of such a space-time, must be false.” Clearly then, it is the different concepts of God that cause the difference of opinions in responding to this question.

Kenneth Miller, Professor of Biology at Browns University, criticized the atheists for mistakenly considering God to be part of the natural world and failing to find him there. He says, “The categorical mistake of the atheist is to assume that God is natural, and therefore within the realm of science to investigate and test. By making God an ordinary part of the natural world, and failing to find Him there, they conclude that He does not exist. But God is not and cannot be part of nature. God is the reason for nature, the explanation of why things are. He is the answer to existence, not part of existence itself.” (Miller 2014) Indeed, if you believe in God or you are a non-believer, either way it is very important to acknowledge that God is not part of the natural world. Being part of the world, such a God would have to abide by the laws of nature and thus could be brought into laboratory tests or tracked by observations. Miller correctly recognizes once again that “The hypothesis of God comes not from a rejection of science, but from a penetrating curiosity that asks why science is even possible, and why the laws of nature exist for us to discover.”

God and the New Physics

Quantum physics, which sprung out of the discoveries made during the first quarter of the last century in the atomic realm, has shaken the well-established confidence in deterministic causality. The wave-like behavior of microscopic particles introduced new concepts in the dynamic of mechanical systems. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle does not allow for simultaneous identification of the momentum and the position of a particle with absolute certainty. Physical parameters of microscopic systems are found to have a spectrum of values that are distributed probabilistically and that any of them can be predicted only with a limited accuracy. Deterministic presentation of microscopic phenomena, like the hidden variables theories of David Bohm, is outside mainstream physics and several experiments have already ruled out such local hidden variables theories, thus confirming the non-local character of natural phenomena. Here I am referring to Alain Aspect’s experiment of 1982 and the other experiments that followed (for non-technical presentation of these experiments, see (Davies 1984)). Literally, no event is known to happen with 100% accuracy. The world is non-local and things are entangled one way or another. This fact is independent of the theories and their involved interpretations, and no matter what arguments are presented in defense of the deterministic view, the established fact is that nature is indeterministic since it has been established by many laboratory experiments. Here we can then ask the question: can the laws of nature stand for the assumed role of God?

In the old kalām cosmological view, especially the Ashʿarite description, the world is understood to be composed of atoms, each of which is made of a substance and a set of accidents (Dhanani 1994). The substance, called jawhar, is fixed and the accidents (called a‘raḍ) are the ever changing properties that the jawhar may acquire and which is assumed not to endure two instances. Such a picture allows for the action of an external agency dominating the events and controlling the development of the world through the change that takes place on a microscopic scale. The behavior of the world is said to follow some customized rules that we recognize through the persistent occurrence of the natural phenomena. The physical theory of kalām suggests that the world is ruled through certain well-respected principles expressing relations that we are accustomed to recognize among its constituents (Altaie 2010). The world is not a collection of miraculous events, but at the same time is indeterministic according to kalām. This understanding has echoes in contemporary quantum physics, although the two approaches and their explanations are quite different. For more details see (Altaie 2009).  Perhaps it would be necessary here to point to the fact that the kalām view concerning atomism and the detailed structure of matter is different in many fundamental aspects from the views expressed by the Greek atomists as well as the views of the seventeenth century European philosophers who adopted atomism and some versions of the notion of re-creation. For this reason the critiques that address those views do not apply to the views of kalām, and this is a detailed topic that has to be studied in its own merits.

Does the world need God at all?

What sort of a need is there that requires the assumption of the existence of God and his action in the world? Sean Carroll, a theoretical cosmologist, says: “It’s certainly conceivable that the methods of science could lead us to a self-contained picture of the universe that doesn’t involve God in any way” (Carroll 2012). This sort of claim is repeated in many essays and books. But how can the method of science lead us to a self-contained picture of the universe other than through the assumed self-action of the so-called laws of nature? If we recognize that laws of nature are actually the phenomena that occur in nature, then by the fact that these phenomena are indeterministic it would be legitimate to ask if these laws can act on their own? Well, as long as the efficacy of these laws become probabilistic, I cannot see how these laws would act on their own; being indeterministic, the action of these laws will be pending the decision by another agency. How then can we claim that the universe is self-contained and needs no agency to run it?

To be able to predict the natural abundance of elements in the universe, for example, is certainly something fascinating and is a bold exposition of the ability of the human mind to discover the logic according to which the universe is developing, but by no means can this be considered evidence for the absence of a ruling agency. Our endeavor to understand how the world develops will never end and whatever claim is made for reaching ultimate knowledge is only a dream of the ignorant. Let us not be deceived by what we call laws of physics, and perhaps we need to read again some of the original arguments presented by Nancy Cartwright in her classic book How the Laws of Physics Lie (Cartwright 1983) and also her essay, No God, No Laws  (Cartwright 2008), in which she argues that “the concept of a law of Nature cannot be made sense of without God.” Obviously, Cartwright has treated the subject from a philosophical perspective, whereas here I am presenting the argument from the scientific perspective in the light of the discoveries of quantum mechanics.

