Proof of God Series: The Way to Belief

Today we will be trying to answer the question, 'How do you know that what you're believing in is true?'. The idea is to look at the different ways to approach belief and to find which is the right one.

So there are many ways of believing:

• Emotions

• Blind Imitation

• Science

• Rationality

Emotions:

Emotions cannot be the correct way to believe as our feelings constantly change due to the changing environment and circumstances. This means that we can be happy one day and do lots of good deeds because we feel good about ourselves but then another day you may be feeling something else e.g. being angry, so you may not treat people nicely - our emotions would influence our actions and decisions that we make. This shows that you do not know the true reason for enjoining good deeds and do not understand why it is essential to do so. It's like doing anything in your power to get something you really want, but once you get it you dump it and never use it again due to having no interest in that thing no longer. Thus, using emotions would obviously be the wrong way to believe.

Blind Imitation:

Blind imitation is basically like following a religion only because someone you know believes in it like your parents. But this isn't right either because you don't know whether the person or your forefathers you are following is on the right path.

"And if you obey most of those in the earth, they will mislead you from the way of God. They follow but assumption/conjecture and they only guess / lie" [*6:116]

"And they will say: O our Sustainer! Behold, we paid heed to our leaders and our great men, and it is they who have led us astray from the right path" [*33:067]

These quotes suggest that many still follow the way of their ancestors blindly or remain to always go with what the majority of the people believe in. These quotes repeatedly warn against this way of believing.

Science:

In science, you have to be able to test something to see whether it is true. So you need to be able to see it, hear it, touch it or to be able to taste it. There is a flaw in utilising this method to believe because you cannot obviously sense God. You can't put God into a beaker or under an electron microscope, can you? Some of you may say 'Well that's exactly my point about God not being real' but hear me out on this.

There are many things that we do not know the answers to but yet exist. For example, what is consciousness? How can we prove it? Consciousness is completely unlike any other scientific problem. One reason is that you cannot see it. You can’t look inside someone’s head and see their feelings and experiences. If a group of scientists were to make an assumption/conclusion just based on what they could observe, they would have no proof to put forward for consciousness at all. However, we know that it definitely exists. Why are there strange noises being detected by Nasa from space? Why do we dream? So many questions that humanity doesn't know the answer to. So because God cannot be put into a test tube and that we know that not everything is explainable with science although we know that it definitely exists; similarly, we can say that God can possibly be a real entity too which shows that science cannot be the right way to believe either.

Rationality:

"Verily! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, and the ships which sail through the sea with that which is of use to mankind, and the water (rain) which Allah sends down from the sky and makes the earth alive therewith after its death, and the moving (living) creatures of all kinds that He has scattered therein, and in the veering of winds and clouds which are held between the sky and the earth, are indeed Ayat (proofs, evidences, signs, etc.) for people of understanding." [*2:164]

The only option left of the four methods of believing is using rationality. So it MUST be this, shouldn't it? But how come? Here's why. By using our minds and our common sense as well as our physical senses, we can confidently and correctly understand how the world works to conclude that the world and whatever is around it and within it must be created.

For example, if someone was knocking on the door, you would ask 'Who is there?', you would assume that there is someone on the other side of the door knocking without even seeing the person. Another would be to find a large footprint(s) in your garden and that your fence is half-broken, you would assume that a bear has probably passed through to go somewhere (if you were living in Canada/Alaska)! If you found the tire on your car is ripped you would use your mind and think 'Well what could have caused this?', you would rationally conclude that someone may have slashed it, or that you have driven over something which could have burst it.

Not everything is based on feelings, needs to be experimented or needs to be a 'majority rules' game to explain whether something is credible which is why we must use our mind to understand everything around us - our rationality.

---

To conclude this post, the demand for using rationality is only found in Islam. To believe in Islam, you must use rationality because if you were to use any other method, it would mislead us in the important trajectory of our lives. By using our rational minds to explain things around us, we can therefore prove whether a Creator exists and if man has a purpose in life. It is intrinsic to use rationality to believe in Islam and so it would be a prejudice to not delve deeper into the concept of rationality... this is only the tip of the iceberg so I will talk about rationality further in the next post.

Thanks for reading, I hoped you liked this new concept now on HR Presents. The Proof of God Series. What are your opinions on this? What would you like me to discuss next? Want to get in touch? - scroll down below. Please follow me on my Instagram to be notified of the next episode or subscribe to my mailing list found below the post so you will be notified of new posts! Without further ado, thanks for reading!