Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part III — Page xix
Introduction xix a few—of His attributes; how then is it possible that some of these perfect attributes should be of no use to mankind. Can there be a greater blasphemy than to believe that He is not the complete Rabbul-‘ A lam i n [Lord of all the worlds], but only a half or a third. ( see p. 80) Study of Creation Cannot Lead to Certainty of Faith in God Even studying the works of God is not a way to acquire a true concept of God. In commenting upon the views of the Brahm u Sam a jists, who maintained that man can achieve cognition of God by studying the book of nature, he explains: The point that the study of creation alone cannot lead to per- fect certainty is proven by the fact that creation is not a book wherein one can read plainly that all these things have been created by God, that God in fact exists, that the joy of meeting Him is the ultimate bliss and that He will reward those who are obedient and punish the transgressors. Rather, when one observes Allah’s creation and finds the design of this universe to be perfect and flawless, one can only conclude, by way of conjecture, that there ‘ought to be’ a Creator of this creation. However, there is a great difference between the import of ‘ought to be’ and ‘is’. There is an element of doubt in ‘ought to be’ and it does not bring about the degree of certainty that ‘is’ does. When a person says by way of conjecture that such and such a thing ‘ought to be’ he means to say only that it has to exist so far as his reasoning is concerned, but he is unable to say whether or not it actually exists. This is why all those who have restricted themselves to the study of nature have never agreed