The Universe Exist In The Being Of God, As The Being Of God Or Apart From It
Whilst l like speculative sufism and its impact on art, especially poetry. l have come to doubt Platonism and the validity of metaphysics as a field of philosophy but there’s great danger lurking ( or a great solution ) in the corner. I will take your approach to its utmost limit to get an interesting result. Does religious language describe the world of experience , ie the reality we perceive ? Our minds and language work in such a way that it’s meaningful to fix truth values to scientific or mathematical statements only. For every other language game (discourse) , using the terminology of Wittgenstein, we can’t assign truth value to statements. This however doesn’t make the non logical-mathematical-scientific statements meaningless. For eg, “Mount Everest is beautiful” isn’t true or false, it’s a value judgment. In a similar manner, religious statements of every category are not true or false, whether it’s related to God, the afterlife or miracles. This doesn’t mean it’s not possible to actually believe in religious statements but our belief is not expressed cognitively ( as descriptive statements), it’s expressed as feelings, value judgments etc. The best example l can give is a person exclaiming ” God ! ” when he is close to drowning, here “God” doesn’t refer to some entity, it’s an EMOTIVE expression of the most desperate call for help. If we take this understanding of religious language ( non-cognitivism ) then the attributes of God replace the being of God in human language and it doesn’t even stop there. The attributes of God don’t inform us of God but of our relation to God, for eg T he Most Merciful only acquires meaning when we see ourselves as sinners. Every attribute of God should be seen in a down to top manner, taking its meaning from human language and not even reaching the reality of God. Do you agree with this hermeneutical approach to religious text, esp the Quran and its theological implications ?
We know we don’t know the reality of God and scope of His attributes. What we can know is that between God and us there is a common ground of nature, His nature on which he created our nature so that we can understand the idea of His attributes and the principles according to which His attributes work. Beyond this, the reality is incomprehensible to us.
Great Answer Mr Irfan sb, anyone who will try to find the nature of God will go astray, since God swt has clearly said you can never know his nature, “there is none like unto Him” . Anyone who will go after mutasabihaat will corrupt his beliefs. our relationship with God should be only about Creator and His creation, which God directly talked and told us in the Quran. Anything else is your own opinion and it has nothing to do with Islam Mr Imran.