The origin of God and Laws of Nature (Islamic perspective)

Question

Atheists claim everything came into existence without a divine creator such as God. Muslims or other contemporary religions claim that something cannot come to an existence without a creator since it defies the principle of creation.

If we take this argument a little further. One can also argue, If NOTHING can exist without being created Where does GOD fit into this rule?

The idea that everything must have a creator is recursive and seems to go all out into an infinite loop. Atheists have broken this loop on Laws Of Nature, which they cant fully explain or understand but do believe in. Theists have broken it on God which is again something they cant fully explain or understand but do believe in.

Therefore,

Fundamentally, Atheists and Theists agree that SOMETHING were created without a creator,..., but the only difference of opinion between them is that they disagree on what is the stuff that has no creator. For atheists the thing that was created without a creator are LAWS OF NATURE. For Theists its GOD.

To make it more simple:
Muslims or theists claim God had no creator and that he was there with no beginning and apparently created the universe.

Atheists claim Laws of Nature had no creator and that they were there with no beginning and apparently created the universe.

My question is: Is there any Verse or Hadith which makes this argument a little simpler? So that we may understand that since everything must have a creator then how come God cannot have one? and if a God cannot have a creator then why The Laws of Nature must have one?

Answer 1

This is a brilliant question. though it falls in a fallacy.

The idea that everything must have a creator is recursive and seems to go all out into an infinite loop.

From a creation perspective, it is indeed!

My below elaboration is based on the Islamic faith, which is my religion.

God, The problem

Universal, and cosmic rules are so consistent, that even Human mind, in its very observant nature, is confined by its delimited exposers, the same vehicle that understands subconsciously its inability to reach the absolute knowledge about any finite matter, except in analytic propositions(discrete problems). So discussion of God as a problem that is contingent by its philosophical nature.

contingency here is either leading to a Possible proposition, or a Tautological proposition (I eliminate the Contradiction proposition based on your premises in the question)

Re-thinking God

It's very important to cast the topic of the premise to well versified premises. In which case it is, Allah, being out of Time and Space, may not be confined in question to any of these two factors relating His necessary existence!

When Does God fail

God will never fail to exist! but God can fail to satisfy His necessary Existence if it (His existence) intersected with His creation, and hence He will be subject to (The Earthly/Universal Rules) and in fact this is the exact part of your question, as we understand He exists, necessarily. But we need not to apply The earthly rules that are (MUST BE) predefined By Allah already.(see note 1.B below)

Allah, The Exalted

Our minds will lead us to the infinite loop of who created Allah. People(a creation) will always apply the so-far observed fact, that everything should have a creator! Ironically, we apply this on the creator Himself, even though our observation of His nature is exactly ZERO! In other words, the Creator can't be THE CREATOR, if He was created! So The Only Solution to break the loop, is: The TRUE GOD MUST NOT HAVE A CREATOR, otherwise, his creator will be the creator!

So, how can Allah's attribute The Creator prove Him?

The creator is the one who creates, and by the way there are many creators! but The Creator is uniquely, Allah. notice the plural in the following verse (creators)

So blessed is Allah, the best of creators.23-14

How does The Creator differ from other creators?

Allah beautifully asks a question,

Or were they created by nothing, or were they the creators [of themselves]?52-35

Also He states:

O people, an example is presented, so listen to it. Indeed, those you invoke besides Allah will never create [as much as] a fly, even if they gathered together for that purpose. And if the fly should steal away from them a [tiny] thing, they could not recover it from him. Weak are the pursuer and pursued. 22-73

Quran's Answer

Allah is The First none before Him, and the last, none will be after Him (after demolishing life, the pre-resurruction time).

He is the First and the Last, the Ascendant and the Intimate, and He is, of all things, Knowing. 57-3

Important Notes

1.a Sura 52- verse 35 that is presented above uses the word Al-Khaliqoun

الخالقون

which is mentioned in DOER FORM. so the verse is a total negation that they might be the CREATORS! Real Ability to create is to find what doesn't exist from nothing. Otherwise, you are just a creator who manipulates/utilises what's already created for him.

