In the essay I distinguished between two different versions of the design argument to prove the existence of God, and instead of the ahl tasawwuf, mutakallim dan the hukama, i drew from modern western-christian theologians and philosophers of religion, without knowing the history and identity of western culture and its own experiences with philosophy and religion, assuming therefore its universality.
The result was, where analogy(tamthil) is concerned I found that the atheist philosophers(pace Hume) also had their own analogies to show that the universe was a product of chance, of things coming out of some latency in matter, and attacking the tamthil of design( the clock maker argument) by using qiyas ma'al fariq( to attack the analogies, the world is neither like a clock or other human designs, or they accept deism as a compromise), that while the probabilistic argument suffers from the fact that probabilism is still conjecture(zann) at best, for not being able to cross the threshold of certainty(yaqin).
Later as I come to read Allamah Iqbal, the great philosopher-poet himself deny the potency of all 5 ways outlined to rationaly demonstrate the existence of God.
That being said I thought as an undergraduate if I could not rationally demonstrate the existence of God, I must be a fideist( taking the existence of God upon the leap of faith), since I know Pascal's wager couldnt take me there either.
But then again, in one of the Saturday night lectures, Prof Al-Attas said,' If we were asked to rationally prove(demonstrate) the existence of God, then we say, what do you mean by rational? And what does it mean to prove?'.
This was how I came to realise, the problem of the existence of God was never part of the intellectual tradition of Islam(although this is not denying that proofs and arguments were set forth by our philosophers), since we did not suffer from the self originated problem of parmenidean conception of existence, or the epistemological problems of descartes and kant, neither did we suffer from the amalgamation of different conceptions of God due to the fusion of the hellenistic-judeo christian-patristic and other traditions of the Europeans.
Therefore the existence of God was a given, the fitri worldview of our forefathers were nourished by the Quran and the Islamic languages which all serve to project its vision of God, the world, the after life and the position regarding the nature of man.
Furthermore, where knowledge is concern we affirm that just as rationality is an aspect of man's intellect, which systematises the information obtained through observation and cognition, it is also part of dynamic soul with multiple modes, some of which may operate in higher regions of reality.
The world of sensible experience is treated as the seen world without denying the reality of the unseen world, which does not leave its traces upon our physical faculties, but is affirmed nonetheless since we affirm just as the rational intellect gradually realises its potential so too does its spiritual counterpart, the heart.
It was so assuring for me to read that our scholars of the past were not just man of the highest scientific and mathematical achievemnts, but they were also men(and women) of spiritual vision and reality.
Let us not suffer the fate of aladdin's wife who traded the old Heirloom for the sake of shiny-new ones which does not posess its barakah!
https://www.facebook.com/syed.m.alattas/posts/10154969815281221
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