by Fuzail Ahmad
After Proving Existence of God, I'm moving on to substantiate 'Monotheism' or 'Tawheed' which certainly is core of islamic theology.
INTRODUCTION:
Theism, the belief that there is ATLEAST One God/deity has various sects within it, few dominant sects are Monotheism, Polytheism, monism. The Word 'Monothiesm' is dervied from two words - 'Mono' and 'Theism', the word 'THEISM' is derived from a greek word 'THEOS' meaning 'GOD', hence 'Monothiesm' is defined as belief in ONE GOD on the very contrary 'Polythiesm' is belief in more than one God, while monism is a deviant and erroneous form of monotheism, it is what i call belief in one God in disguise as it asserts that the One God has several manifestations in different or human form which is no doubt an irrational belief.
Monotheism & Islam :
Islam, as enshrined in Quran and hadith is a undoubtedly a Monotheistic faith, infact Monotheism is the central theme of Islam, there are 1000s of explicit and unambigious verses of Quran and various hadiths which denies and argues the existence of any other gods beside the One God - the creator, the sustainer, etc.
The Holy Qur'an presents a very 'apt' & 'concise' definition of 'God' in its 112th chapter, this sacred chapter is known as 'SURAH IKHLAAS', besides scrutinizing the Monotheism and Polytheism.
The Surah Ikhlaas reads as follows :
1 - “(Say) He is God one and Only.”
2 - “God the Eternal and absolute”
3 - “He begets not, nor was He begotten”
4 - “And there is None like him”
Monism & Polytheism in Hinduism :
First of all we ought to know that, Hinduism unlike Islam doesn't emphasizes on a particular philosophy, rather it is hodge podge of several religions under a name "Hinduism". Those who practice it differ very much from one another in their faith and practice. Hinduism includes in it Vedism, Brahmanism, Sivaism, Vishnuism, Polytheism, Pantheism, Idolatory in is greatest forms, Tree-Worship, Serpent-Worship, Demon-Worship and so on.
Various schools of thoughts of hinduism emphasizes on Monism and polytheism.
for instance, adavaita, vishisistadvaita, shuddhadvaita, dvadvaita, etc are some monistic schools of hinduism. These monistic faiths asserts that there is One God i.e 'brahman', and has several manifestations, consequently it asserts that we humans or some of us are too God and worthy of worship.
It teaches polytheism is also evident from the following citations from its scriptures:
Rigveda 1:34:11 says,
आ नासत्या तरिभिर एकादशैर इह देवेभिर यातम मधुपेयम अश्विना | परायुस तारिष्टं नी रपांसि मर्क्षतं सेधतं दवेषो भवतं सचाभुवा ||
"Come, O Nasatyas, with the thrice-eleven Gods; come, O ye Asvins, to the drinking of the meath. Make long our days of life, and wipe out all our sins: ward off our enemies; be with us evermore."
Similarly it is mentioned in Rigveda 8:30:2,
इति सतुतासो असथा रिशादसो ये सथ तरयश्च तरिंशच्च | मनोर्देवा यज्ञियासः ||
"Thus be ye lauded, ye destroyers of the foe, ye Three-and-Thirty Deities, The Gods of man, the Holy Ones."
In Rigeveda 10:52:6 the number is 3,339. It says,
तरीणि शता तरी सहस्राण्यग्निं तरिंशच्च देवा नवचासपर्यन | औक्षन घर्तैरस्त्र्णन बर्हिरस्मा आदिद्धोतारं नयसादयन्त ||
"The Deities three thousand, three hundred and thirty-nine, have served and honoured Agni, Strewn sacred grass, anointed him with butter, and seated him as Priest, the Gods' Invoker."
# To know more about hinduism, read this article ==> What is Hindusim? By Mushafiq Sultan
Probing Monotheism & Polytheism :
After having a brief introduction with these notions, i'll like to move on for probing Monotheism and Polytheism and substantiating monotheism.
