Hello,
First and foremost, I want to say that I am sorry if I am overwhelming my co-members of this forum with all of my questions, as I have no intention of doing so. Rather, I do so to have my thoughts clarified.
I have been thinking recently, and I have been wondering about the concept of religious miracles and Allah and the scientific laws of nature being compatible with each other. Like is the concept of there being universal scientific laws and there existing perhaps of the possibility of breaking these laws in accordance with divine will even possible? Is it possible for scientific laws of nature to be broken, even by a divine will? Take for example the Quranic story of Moses throwing down his staff and it turning into a snake by the will of allah, couldn't allah just miraculously have transformed the staff, physically and chemically, into a snake because that is who he is, allah?
Whenever I used to bring up these questions to other muslims, I typically got the answer of that "Allah can do it, because he is Allah, and if he wasn't able to do it, then he wouldn't be Allah." I know that this is an example of circular logic, but that is what they always used to say to me. Whether I would ask how Noah would be able to fit two pairs of every animal into the Ark or why Allah would ban music or demand that men grow their beards, I would always get the answer of, well Allah is Allah, so He is able to do it, or in the latter case I would always get the answer of, well Allah is Allah, He is the Lord, and we are not allowed to argue with Allah, we only have to obey, because He is the Lord and He is the one in charge. This would apply to other stuff too, like sometimes I would bring up the concept of homosexuality being biologically inherent, and I would get the answer of something like, well Allah has decreed that homosexuality is a sin, so even if He (Allah) made homosexuality to be biologically inherent, we still have to forbid homosexuality because that is what Allah has demanded, and we are obliged to obey him because He is our Lord and thus He is the one in charge.
I am just very confused and I need rationality...
Thank you for hearing me out.
Richard Swinburne argues that miracles are incorrigible natural laws. That is to say, our picture of what constitutes natural laws is incomplete and what may appear to us to be a violation of nature may actually be an unknown variable.
Of course, such a view is predicated on a (primarily) unfalsifiable metaphysical premise — not necessarily that a god exists, but that the uimaginal (that is to say imagination of collective human consciousness — or psychic metamorphmosis is reality imported from the realm of the internal onto the realm of the external. Undoubtedly there is cross-fertilisation between the internal experiences of a human organism and how it relates to the tribe as a whole, and vice-versa, but ultimately our references for functioning in society largely take place on the plane of the external as we can falsify on said plane. This is not to say that Swinburne's view is correct or incorrect, but it needs hermeneutical analysis. Can we contend that the concept of a natural law objectively exists? After all, it is a human construction. Furthermore, can we contend that (a... violation) of a human construct is objective insofar as the human construct possesses an antithesis, insofar as x=0 rather than X being tantamount to X-1?
Topic: Scientific laws, Allah, metaphysical/miraculous claims of religion(s)