God in Proof. Nathan Schneider
is impossible to form an infinite by successive addition.
c.Scientific cosmology describes a universe with a beginning.
3.Therefore, the universe has a cause, and that cause is God.
a.The cause must transcend space and time.
b.The cause must be changeless and immaterial.
c.The cause must be unimaginably powerful.
d.Causes are either scientific or personal; this one cannot be scientific, so it must be personal.
Craig’s dissertation appeared in print as The Kalam Cosmological Argument in 1979—kalam roughly means “theology” in Arabic—and it would become the most argued about philosophy of religion text in recent memory.7 “If our discussion has been more than a mere academic exercise,” the book concludes, “this conclusion ought to stagger us, ought to fill us with a sense of awe and wonder at the knowledge that our whole universe was caused to exist by something beyond it or greater than it.”8 For Craig, this was never merely academic. He would turn the argument into his opening volley in public debates. Proclaiming it became his ministry. When you’re confronted with the logic, if a proof like this means anything, he thought, it changes you.
And on that note the great dilemma of creation and eternity brings us back to Hayy, alone on the island. Assembling these proofs changes everything for him. But it does so only when he finally realizes that the dilemma isn’t worth his worry.
Hayy’s mind thinks its way to a proof of the first cause, and to something like Ibn Sina’s being that is necessary-by-virtue-of-itself with an eternal universe. Each, like al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd, pokes objections at the other. From where Hayy stands on his island, and in his short island of time, he can’t decide which story is really true—eternity or creation. He has no revelation or ancient authorities to incline him one way or another. But what he finally discovers is that the implications are the same. A God worthy of worship awaits him at the end of either proof: a cause without a body and a perfect, unchangeable ground of being. It dawns on Hayy that, no matter what, he can be sure there is a God, and that’s assurance enough for him.
It was also enough, evidently, for Ibn Tufayl and the sultan when Ibn Rushd found them talking together and when the sultan raised his question about the universe. This sultan was a reactionary ruler who sought to purge his society of heretics and unbelievers. But as philosophers alone in a quiet room—their little island, away from the mainland public—they could confess to one another that the truth might be more ambiguous than they would publicly admit. Ibn Tufayl finally managed to calm the younger Ibn Rushd, who told them what he knew about the ancients’ opinions. The sultan sent him home with money and a robe and a horse to carry them.
∴
With thirty-five years behind him, Hayy’s life takes a sudden turn. It’s all because of the God he found in proofs. He had become possessed.
By now thought of this Subject was so deeply rooted in his heart that he could think of nothing else. He was distracted from his prior investigation of created being. For now his eye fell on nothing without immediately detecting in it signs of His workmanship—then instantly his thoughts would shift from craft to Craftsman, deepening his love of Him, totally detaching his heart from the sensory world, and binding it to the world of mind.9
This God makes him lose interest in the things around him and even in taking care of his body beyond what it needs to keep the ecstasies coming. He gets better and better at making the periods of bliss last longer and longer. He learns that it helps to spin in circles—like a Sufi dervish, or pilgrims circumambulating the Ka’ba in Mecca, or the stars overhead.
This is just the kind of experience that Ibn Sina’s oriental philosophy promised, drawing in part from those we now call the Neoplatonists. Chief among them was Plotinus, a third-century Greek-speaking Egyptian who developed what he found in Plato into an elaborate doctrine, with an eternal and perfect One at its summit. Plotinus experienced mystical union with this One on several occasions, apparently. He described these in terms that make it seem like he had Hayy in mind: “The flight of the alone to the Alone.”10
Hayy’s visions don’t fit well into words. Ibn Tufayl actually warns us not to take any of his images too literally. But Hayy travels through the celestial spheres of planets and stars and sees countless faces all praising God in unison. He sees the torment of souls who don’t heed their divine source. This might sound to us like a mescaline trip, but its cause is proof and proof alone. The whole cosmic order comes to him on his island. Now, Hayy is perfectly and never alone in the divine company. “He has gained an understanding as unshakable as that of an old friendship,” says Ibn Tufayl, quoting Ibn Sina.11 After seven seven-year periods, in his fiftieth year, Hayy’s ecstasies become so intense that he loses interest in living entirely: “Hayy longed that God—glory to Him—would ease him altogether of his body.”12 But his body perseveres, and the story continues.
It turns out that there is another island nearby, and one not so lonely. It’s full of people. They’ve received news of God’s prophets and made a religion out of it. Where Hayy has only hard-won, direct experience, the people on this other island teach each other about the necessary being with symbols and laws. Or, at least, they try.
There is a man on this other island named Absal. Having had a small taste of mystical adventures like Hayy’s, life in society doesn’t satisfy him anymore. He sets off into the ocean in search of solitude, and he lands you-know-where.
At first when they see each other, Absal runs away. Hayy chases him down and catches him, and they become friends. Absal teaches Hayy language, and Hayy reciprocates by talking about his visions. Absal explains how religion works back on his island. There are certain basic practices: faith, prayer, alms, fasting, and pilgrimage. He describes the stories of heaven and hell, of judgment and resurrection—stories that came to earth through a messenger. Basically, he teaches Hayy about Islam.
Parts of these lessons seemed familiar to Hayy, consistent with the visions he had been having and with his longings. And it’s familiar to me. When I took an introductory class on Islam, during my first semester in college, things that didn’t make sense before in other contexts started to cohere for me in the context of that religion. Again: the exotic can shake one into a fresh look at the familiar. We learned about Islam’s Five Pillars—the same practices that Absal taught Hayy—and about the medieval empires and modern revolutions. One thing that especially stuck with me was an article by an anthropologist we had to read about conservative Muslim women in Cairo.13 She describes conversations among them about praying the five-times daily salat prayer: they do it not because they want to, necessarily, but because they want to want to. This was a revelation—a simple idea, though far from obvious to me. I had expected faith to arrive more or less prepackaged and rock-solid from the start. But these women knew it isn’t automatic; some of us have to prepare ourselves through discipline and practice.
When Absal tells him about popular religion, however, with all these trappings of ritual and law, Hayy doesn’t exactly see the point. Why bother? Why doesn’t everyone just live in perpetual ecstasy like he does? Absal has to explain human nature. He has to explain how society works. It’s hard for Hayy to grasp, having no idea what people become like when they live together. He needs to see it for himself.
They sail for the other island, and on arrival Hayy starts preaching about what he had discovered from his thinking and visions. People gather around him and listen at first out of curiosity, but their attention hits a limit. Those who understand a little get stuck in arguments and confusion, while the rest understand nothing. Most are interested in religion only so far as it can win them possessions and power over each other. His teachings cause chaos.
“Hayy now understood the human condition,” writes Ibn Tufayl, probably parroting the cynicism of the Almohad rulers. “He saw that most men are no better than unreasoning animals.”14
Popular religion, for all its faults, is the best these poor creatures can be expected to