We need to assess the value of science and expose whether it can be taken as an absolute reference for the truth. This is needed in order to know the meaning and the value of our scientific knowledge. Experience tells us that science is a product of our cognition and the laws of physics are only our constructions of the observed facts of nature. This we have learned from the history of science particularly our knowledge about gravitation where Einstein’s theory of general relativity offered us a picture about gravity totally different from that of Newton and it was shown that Newton’s picture was conceptually in contrast with Einstein’s theory despite the fact that the former provided us for centuries with very accurate calculations for movements of the bodies in the solar system.

Then, is it our logic and the structure of our cognitive capabilities which is shaping the need for God? Certainly, yes. It is our built-in logic which tells us that precise systems as the ones that we see in our world and the directive development of these systems: the big bang, biological evolution, the fate of the stars, the presence of black holes as gates for other worlds; all these need to be designed by a supreme power that has knowledge of everything. Chance and necessity, being relevant parts of the structure, play the role of relevant factors for manipulating the game, but certainly the game itself is not played by chance and necessity alone. Therefore, I would agree with Keith Ward in saying that “It is not science that renders belief in God obsolete. It is a strictly materialist interpretation of the world that renders belief in God obsolete, and which  science is taken by some people to support.”

References

Altaie, M. B. (2009). Daqīq al-Kalām: The Islamic Perspective for Natural Philosophy, ‘Ālam al-Kutub al-Ḥadīth, Jordan.

Altaie, M. B. (2010). Matter: an Islamic Perspective. Matter and Meaning: Is matter Sacred or Profane? M. Fuller, Cambridge Scholar Publishing: 87-99.

Carroll, S. (2012). Does the Universe Need God? The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, Wiley: 185-197.

Cartwright, N. (1983). How the laws of physics lie, Cambridge Univ Press.

Cartwright, N. (2008). “No God, No Laws.”

Davies, P. (1984). God and the new physics, Simon and Schuster.

Dhanani, A. (1994). “The physical theory of Kalam.” Brill, Leiden.

Garber, D. (2013). Laws and Order of Nature. The divine order, Human Order and the Order of Nature. E. Watkins. Oxford, Oxford University Press: 45-66.

Hawking, S. and L. Mlodinow (2008). A briefer history of time, Random House.

Hitchens, C. (2014). “Does Science Makes the Belief in God Obslete?”, from http://www.templeton.org/belief/.

Jalobeanu, D. (2001). “Forms, Laws and Active Principles: what happened with the laws of nature in the scientific revolution?” Analele Universităţii de Vest din Timişoara Seria Philosophie/Annales Universitatis Occidentalis Timisiensis Series Philosophia: 5-34.

Kaufman, S. (2014). “Does Science Makes the Belif in God Obslete?”   Retrieved 12/25/2014, from http://www.templeton.org/belief/.

Laplace, P. (1840). “A philosophical essay on probabilities .(FW Truscott, & FL Emory, Trans.) Dover.”

Miller, K. (2014). “Does Science Makes the Blief in God Obslete?”   Retrieved 12/25/2014, from http://www.templeton.org/belief/.

Shremer, M. (2014). “Does Science Make the Belief in God Obslete?”.

Ward, K. (2014). “Does Science Make the Belief in God Obsolete.”   Retrieved 12/25/2014, from http://www.templeton.org/belief/.

Wolfson, H. A. (1976). The philosophy of the Kalam, Harvard University Press.

Mohammed Basil Altaie is a Professor of Physics of Iraqi descent currently at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan.

Introduction

 Modern science infiltrated the Islamic world in the beginning of the  nineteenth century. But what affected Muslim intellectuals mostly was  not science itself; rather, it was the transfer of various philosophical  currents, entan­gled with science, that had a profound effect on the mind  of Muslim scientists and intellectuals. Schools like posi­tivism and  Darwinism penetrated the Islamic world and dominated its academic      circles and posed some challenges to several Islamic theological doctrines.  Some scholars attempted to reinterpret some of the Islamic theological  issues in the light of modern science. But some Muslim philosophers  differentiated between the findings of modern science and its    philosophical underpinnings. They advocated the discovery of the secrets  of nature through experimentation and theoretical work, but warned against its positivistic interpretations, advertised in the name of science. In the company of the last group, I believe that the source of the claimed conflicts between modern science and religion is to be found mostly in the philosophical attachments to science, rather than science per se. Here, we elaborate on several crucial challenges which are propounded, in the name of science, concerning the existence of God, life, spirit and purpose in nature.

