The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam — Page 97
mortality. 91 Another proof of His existence that God has set forth in the Holy Quran is: 121 اَلَسْتُ بِرَبِّكُمْ قَالُوا بَلَى That is, I asked the souls, am I not your Lord? They answered: Indeed. In this verse God Almighty sets forth, in the form of a story, the characteristic with which He has invested the souls, and that is that by its very nature no soul can deny the existence of God. Those who deny God do so because they can find no proof of His existence according to their own fancy. Yet they acknowledge that for everything that is created there must be a creator. There is no one in the world so stupid that if he falls ill he would insist that there is no cause for his illness. If the system of the universe had not been made up of cause and effect, it would not have been possible to predict the time of a tornado, or of the eclipse of the sun or the moon, or that a patient would die at a certain time, or that a disease would be reinforced by another disease at a certain stage. Thus, a research scholar who does not acknowledge the existence of God, in effect does so indirectly, for he too, like us, searches for the causes of effects. This is an acknowledgment of a sort, though it is not perfect. Besides, if, through some device, a person who denies 121. Am I not your Lord?' They say, Yea, (The Holy Quran, al-Aʻrāf 7:173)