The Contemporary Physicists and God's Existence* -- Dr. Jaafar Sheikh Idris

[AYOUB]

Dr. Jaafar Sheikh Idris

1994*

Whether God exists or not is not as such, part of the subject matter of any empirical science, natural or social. But the facts, or what are sometimes assumed to be the facts, of the natural sciences, especially physics and biology, are often interpreted to support one view or the other. This is not therefore a paper about physics, but about the relationship between physics and the question of the existence of God. More specifically, it is mainly an Islamic rational critique of the ways modern atheists attempts to meet the challenge posed by the Big Bang theory. It does not deal with positive proofs for the existence of the Creator; it only proves the invalidity of the arguments used to buttress atheism.

 

 

http://www.jaafaridris.com/English/Books/physicists.htm

[Voltaire]

Dr. Jaafar Sheikh Idris;682401 wrote:

One of the main arguments invoked in support of some form or other of atheism has always been the claim that the world, or some part of it, is eternal and, as such, needs no creator. Thus, some Greek thinkers believed that the heav*enly bodies, and especially the sun, were eternal. The main ar*gument of one of them, Galen, was, according to Al Ghazali, that it had continued for eons and eons to have the same size, which shows that it is not perishable, because if it were, it would have shown signs of decay which it doesn't. Al Ghazali says that this is not a good argument because: ...

There are many things wrong with this! First, Galen was justifying the sun's unchanging nature not because he was a sceptic, but rather because he was a Platonist. He was adherent of the so-called Plato's notion of God (look up 'the metaphor of the sun'), which is explains why he felt the need to argue that the sun is unchanging. In fact most of those who held the view that the world is eternal in antiquity were classical theists. Aristotle was the champion of this view, yet he was the one who formulated what we call today the 'first cause' argument. What's even more wrong and careless of the author is that Galen did not subscribe to the eternity of the world.

 

R. J. Hankinson explains in Furley's From Aristotle to Augustine that, although Galen was 'consistent in his expressed view that the pinnacle of all wisdom is to be sought in Plato', he we would not follow him slavishly, as he 'refuses to commit himself one way or the other on questions such as the eternity of the world or the soul's immortality,' being of the view that such questions are 'beyond the reach of human knowledge'; a commendable position for a man of antiquity. Al-Ghazali would be the last person to have an impartial view on this matter because he's the one who wrote the entire book of attempted refutation just because he was uncomfortable with Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi adopting Aristotle's philosophy, a vital one of which was this subject matter itself – the eternity of the world. If I were to grade this as an essay of sorts, I would have given Sheikh Idris a big U. The rest of the piece is riddled with as much inaccuracies, with the use of non sequiturs on the top of that.

[AYOUB]

^ What's your take on the topic itself?

[Voltaire]

AYOUB;682622 wrote:

^ What's your take on the topic itself?

Can you be bit specific, please?

[AYOUB]

^ Physicists/Physics and God's Existence to be precise.