• The Problem of Life and Spirit

 According to the Holy Qur’an, human beings have a physical dimension and a spiritual one. The latter comes into being at a later stage in the development of the human body, and has non-material nature. It is a Divine Grace emanated to every human being:

“When your Lord said to the angels, ‘Indeed I am going to create a human out of a dry clay [drawn] from an aging mud. So when I have proportioned him and breathed into him of My spirit, then fall down in prostration before him’.”  (al-Hijr 29)

The idea that human beings have a dual aspect, i.e. physical and spiritual, is an old one and has been a controversial problem since old times. In our time when empiricist philosophy is dominant, the primacy is attributed to matter, and life is considered as a byproduct of physico-chemical processes, leaving no room for the human soul. Francis Crick, who was one the discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule, says this clearly:

The astonishing Hypothesis is that “you,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. (1)

The prevalent outlook restricts reality to what is detectable through physico-chemical processes. But this outlook cannot be derived from science per se; rather, it is rooted in the naturalistic philosophy ruling over contemporary scientific circles? Roger Trigg describes the matter beautifully:

“Why should not a transformed science one day even be able to accept the existence of ‘spiritual’ realities? Only a metaphysical decision now that such things cannot exist would suggest that that is impossible. The question is whether we are concerned with the nature of reality, or with the validity of a scientific method tailored to current human capabilities.” (2)

In response to the position of materialists concerning the problem of life and spirit, Muslim philosophers argue that:

(a) In addition to the material dimension, human beings own a spiritual dimension that appears when the conditions for its appearance is fulfilled. In fact, spirit is a special effusion of Allah to each individual human being. The denial of this spiritual dimension by materialists is not a scientific decision; rather it is a metaphysical decision not rooted in empirical science.

Mutahhari , a contemporary Muslim philosopher, describes the Qur’anic position concerning this matter:

“The Qur’an’s logic concerning life is that an effusion [of Allah], at a higher level than the sensible body horizon… This logic is based [on the fact that] sensible matter, by itself, lacks life and that life is an effusion and a light from a higher source” (3)

It is interesting that John Eccles, a Nobel Laureate in Medicine, says the same thing:

Since materialist solutions fail to account for our experienced uniqueness, I am constrained to attribute the uniqueness of the Self or Soul to a supernatural spiritual creation. To give the explanation in theological terms: each Soul is a new Divine creation which is implanted into the growing foetus at some time between conception and birth. (4)

Neville Mott, a Nobel Laureate in physics, concurs:

“I believe, too, that neither physical science nor psychology can ever ‘explain’ human consciousness … To me, then, human consciousness lies outside science, and it is here that I seek the relationship between God and man.” (5)

Furthermore, a number of eminent contemporary physicists, without any reference to metaphysics, believe that consciousness, which is a manifestation of spirit, is not explainable in terms of physics. For example, Schrödinger says:

“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” (6)

Even Richard Dawkins, who believes that science can ultimately explain everything, admits that consciousness is one of the most difficult problems. In an interview from October 2009, he says:

“Consciousness is the biggest puzzle facing biology, facing neurobiology, facing evolutionary biology.  It is a very, very big problem.” (7)

Popper, however, believed that the origin of life will probably remain untestable for ever and that even if scientists create life in a laboratory, they can never be sure that life actually began in the same way. (8)

(b) Physico-chemical processes prepare the ground for life, i.e. they are necessary conditions for the emergence of life. But they are not sufficient conditions. Muslim philosophers do not deny the material ground for life, but they believe that at a certain stage of the physical development of a body, it is through God’s effusion that life is developed in human beings. In Mutahhari’s words:

“The synthesis, addition, subtraction and combination of the parts of matter are necessary conditions for the appearance of life effects, but they are not sufficient.” (9)

Materialists only see part of the problem, but they claim that they are seeing the whole. A radio is necessary to broadcast the signals sent by a transmitter, but it is not sufficient. There has to be a transmitter.

(c) Even if one day human beings bring about living organisms, theists’ claim for the existence of a spiritual element is not disproved. Because they can claim that when the material ground of life is ready, Allah will effuse life to it, as He is the owner of infinite effusion. As Mutahhari put it:

“If some day human beings discovered the law of creation of living beings … and discovered all conditions and material parts of a living creature … does that creature become a living one or not? The answer is that it certainly becomes a living one, as it is not possible that the conditions for the diffusion becomes available but it is not realized…

If some day human beings get this opportunity, what is essentially done is the preparation for the appearance of life, not the creation of life.” (10)

Mulla Sadra, an eminent Muslim philosopher of the 17^th century, believed that the soul appears at a certain stage of transubstantial motion of the body.  However, the body is not the cause of the soul, but it  provides the ground for the emergence of the soul:

 “In truth, the human spirit is material in creation and action, but it is  immaterial in subsistence and intellection.” (11)   

 After emergence, however, the soul does not depend on the body and survives  the body’s death, i.e. it is immortal. In short, soul has a corporeal ground, but  a spiritual subsistence.

