Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part IV — Page 75
Footnote Number Eleven 75 suffer the consequences of this ‘freedom’ the day when they will have to answer to Almighty God for their dishonesty. Another supplement to this conjecture of the Brahm u Sam a j is an assertion—by making which they have dressed up the disfigured body of their objection in another attire—which is: To be a follower of revelation is an act tantamount to deviating from the right approach and is contrary to the course of nature because the clear and straight path to discovering the reality of everything, which the inner voice of every human being inherently demands, is to explain its essence through rational arguments. For instance, the true reason—upon which spiritual satisfaction depends—for theft being a vile act is that it is cruel and oppressive, and is therefore improper and unjust accord- ing to reason, not that any revealed book has declared its commission as a sin. Again, for example, arsenic, a poison, is essentially prohibited from consumption because it is deadly and fatal, and not because its consumption is forbidden in divine revelation. Thus, it is proven [they argue] that the guide of certain and real truth is reason alone, and not revelation. These gentlemen, however, are still unaware of the fact that their argument was completely shattered at the very instant when it was proven with strong and cogent arguments that their reason is imper- fect and incomplete. Is it sensible to continue, like a shameless man, to harp on the same dead thought that has already been pulverized by the powerful onslaught of mighty arguments? What a pity! What a pity! My friends, have you not heard it many a time that, although the reality of things is discovered to some degree through rational arguments, it is not [true] that perfection of all stages of certainty is dependent upon reason alone? You can be refuted by the very example that you have presented because arsenic being deadly and fatal has not been established solely by reason. Rather, this quality was understood to be a certainty when reason joined hands with proper experimenta- tion and observed the hidden quality of arsenic. This is precisely what I am explaining to you, that just as reason had to have recourse to a