Ockham’s Razor :
Its a philosophical principle attributed to the 14th century logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. This principle enjoins “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate”, meaning “Plurality should not be posited without necessity.” In simple words it means that, entites shouldn't be multiplied without neccesity.
Since, this Universe must have creator(thoroughly proved HERE) as 'NOTHING COMES OUT OF NOTHING' (for a chair to exist there ought to be a carpenter) and as Universe must have began to exist(which will be proved in latter part of article) be it few billion years ago, hence it must have atleast One Eternal and Uncreated Diety, but polytheism would be an irrational notion as it would implicate that ONE GOD is not sufficient enough to do everything, because in light of this premise, there must be something which one God is unable to do and that is done by the other God implying that God is NOT OMNIPOTENT and ALMIGHTY. So, it sounds Irrational, because the cause or creator of this universe should be Omnipotent/all-powerful because without this ability universe couldn't be created. Therefore, there should be only one God as per Ockham's razor as “Plurality should not be posited without necessity.”
A possible contention to the above might be, Why can't multiple gods be semi-powerful and maintain this universe together?
The basic problem with this contention is that, the existence of multiple god would create chaos.
Quranic Argument :
Holy Qur'an presents this classical arguement :
“If there were in them gods besides God, they would both have been in disorder. So glory be to God, the Lord of the Throne, being above what they describe.”
[Al-Quran Surah Ambiyaa 21:22]
“No son (or offspring or children) did God beget, nor is there any ilah (god) along with Him; (if there had been many gods), behold, each god would have taken away what he had created, and some would've tried to overcome others! Glorified be God above all that they attribute to Him.”
[Al-Quran Surah Al Mu’minun, Chapter 23, Verse 91]
Let us understand it better with help of Mode logic i.e analogies/examples
1.For instance, if all time-keeping equipments were produced by a company consisting of three independent partners, with each specializing in only one aspect of these time-keeping equipments.
Can such a company be depended on for continual supply of time-keeping equipments?
What if one partner (for some reason) decides to withhold his part, or decides to stop making it altogether–where would this leave the consumers?
Or what if each of the three partners, thinking that his part is the most important wants his name to be listed first at the top of the product–where would these wrangling leave consumers?
Or what if the partners cannot agree on a specific design?
2. If there were two dieties and they disagreed about something, such as one wanted to move X, whereas the other did not want it to moved, or one wanted to make Y a living being, whereas the other wanted to make it lifeless, then, logically speaking, there are only three possibilities. First, the wills of the two are both carried out; second, only the will of one of them is carried out; third, the will of neither of them is carried. The first case is not possible because it requires the existence of contraries. The third possibility is also ruled out because it would imply that a body is neither moving nor not moving and this is impossible. This would also imply that both of them are incapable or carrying out their wills, which would disqualify them from being God. Finally, if the will of one is realised and not that of the other, he alone will deserve to be God and the one whose will is not realised cannot be considered God.
UNITY OF PHYSICAL LAWS:
There is order in the universe because one law pervades the whole of it, and one law clearly points to one Author and Maintainer of that law. The unity of law is a clear proof of the Oneness of the Maker.
What I mean by one law pervading the universe is that a physical law doesn't change from one place to another. For example, law of gravity is same everywhere be it on moon or earth or anywhere else. One set of laws obtaining at one time or place, for example, and a different set of laws obtaining at a different time or place. We observe nothing of the sort, however. On the contrary, the unity of the world, the fact that it exhibits a uniform structure, that it is a single cosmos, strongly suggests some sort of unity in its cause—that there is either a single designer, or several designers acting cooperatively, perhaps under the direction of one of their number.
Consequently there can be drawn two possible premises from the above argument - (a) there is only one God. (b) There is unity between various gods.
However, the premise (b) would be an erroneous one because in a council or in apex executive body, members do not necessarily agree on a certain design. Moreover, that would mean that their wills are now limited and passive, which would mean they are not Gods anymore by definition! Therefore, we can conclude that notion of one God is a rational one.
