Praise be to Allah!

For a believer the existence of Allah is so natural that it is affirmed through ones day to day life. However, for a seeker of knowledge in this subject, the quest for existential truth is not an easy prospect, especially in a social environment in which faith is mocked as superstition, wishful thinking, or even as a dangerous fantasy.

In Islam, the case for Allah’s existence is solid in terms of its rational foundations as well as the purpose, meaning, comfort, and guidance that it gives to our lives. The Quran inspires conviction by appealing to the aspects of the inner life of human beings, namely, to the heart and the mind. Intuition and experience work in tandem with logic and reason to arrive at a state of certainty in faith.

The Quran and Sunnah deal with this subject involving both sources of beliefs, namely, heart-based appeals based on intuition and mind-based appeals based on rational reflection.

Let us firstly deal with the heart-based appeal based on intuition.

The Natural Instinct - Fit?rat Allah

Human beings sense the existence of Allah (God) or what they perceive as a higher power by pure instinct, with or without a prophetic revelation to guide them. In Islam, this is simply explained through a Quranic verse, where Allah took a primordial covenant with every person before the world was created that they would recognize their Creator.

Allah said:

And [mention] when your Lord took from the children of Adam - from their loins - their descendants and made them testify of themselves, [saying to them], "Am I not your Lord?" They said, "Yes, we have testified." [This] - lest you should say on the day of Resurrection, "Indeed, we were of this unaware." (Al Quran 7:172)

The primordial covenant results in the innate impulse within people to seek out the higher power that they can sense, as they have done in some form or another throughout all of recorded history, to the point that some scientists today argue that belief in Allah (God) or a higher power is hardwired into our genes.

All true and revealed religion confirms and conforms to the human nature that the Creator instilled within us. The Quran refers to human religious nature as “Fit?rat Allah”, the instinctive and inherent disposition with which God created people.
Allah said:

So, direct your face toward the religion, inclining to truth. [Adhere to] the fitrah of Allah upon which He has created [all] people. No change should there be in the creation of Allah. That is the correct religion, but most of the people do not know. (Al Quran 30:30)

All people were born to be believers in God, and the revelations of the Prophets simply awaken and reinforce the disposition that is already inside us. Even polytheists, who believe in multiple gods and deities, often believe that there is an even higher power, an even greater God over all of them.

Though there are many examples which can be quoted here, but we have restricted our answer with only 2 examples for this approach. Let us now delve into the mind-based appeals based on reason and logic.

The question that most human beings eventually ask themselves is about the nature of existence: Why am I here? Why is there a world and a universe? Why is there something and not nothing?

The Quran addresses this question with a cosmological discourse, a reminder that it was Allah who created everything and caused it to be. Human beings are asked to reflect upon the nature of their existence and the universe. Is it really plausible, sensible, and intuitive that the universe appeared arbitrarily for no reason?

Allah said:

Do they not contemplate within themselves? Allah has not created the heavens and the earth and what is between them except in truth and for a specified term. And indeed, many of the people, in [the matter of] the meeting with their Lord, are disbelievers. (Al Quran 30:8)

Our intuition and experience tell us that effects have causes; things come to be because something made them that way. Since the universe is one giant series of causes and effects, it is reasonable to conclude that it had an original cause that set it all in motion.

Allah said:

Or were they created by nothing, or were they the creators [of themselves]? Or did they create the heavens and the earth? Rather, they are not certain. (Al Quran 52: 35 to 36)

These verses suggest three possibilities:
 

• The universe appeared without any agent to bring it into existence.
• People created themselves.
• The universe must have been created. (Obvious implication).

The first two propositions are impossible. It could not be the case that the universe appeared from nothing without any reason, purpose, or force to inject it with its energy and direction. Everyday experience informs us that all things we witness in life, every effect we see, must have an explanation at some level. The second proposition, that people created themselves, can be dismissed on its face. As such, the only reasonable conclusion is that the universe was caused, it was created, it was made to exist by something greater and more powerful than itself.

Scholars derive from these verses and others a logical train of thought, sometimes referred to as the cosmological argument, which determines that Allah (God) as the uncaused cause or first cause, is the most reasonable answer to the existential question. One of the scholar summarizes the logic of the argument in the following steps:
 

• Everything in the universe that has a beginning must have a cause.
• The universe began to exist.
• Therefore, the beginning of the existence of the universe must have been caused by something.
• The only such cause must be an uncaused cause, or God.

This line of thinking is acceptable to the mind and it finds validation in human intuition and experience. It sufficiently answers the question of why anything exists in the first place. The great physicist Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion states: “Every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed on it. In other words, things in the universe do not move or change their movements unless an external force, acts upon them. This is true of everything in the universe, and it is just as true for the universe itself as a whole.

Those who deny the existence of the Creator attempt to challenge the a priori premise that the universe has a definite beginning. Their argument is that the universe has always existed in an endless series of causes, or an infinite regression, without the need for a first cause to set it in motion. Besides being counter-intuitive, as all things we experience in life had a beginning at some point, modern physics and cosmology now largely accept the premise of the cosmological argument as fact. The “big bang” theory postulates that the universe began from a singularity somewhere between 12 and 14 billion years ago.

Another angle of reasoning is by means of the "Teleological discourse".

The very fabric of the cosmos, from the macroscopic stars to the microscopic world of microbes and everything in between, contains a set of universal, natural laws that produce order. The result of these laws is that many things in the universe exhibit identifiable purpose. Our eyes were made to see. Our ears were made to hear. Our lungs were made to breathe. Our trees were made to produce fruit and clean air. Our water was made to sustain life, and so on. With so many clear instances of purpose that we repeatedly experience in the different parts of the universe, it is only logical to conclude that the entire universe itself exists as it is for a purpose.

Indeed, teleological language is unavoidable in daily life and especially in life sciences. Biologists and medical professionals speak of the “role” and “function” of various organs (who assigned its role and function?), as well as genetic "codes" and "information" (who coded it and informed it?). Charles Darwin himself, often held up as a champion of atheist philosophies, was unable to convey his scientific ideas without frequent recourse to the language of design and purpose. It is natural and intuitive for us to recognize the teleology of the universe.

Accordingly, the Quran persistently draws attention to signs (a?ya?t) in nature that demonstrate the grand design and power of the Creator. We are called to engage in thoughtful reflection (tafakkur) upon all of these signs as a means of recognizing our purpose and attaining conviction.

Allah said:

Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding. Who remember Allah while standing or sitting or [lying] on their sides and give thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth, [saying], "Our Lord, You did not create this aimlessly; exalted are You [above such a thing]; then protect us from the punishment of the Fire (Al Quran 3:190 to 191)

True faith, then, is not the result of an abandonment of reason, as some people imagine. The apparent dichotomy between religion and science is a false one. Rather, using the faculty of reason, in concert with a sound heart, is a path to Allah (God) and an Islamic virtue.

No length of an article can sufficiently do justice to this question. However, a truth-seeking mind may ponder and contemplate over the universe to reach the reality of Allah’s existence.

Allah says:

We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth. (Al Quran 41:53)