Philosophy of religion and Iqbal

Philosophy · Logic, ethics and special topics. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.

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The idea

Philosophy of religion examines by reason the classical arguments for the existence of God. The ontological argument starts from the concept of God alone. The cosmological argument starts from the existence of the world and reasons to a first cause or necessary being. The teleological argument starts from order and purpose in nature and reasons to a designer. The problem of evil asks how evil can exist if God is all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good.

Iqbal's central idea is khudi: the self or personality, which is real and must be strengthened by love, action and struggle, not dissolved. The fully developed self is the perfect man, God's vicegerent on earth. His 'Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam' calls for fresh thinking through ijtihad.

Rules to remember

Ontological: Anselm ('Proslogion'), God as the being than which none greater can be conceived; Descartes gave a later version. Critics: Gaunilo (the perfect island), Kant (existence is not a predicate).
Cosmological: Aristotle's unmoved mover; the first three of Aquinas's Five Ways; the kalam argument defended by al-Ghazali; Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason.
Teleological (design): Paley's watch, 'Natural Theology' (1802). Chief critic: Hume, 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' (1779).
Evil: moral evil comes from human choices; natural evil from events in nature such as earthquakes. Replies (theodicies): the free-will defence; the soul-making view (Hick).
Iqbal (1877 to 1938): 'Asrar-e-Khudi' (Secrets of the Self, 1915) on the individual; 'Rumuz-e-Bekhudi' (Mysteries of Selflessness, 1918) on the individual in the community.
Stages in the growth of khudi: obedience to the law, self-control, divine vicegerency (niyabat-e-Ilahi).
'Reconstruction': lectures in English, first published in 1930; ijtihad is 'the principle of movement in the structure of Islam'.

Common mistake

Candidates confuse the three arguments. Look at the starting point: a definition of God (ontological), the bare existence of the world or of causes (cosmological), or order and purpose in the world (teleological).

Worked example

A critic says: 'By the same reasoning I can prove that the most perfect island exists, since an island that existed would be more perfect than one that did not.' Which argument is under attack, and by whom was this objection first made?

The critic's parody moves from the idea of a most perfect thing to its real existence, with no appeal to observation.
The argument that reasons from a concept alone to existence is the ontological argument of Anselm.
The 'perfect island' reply was made by the monk Gaunilo, Anselm's contemporary, to show that the form of reasoning proves too much.

Answer: The ontological argument; the objection is Gaunilo's 'perfect island'.

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