 (2) Creation of the Universe

 Modern cosmology started with Einstein’s 1917 article entitled, “Cosmological  Considerations about General Relativity.” Einstein applied his theory of general relativity (GR) to the whole universe. Einstein’s equations have different solutions, but GR cannot choose a solution by itself. In 1929, Hubble noticed that the spectra of light reaching us from galaxies is red-shifted and this shift is proportional to the distance of that galaxy from ours. This was interpreted in terms of the expansion of the universe, and led to the big bang model of the universe that implies an initial time for the creation of the universe.

In the 1940’s, Fred Hoyle and his collaborators presented the steady-state model of the universe, which claimed that there was no temporal beginning to our universe. The steady-state theory had appeal for some physicists, because they thought that with this theory they can dispense with the idea of a Creator for the universe. Weinberg is very clear about this:

“The idea that universe had no start appeals to many physicists philosophically, because it avoids a supernatural act of creation.” (12)

Similarly, Stephen Hawking:

 “Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.” (13)

The discovery of the microwave background radiation in 1965 gave an impetus to the big bang model of the universe.

In the last three decades, atheist physicists have been after the elimination of the initial moment of time, as they considered this as an indication of the creation of the universe by an external agent. In Hawking’s words,

“So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?” (14)

 But the assumption of no beginning in time, does not make the universe self-explanatory, as Paul Davies explains:

“The fact that the universe might have no origin in time does not explain its existence, or why it  has the form it has. Certainly, it does not explain why nature possesses the relevant fields (such as  the creation field) and physical principles that  establish the steady—state condition.” (15)

Furthermore, as some Muslim and Christian scholars have indicated, creation does not mean creation in time. Rather, it means dependence on God. As Arthur Peacocke put it:

“The principal stress in the Judeo-Christian doctrine of creation … is on the dependence and contingency of all entities, and events, other than God himself: it is about a perennial relationship between God and the world and not about the beginning of the Earth, or the whole universe at a point in time.” (16)

Furthermore, in Philip Hefner’s view:

“Creation for Christian theology is by no means limited to protology. It is not limited by what happened at the beginning when time was first created. Creation also refers to God’s ongoing sustaining of the world. Every movement of the world’s existence depends on the ongoing grace of God.” (17)

This is similar to the view of Mulla Sadra, an eminent 17^th-century Muslim philosopher, who believed that our world is recreated at every instant. Mulla Sadra, however, considered no beginning for the creation. In his view, the belief in the uninterrupted effusion of Allah requires eternality of creation. The argument, in Mutahhari’s words, goes as follows:

“They have thought that the theory of eternity of matter is inconsistent with the belief in God. But there is no inherent connection between this theory and the denial of God; rather, theist philosophers believe that belief in God requires belief in the eternity and continuation of His grace and creativeness , which requires the eternity of creation.” (18)

On this basis, Mutahhari concludes that there could have been other worlds before our world:

“On the basis of monotheistic principles we should say that there is no beginning for the universe. If [it turns out] that this universe has a beginning, there should have been another world, [possibly]in different form… In order for the world to have a God, who is inherently all-emanating and eternally graceful, there should have been always creatures  existent”. (19)

Arthur Eddington was hesitant about the Big Bang theory on the same grounds:

“ As a scienti,st I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang; unscientifically, I feel equally unwilling to accept the implied discontinuity in the divine nature.” (20)

• Does the universe have a purpose?

 In the Qur’anic view, God is the Creator and the Sustainer of the universe. He has created everything in measure and has decreed for it a telos. The creation is in truth, not for sport or vanity, and everything has a definite term:

We did not create them, save in truth. (44:38)

 We have not created the heavens and the earth and whatsoever is between them, save in truth and for a definite term. (46:3)

 We did not create the heaven and the earth, and whatsoever is between them, as play … (21:16)

 We have not created the heavens and the earth, and whatsoever is between them, for vanity … (38:27)

The above verses imply the creation of the universe by God as well as its guidance by Him. In fact, the Qur’an talks of a universal notion of purpose and a direction to the created universe:

[Moses] said: “Our Lord is He Who gave everything its creation, then guided it.” (20:50)

 Imam Fakhr al-Din Razi, in his celebrated commentary on the Holy Qur’an, has elaborated on the distinction between the creation of a thing and its sense of direction. (21) This sense of direction is a mysterious dimension present in everything, directing it toward its proper God-assigned role.

Following the Qur’an, Muslim theologians have never ignored teleological considerations, and the silence of modern science about this point has not affected their view, though it has had a silencing effect on Muslim scientists.

Teleology played an important role in medieval science. For the scientists of that era, every created thing had its especial place in the hierarchy of the created world, because it was created by a God who had designed a telos to the universe. The founders of modern science, who were devoted theists, did not deny the presence of telos to the universe, but they did not consider the job of science to deal with teleological considerations. But the negligence of teleological considerations by the scientists of the last few centuries is partly   due to their heavy involvement with mathematical manipulations and the predictive aspects of science, and partly due to the false assumption that questions of teleological nature hinder further development of science.