CONCEPT OF DIFFERENTIATION :
For differentiating between two entities we need certain Observable characteristics, such as Colour, Shape, Size, etc.
But in absence of these certain characteristics, would we be able to perceive the two objects or any objects at all? One could not, because these concepts are required to perceive any number of entities. Now since the cause of the universe is outside the universe, we can assert that there are no such observable characteristics, such as distance, shape, colour and size, because these concepts only make sense within the universe. hence if there are no observable differentiating characteristics we can't claim multiplicity of causes of universe.
But it doesn't implicates that there is no Creator, because there are various philosophical and cosmological evidence of the contrary, thoroughly presented here ==> There must be a God or Creator! By Fuzail Ahmad
Since, I've substantiated the notion of existence of One and only God, we're on bifurcated road one of them leads to Monotheism and the other one to the Monism.
Therefore, I'll scrutinize these two roads, so that we can move a step ahead on the right one.
Probing Monism :
Monism is typically defined as the belief that there is one god and he has several manifestations or forms, though i define it as belief in one god in disguise.
First of all, God or the cause of this universe must be IMMATERIAL and unlike anything which we can imagine like how Quran says in 112:4 “And there is None like him” because asserting that God is material would imply that :
1) God is not eternal, since whatever is physical or material is within the boundary of the universe and therefore is limited in time dimensions and whatever entity is limited in time dimension has to undergo causation and effect.
2) Universe we see around wouldn't have existed as whatever has a beginning is a physical and material entity and therefore is within the universe itself as a created thing is limited in time dimension, so saying that universe is created by something physical would imply that a part of universe created the universe which isn't plausible as for that it this material god must have a creator as out of nothing, nothing comes.
3) Universe wouldn't have existed, as it would lead us to absurdity of infinite regress, let me a elaborate it by an example, If the universe, U1, followed another temporal cause U2, and U2 followed another temporal cause U3, and this went on and on to infinity we wouldn’t have the universe U1 to talk about in the first place.
Think of it this way,
when does U1 come into being? Only after U2 has come into being.
When does U2 come into being? Only after U3 has come into being.
This same problem will continue even if we go to infinity.
If U1 depended on its coming into being on a chain of infinite temporal causes, U1 would never exist.
Therefore, the creator must be eternal and thus immaterial.
4) Big Crunch - Wikipedia theory tells us that this universe will be crunched after a certain period of time, so this so-called god would be crunched as well since he is material and thus part of the universe.
Since, I've substantiated the notion(there is None like him) i would like to throw some light on hoax of God taking forms.
An immaterial God taking being a material being is conceptually and philosophically incoherent, it is tantamount of saying that a circle can be rectangular but its irrational because they are very contrary to each other. Alike, an immaterial, eternal, non-physical God cannot be a material, created and physical because its very-very contrary to the basic attributes of God, therefore God being a human is certainly a hoax and myth.
I've already answered this contention in my Previous article on existence of God as follows :
"It would be tantamount of saying 1=2. Since, when 1 becomes 2 it isn’t 1 anymore neither can this ’2′ be called combination of ’1′ and ’2′ and furthermore there won’t remain anything like ’1′. Likewise, if we say that ‘God’ becomes a man named ‘gagan patil’, ‘gagan patil’ won’t be God any more, moreover there won’t exist any ‘God’ after God becomes ‘Gagan patil’."
Some monists come up with the contention that ISN'T YOUR GOD ALL-POWERFUL? SO WHY CAN'T HE BECOME A MAN?
Although he is ALL-POWERFUL/OMNIPOTENT as Quran mentions that in several verses like, 2:109, 2:284, 3:29, 16:77, 24:45, 29:20, 33:27, 35:1, 48:21, 59:6, 65:12 he doesn't commits un-Godly acts, those acts which are contrary to his attributes.
Meanwhile, i leave a rhetorical question for monists to contemplate over "Can your God lie since he is omnipotent?"
May God Almighty guide all of us to the valid path of Monotheism.
I invite readers to the rational faith - "Monotheism"
