Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

The Mosque, the Laboratory, and the Market • 109existence of God would have been conclusively demonstrated only ifshown to follow from both the hypothesis of the world’s eternity andits creation (Ibn Tufayl, tr. 1972, 81–86).These debates came into the Islamic tradition from Greek sourcesalong with the entire stock of commentaries on Aristotle’s originalproof for the existence of God. The translation movement also broughtinto Arabic the entire stock of refutations of Aristotle’s arguments,most important the refutation of John Philoponus, who systematicallyrefuted all the arguments for the eternity of the world put together byAristotle and Proclus (ca. d. 485). These stock proofs and refutationswere supplemented by numerous subtle refinements by Muslim andJewish philosophers over the centuries. One of the most importantaspects of the Islamic as well as Jewish traditions is that whereasAristotle had taken the world as his point of departure, Muslim andJewish philosophers often take God as their point of departure.These debates involved a large number of philosophers, whowere sometimes also scientists, but there were no means available tothem to test their arguments by experiments such as carbon dating;all they had were philosophical tools such as logic. In the courseof these debates, a further refinement of the argument led somephilosophers to postulate that matter was eternal, but the world inits present form was created in time. Thus, the entire debate can bedivided into three categories: (i) arguments for the eternity of bothmatter and the world; (ii) arguments for the creation of both matterand the world; and (iii) arguments for the eternity of matter butcreation of the world.That it is impossible for generation to take place from nothingwas the foundation of Aristotle’s argument, but those who opposedeternity attempted to show that it was a feeble foundation. Itsultimate counterargument rested on the point that what we observetoday to be a law of nature cannot be retrojectively assumed for atime hidden from us. Thus, the fact that we never observe a henexcept from an egg or an egg except from a hen cannot be extendedbeyond our observation to the remote past. Many Kalam writers,such as Abd al-Jabbar (d. 1024) and al-Juwayni (d. 1085), refutedthe eternity of the world on the basis of this argument, which hadalready been put forward by John Philoponus.