With further development of modern science and the dominance of empiricist outlook, teleology was considered as an avenue for theism. Therefore, atheists have been insisting on denying any kind of teleological considerations. In Atkins’ words:

A gross contamination of the reductionist ethic is the concept of purpose. Science has no need of purpose. All events at the molecular level that lies beneath all our actions, activities, and reflections are purposeless, and are accounted for by the collapse of energy and matter into ever-increasing disorder. (22)

 Similarly, Steven Weinberg sees no visible purpose in the universe:

“The present universe had evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” (23)

 But can one, on the basis of data obtained from chemistry or molecular biology at the level of atoms and molecules, claim that there is no telos to the nature? The answer is no, because this conclusion is not drawn directly from science; rather, it is rooted in the metaphysical prejudices of the scientists involved. It is, in fact, a jump from an epistemological statement to an ontological one, and is a direct result of restricting the whole of existence to the material world and the sources of our knowledge to sense impressions.

In response to Weinberg who denies any purpose in the universe, Paul Davies mentions two important points: if the universe has no purpose, then there would be two problems: (i) scientific effort would be meaningless, and (ii) the more we search nature, the more it seems incomprehensible:

“If [the universe] isn’t about anything, there would be no good reason to embark on the scientific quest in the first place, because we would have no rational basis for believing that we could thereby uncover additional coherent and meaningful facts about the world. So, we might justifiably invert Weinberg’s dictum and say that the more the universe seems pointless, the more it also seems incomprehensible.” (24)

Later on, Weinberg himself qualified his earlier statement about a pointless universe by saying that:

“I believe that there is no point in the universe that can be discovered by the methods of science.” (25)

 But, contrary to what Weinberg says, some scientists and philosophers (both in the Islamic world and in the West) think that there are some clues to the teleological aspects of our universe in modern science. One has to be perceptive to discover such clues. For example the notions of purpose and design of the created universe has recently attracted much attention to the so-called anthropic principle, according to which the physical constants of nature are so-finely tuned that if they were slightly different, carbon-based life could not have developed and we would not be here. Anthropic coincidences call for an explanation, and there have been several explanations. In the monotheistic religions, one can take them as an indication that God planned the universe with human beings in mind. Other explanations carry heavy loads of metaphysical assumptions which, in my view, are much more involved than the explanation in terms of an a priori plan by an intelligent designer. For example, the most serious alternative to the design hypothesis, is the many-worlds hypothesis, in which one postulates infinite universes to explain the fine tuning of fundamental constants. In Stephen Hawking’s words:

“The multiverse concept can explain the fine-tuning of physical law without the need for a benevolent creator who made the universe for our benefit.” (26)

 But, as Paul Davies says, this carries too much baggage and the existence of many worlds is not scientifically disprovable:

“Not everybody is happy with the many-universes theory. To postulate an infinity of unseen and unseeable universes just to explain the one we do see seems like a case of excess baggage carried to the extreme. It is simpler to postulate one unseen God …

Scientifically, the many-universes theory is unsatisfactory because it could never be falsified: what discoveries could lead a many-worlder to change her/his mind?” (27)

It is interesting that the idea of the multiverse, which is used by atheists for denouncing God’s existence implied by the entropic principle, is used by both Muslim and Christian scientists and philosophers to secure the idea of everlastingness of God’s grace. In Mutahhari’s words:

“Maybe they are right that if we go back so many years, the world did not have the present order. But how do we know that there had not been another world before ours with a different order?” (28)

In addition, some theists have asserted that an all-powerful God could have created many worlds, rather than just one world. In the words of George Ellis:

“Does the idea of a multiverse preclude the monotheistic idea of a creator God?… I argue that the answer is no … the ideas can exist together. God could have chosen to operate via creation of multiverses. The multiverse proposal says nothing about ultimate causation (chance, probability, design): All the same anthropic issues arise as for a single universe: Why this multiverse and not another one?” (29)

References

1. Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for Soul (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,1994),p. 3

2. Roger Trigg, https://www.faraday.st-https://www.faraday.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/CIS/trigg_lecture.pdf

3. Mortaza Mutahhari, Collected Works, Vol. 13 (Tehran: Sadra Publications, 1975), p. 56

4. John Eccles, Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self (London: Taylor & Francis, 2005), p. 249

5. Neville Mott, Can Scientists Believe? (London: James & James Science Publishers Ltd., 1991) ,p.8

6. Erwin Schrodinger, “General Scientific and Popular Papers,” in Collected Papers, Vol. 4 (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1984), p. 334

7. http://ttbook.org/book/transcript/transcript-steve-paulson-reports-consciousness

8. John Horgan, The End of Science (Great Britain: Little, Brown and Company, 1997), p. 38

9. Mortaza Mutahhari, Collected Works, Vol. 13 (in Persian), p. 38

10. Mortaza Mutahhari, Ibid., pp. 58-59

11. Mulla-Sadra (Ṣadr ad-Din Muḥammad Shirazi), al-Hikmat al-Muta’aliyah fi al-Asfar al-Aqliyyah al-Arba’ah (Beirut: Dar Ihya al-Turath al-Arabi, 1981), Vol. 9, p. 347

