Our God — Page 110
110 Three Grades of Certainty The next argument I would like to present in favour of God, albeit logical and relating to the ‘ought-to-be’ stage of certainty concerning God, provides a sure and definite sign to God for the discerning. One must not assume that logical arguments are just hypothetical and cannot lead to any degree of certainty con- cerning God. Anyone who has this idea has completely misun- derstood. The ‘ought-to-be’ stage concerning God is a stage of certainty, just as the ‘is’ stage is a stage of certainty. The difference is that the ‘ought-to-be’ stage does not provide the utmost cer- tainty provided by the ‘is’ stage, and it is not as assuring and as comforting; nevertheless, no wise person should doubt that it is a stage of certainty. There are various stages of certainty. One stage of certainty is that which is achieved by reasoning, when we infer the exist- ence of something by observing some of its effects. For instance, when we observe smoke far off in a forest, we infer that there is a fire giving off smoke, as there cannot be smoke without fire, and that gives us the certainty of reason. In Quranic terminology this is called ‘ilmul-yaq i n; i. e. the certainty through inference in the absence of any direct observation. Clearly, the ‘ought to be’ stage belongs to this category, as we infer the existence of God from signs, not from direct observation. When we see fire with our eyes, or experience its heat, the ‘ought to be’ stage of certainty changes to ‘is’ stage of definitive certainty. In other words, in the ‘ought to be’ stage we believe in God on the basis of reasoning and in the ‘is’ stage we no longer depend on reasoning; rather, we graduate to a kind of physical observation.