1.b Thinking that God can confine Himself to what He has created, which might lead to contradictions of what He had decreed before will just blow the concept of God. If He has knowledge and it was always absolutely TRUE, then He can't contradict His own Rules, due to the suggested premise that He is invisible.

1.c The fallacy in the premise is addressed in section Re-thinking God above

This is, and Allah knows best. if you have any further questions please leave a comment.

Answer 2

A lot of your arguments warrant severe scrutiny to the point that your real question becomes a moot point.

If atheists or for that matter scientists cant explain the origin of the laws of nature it does not automatically follow that they equate them to God. In fact, science is exactly in pursuit of cracking open the mystery of the laws. Intuitively, the laws of nature exist because "nature exists, period!" (so there we have a creator - see next para) And that leads to the most vexing question of all times. "Why is there something (nature) rather than nothing?" Even the likes of Richard Dawkins term is as the "last remaining trump card of the theologian." Other - relatively less vulgar - scientists answer the question relatively modestly and are open to the possibility that Science Will Never Explain Why There's Something Rather Than Nothing.

On a slightly different note: What we call laws are nothing but mathematical descriptions or models of reality that work empirically (even if they don't make any sense - think about the interpretations of quantum physics). Does gravity really exist as a "being," or a tangible entity? Or is it a name given to the relation that exists between massive objects? When I raise my foot am I filling it with some sort of real substance called "potential energy?" Is energy not an abstract concept, just like the so called laws? To say, why do laws exist is a layman's way of saying: why do mathematical concepts/equations work when applied to reality? And who created them? For starters, man created these concepts. Ontologiacally, they may not even exist outside our minds. Certainly, these laws exist only because reality exists, and therefore laws are no where near attaining any divine status.

As for your "Where does GOD fit into this rule?"

"something cannot come to an existence without a creator since it defies the principle of creation"

This is a vulgar formulation of the Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God, formulated by Muslims theologians and philosophers (of which Al-Ghazali is the most famous). The correct formulation would be something like "Everything that has a beginning of existence, has a cause of its existence"

God - by definition - does not have a beginning and therefore the rule cannot even be applied to Him. Again, intuitively, God is also not a thing/being like any other temporal thing/being and therefore the rule cant really apply to God.

Answer 3

If we take this argument a little further. One can also argue, If NOTHING can exist without being created Where does GOD fit into this rule?

According to Ibn al-Arabi:

This [factor] is our dependence on Him for existence, which, in our case, derives entirely from Him be- cause we are originated while He is free of all dependence whatsoever. Thus is He rightly called the One without beginning, the Ancient of Days, contradicting all priority in the sense of existence starting from nonexistence. For, although He is the First, no temporal priority may be attributed of Him. Thus He is called also the Last. Even if He were the First in the sense of being the first-determined existence, He could not be called the Last in this sense, since contingent being has no end, being infinite. He is called the Last only in the sense that all reality, though reality be attributed to us, is His. His Finality is essentially [implicit] in His Priority as is His Priority essentially [implicit] in His Finality.

This is, rationally speaking, the Occasionalism of Al-Ghazali and the Wahdat al-Wujud (the unity of being) of Ibn al-Arabi; in the former, reality is annihilated and recreated every moment; and this annihilation and recreation is wholly dependent upon Allahs will; the latter is what is being referred to, rationally speaking, in the Wahdat al-Wujud in Ibn al-Arabis cosmology.

It's also worth taking into account too what he later writes:

Know also that the Reality (Allah) has described Himself as being the Outer and the Inner [Manifest (Zahir) and Unmanifest (Batin)]. He brought the Cosmos into being as constituting an unseen realm and a sensory realm, so that we might perceive the Inner through our unseen and the Outer through our sensory aspect.

(italics are my insertions).

The inner world, which is often neglected when one talks of the world, has many worlds, and is full of veils...