12. Steven Weinberg, The New Yorker, 12 June,1997, p. 20

13. Stephen Hawking, ABrief History of Time (London: Bantam, 1988), p. 46

14. Ibid., p. 141

15. Paul Davies, The Mind of God (London: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 56

16. Arthur R. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science: The Bampton Lectures, 1978 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p.78

17. Philip Hefner, “The Evolution of the Created Co-Creator” in Cosmos as Creation, ed. by Ted Peters (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), p. 227

18. Mortaza Mutahhari, Collected Works, Vol. 1 (Tehran: Sadra Publications, 1995), p. 524

19. Ibid., p. 524

20. David Layzer, Cosmogenesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p.137

21. Fakhr al-Din Razi, al-Tafsīr al-Kabīr, Vol. 31 (Beirut: Dar’Ihya’ al-Turath al-Arabi), pp. 138-140

22. John Cornwell (ed.), Nature’s Imagination (Oxford: OUP, 1995), p. 127

23. Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. 154

24. Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life? (Great Britain: The Penguin Press, 2006), p. 16

25. http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/wein-frame.html

26. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (New York: Bantam, 2010), 165

27. Paul Davies, The Mind of God (New York: Touchstone, 1993), p. 190
28. Mortaza Mutahhari, Collected Works (in Persian), Vol. 10 (Tehran, Sadra Publications, 1976), p. 405

29. George Ellis, “The Multiverse, Ultimate Causation and God”, https://www.faraday.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/resources/George%20Ellis%20Lecture/Ellis-Faraday.pdf

Mehdi Golshani is a contemporary Iranian theoretical physicist and philosopher and Professor of physics at Sharif University of Technology.

Introduction

Evolution is used as an example of contradiction between Religion (Islam) and science. I am a scientist and a religious person from the Muslim faith.  I see no contradiction. Why then does this contradiction exist? Who created this myth and why?

Islam has always been open minded asking us to seek knowledge and to question phenomenon around us. Islam asks us to observe, think and come up with hypotheses to explain phenomena. In other words it proposes to Muslims to adopt the scientific method as we call it today in discovering the world around us.

“Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding, Who remember Allah while standing or sitting or [lying] on their sides and give thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth, [saying], “Our Lord, You did not create this aimlessly; exalted are You [above such a thing]; then protect us from the punishment of the Fire.” (Quran 3:190-191)

Our seeking of knowledge is a form of worship on itself.  Because as we discover the  elegance and beauty of Allah in the mechanisms He has created   we start to appreciate His greatness and feel closer to Him. ”

“Only  those fear Allah, from among His servants, who have knowledge.”  Quran 35:28.

It is a way to understand Allah, a journey of  discovery so to speak.  Allah is the only constant. He does not  change. Everything is constantly evolving and changing.

Early Muslim Responses to Evolution

Scientists during the Islamic civilization have been doing just that producing a civilization where scientific discoveries flourished.  Amongst the scholars and scientists Ikhwan Alsafa, Al Jahez and Ibn Khaldoun produced theories similar although rudimentary to the theory of evolution as we know it today (1).

Al Rumi very nicely described his theory of evolution in this poem:

“Man first appeared at the level of inanimate matter

 Then it moved to the level of plants

And lived year and years a plant among the plants

Not remember a thing from its earlier inanimate life

And when it moved from plant to animal

It did not remember anything from its plant life

Except the longing it felt for plants

Especially when spring comes and beautiful flowers bloom

Like the longing of children to their mothers

They don’t know the reason for their longing to their breasts

Then the creator pulled Man –as you know- from its animal state

To his human state

And so Man moved from one natural state

To another natural state

Until he became wise, knowledgeable and strong as he is now

But he does not remember anything from his earlier states

And he will change again from his current state” (1)

The demise of the Othman Empire, colonialism, dictatorships resulted in decline of education and science in the Islamic world in general.

Therefore, when Darwin published the Origin of Species in 1859, the Muslim world did not have the qualified natural scientists to understand what it was about.  The actual book was only translated into Arabic in the early twentieth by Ismael Mazhar.  However, the thesis of Darwin had reached the Islamic world through writings of others. Some of Christian religious groups at that time denounced Darwin as an atheist and that the theory of evolution was against religion.  Other Christian groups on the other hand supported Darwin.

This disagreement among Christians did not go unnoticed to the Muslims.  Muslim theologian scholars such as Jisr and Ahmad Medhat did not oppose Darwin and actually addressed the issue of evolution in a rational manner.  However, during the first quarter of the twentieth Darwin’s ideas became associated with colonialism, imperialism, the West, atheism, materialism, racism by different thinkers and writers in the Muslim world (2). Therefore, the Muslim religious scholars gradually took a stand against Darwin and his ideas which the general public adopted. The Muslim scholars used the Creationist Christian arguments to support their stand against Darwin having no natural scientists of their own that were religious Muslims. (3) Therefore transferring the war between science and religion to Islam. Although, it had not existed before.  Not to mention that there were religious groups who used each side of the argument to their advantage politically at some point.

Muslim Scientists’ Approach

In teaching science at the university in the Islamic world a number of important points should be taken into consideration on the topic of Islam and Science in general and evolution in particular:

1. Theology

2. Evolution is not about who created the universe. We explore what is in the universe. We believe there        is a creator who set rules which govern physics, chemistry and biology. Science is about discovering          the laws. Religion is about the why and science is about the how.

3. Confusion in terminology: the word ‘create’ does not necessarily mean spontaneous it could be                    interpreted as over a period of time. Muslims don’t have a problem with the sun and stars taking                billions of years to be created but they do have an issue with living things or specifically humans                taking millions of years to be created.

4.  Time is a dimension and Allah is above all dimensions. Hence, Allah is not governed by time.                       Therefore Muslims should not have any problem with creation taking a long time.

5.   Human fallibility and human religion, including issues of interpretation

6.   One point of contention is that Muslims believe that humans are the epitomy of perfection and                    therefore cannot have evolved from a lower form. This is contradictory to the teachings of Islam.                The Quran warns us from being arrogant as humans. “man does transgress all bounds” Quran 96:6.          We are but one of Allah’s creations and that we are part of the bigger plan of creation. We have been          created in harmony with the rest of creation and we hold a place in the balance of all things.  Islam            states that we are khalefa and should take care of this world living and non living with compassion,            care and mercy. “Indeed, I will make upon the earth a successive authority.” Quran 2:30. This is                important in the context of conservation of the environment and the concept of Global Civics that              was coined by Dr Hakan Altany (4).  We have developed a course on Global civics from the Science/          Muslim perspective for undergraduate science students in the Arab world.

7.    The Quran is not a book of science. It is a guide how to live our lives. Therefore we don’t look into it           for evidence for every scientific discovery.

The interpretation of the Quran is done by humans who try their best. However they are human and may err on one hand and on the other they are interpreting within the scope of knowledge present at that time.  “When a judge gives judgment and strives to know a ruling (ijtahada) and is correct, he has two rewards. If he gives judgment and strives to know a ruling, but is wrong, he has one reward” (5).

Therefore when knowledge changes the interpretation may change and that is one of the beautiful tenets of Islam ijtihad.  Ijtihad (every adequately qualified jurist had the right to exercise such original thinking, mainly ra’y (personal judgment) and qiyas (analogical reasoning) (6).

1. The story of Adam in the Quran as well as other stories should not be taken literary. They are          metaphors to learn lessons.  The process of human evolution was gradual and concerned groups of  humans who evolved from former ancestors.

2. The development of consciousness is also an argument put forward by those who oppose evolution.  They state that the development of consciousness requires divine spontaneous intervention. The  response that I give is that science up till now is still trying to understand the development of the brain  let alone coming up with an explanation for consciousness but that does not refute the theory of  evolution.  Example: In the past people assumed that certain disease were caused by bad spirits and  later we discovered that the disease is caused by viruses.

3. Even as science advances and develops, we must keep in mind that we are limited in our cognition by  our biology. For example ants can only comprehend two dimensions because of how their neurons are  wired in the brain.  Nothing in the world can allow them to comprehend a third dimension.  Similarly  we are limited by how are neurons are connected which will ultimately put a limit on the extent of our  cognition of phenomenon around us.

4. Similarly, I propose that miracles are natural phenomenon that we have not yet discovered the laws    for.

5. The soul is the result of complexity of cellular interconnectivity.

6. Science, with fallibility and provisionality, operating within the created order, but within these      limitations, knowledge that deserves to be taken very serious

7. Science changes all the time. We may find something in the Quran that supports a scientific discovery    and we may not.

8. If there is an apparent contradiction between religion and science we check the science first then the  interpretation of the Quran.

9. Reflection on religious issues in the light of science

10. As history of science and Islam tells us there has never been a serious strife between religion and  science. This new strife around evolution comes from our misunderstanding of our religion on one hand  and lack of scientists on the other.

11. Decisions on issues that are not concerned primarily with theology should be made through the  formation of committees of stakeholders which should include:

• religious scholars,
• Arabic language experts in order to find the best fit meaning for the Arabic word from the Quran within the circumstances, in this case the scientific discoveries to date,
• experts in the field in this case scientists.

Some members should come in without prior knowledge of the religion matter so that they can be unlimited in their imagination and innovation to think of new solutions, ways of approaching the subject. The members should meet, discuss until they reach a consensus.  In addition such a committee should meet regularly to discuss any new advances in the field. Science is dynamic and therefore we must keep up as Muslims in order to advance in both basic and applied sciences. Islam is a religion for all time.

“And those who have responded to their lord and established prayer and whose affair is [determined by] consultation among themselves, and from what We have provided them, they spend.” Quran 42:38.

Such efforts become paramount in issues that have an application such as stem cell research and therapy. A very good example of applying a multi-stakeholder committee that meets regularly is the example of the stem cell law that was passed in Jordan recently (7). The traditional way of conducting ijtihad at least today does not usually take into consideration all stakeholders. Nor do they meet on a regular basis because science is always advancing and changing therefore new issues arise and old issues contentions change. For example the last time abortion was discussed was in 1985

Most of these points could be addressed if there were a course at the university that explored the philosophy of science from an Islamic perspective. As well as encouragement of studying and researching humanities from with in the Islamic world to produce our own identity that will be the base for any discussion around any apparent controversy around science and religion.

Another point is that in any discussion which we envision disagreement we should strive to establish a common ground first then start exploring the contentions.

Conclusion

The important point here is not whether we are able to convince our students to agree or disagree with evolution.  What we should strive for is to teach/instruct our students to develop a rational methodology of assessing the natural world around them and to think independently to come up with their own opinions, hypotheses and theories.  If we succeed in that endeavor the rest of the controversies between science and religion will be resolved and we will contribute to the creation of a generation of Muslim scientists who are free thinkers.

There have been a few free thinking Muslim pioneers who have attempted to  accommodate evolution from an Islamic point of view.  Examples are: The Book and The Qur’an: A Contemporary Reading by Mohammad Shahrour, The book and the mountain by Mohammd Hassan, Islam and Biological Evolution: Exploring Classical Sources and Methodologies by David Solomon Jalajel.  My father Adam by Shaheen. The approaches adopted vary from author to author.  Regardless of the validity of the arguments adopted by each author it is a step towards providing multiple explanations to remove the contradiction and to open the field to research and discovery.

Damina Howard proposes three categories to describe the relationship between science and religion in this case Islam.  In my approach towards science I lean towards the following relationship where to me it is an ongoing dialogue between religion and science. Where one (religion) seeks to guide how to live our lives and the other (science) deals with discovering how the world works.  Both will cross over each other.  For example as science seeks to understand the higher functions of the brain and what does conscience means. One ultimately enters into the realm of religion.  Therefore, my approach to both religion and science is an ongoing journey of discovery i.e. the relationship is fluid. It flows like a stream which fits the description stated by Damian Howard:

“Hence, there is a real and pressing need for dialogue and mutual critique. But it’s not about achieving “harmony” once and for all as in cognitive propositionalism but a constant dialectic of mutual interrogation. Which is rather a good description of one’s actual experience of the field. There is no final answer, no ultimate stability.”(8)

This is the path I propose Muslim scientists should adopt.

I want to highlight that the notion that evolution contradicts Islam, is a myth, and is an example of what happens when we misunderstand our religion. Islam calls for freedom to think and explore.  The lack of freedom to think which comes from misunderstanding of our religion results in borrowing from other cultures.

Other examples are modern women rights, modern education systems. These issues have all came up against west colonialism, imperialism

Can you think of others?

Our aim is not so much to debate evolution as it is to suggest that the mainstream approach to the theory is a symptom of a larger problem. This problem consists of certain attitudes towards science and culture being imported into Muslim societies in a process of Western globalization that often precludes the development of a uniquely local approach. In the case of Muslim societies, now is the opportunity to think independent of the received framework in order to pursue more rigorously our relationship to science, and the world at large

The issue is not religious authority versus scientific authority it is an ongoing process based on rational methodology in seeking the truth.

References

1. Nidhal Guessoum Islam’s Quantum question I. B. Tauris 2011 p308

2. Marwa Elshakry, “Muslim hermeneutics and Arabic views of evolution”, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 46 (2, June 2011), 330-344,

3.  Dajani, R Evolution and Islam’s Quantum Question Zygon vol. 47 no. 2 page 343-353 June 2012

4. Hakan Altany Global civics

5. Bukhari (b00), 9.133: 7352 (a2)

6. Aksoy, S. (2005) Making regulations and drawing up legislation in Islamic countries under conditions of uncertainty, with special reference to embryonic stem cell research. J Med Ethics, 31, 399-403.

7. Dajani, R Jordan’s stem-cell law can guide the Middle East. Nature. 2014 Jun 12;510(7504):189.

8. Damian Howard’s commentary on Stephano Bigliardis article on harmonizing Islam and science. http://social-epistemology.com/2014/09/24/some-reflections-on-stefano-bigliardis-on-harmonizing-islam-and-science-damian-howard/#comments

Rana Dajani is Ph.D. in molecular biology, University of Iowa, USA. She is currently working as a consultant to the Higher Council for Science and Technology in Jordan. She has written in Science and Nature about science and women in the Arab world. She is also on the UN Women Civil Society Advisory Group in Jordan.

The paper was submitted to the Task Force on Science and Islam (‘Muslim responses to Science’s big questions’). The big question that the Task Force sought to address is: Can Islam’s theological teachings be reconciled with cutting edge discoveries in the world of science?