Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 283
BELIEF IN THE UNSEEN وَإِنْ مِّنْ شَيْءٍ إِلَّا عِنْدَنَا خَزَائِنُهُ وَمَا نُنَزِلُةَ إِلَّا بِقَدَرٍ مَّعْلُومٍ 15:22. We possess inexhaustible treasures of everything, but We do not cause them to descend except in welldefined and calculated measure. 4 4. The most wonderful message delivered by the verse just quoted is that the world of the unknown is boundless. and fathomless, yet man will always be permitted access to it, but in measured portions which will be estimated by God in accordance with the requirements and dictates of the time. Thus, the Quranic terms of 'the unknown' and 'the unseen' do not in any way encourage blind faith and ignorance. On the contrary, they promote perpetual investigation by assuring man that what he knows and observes as reality is but infinitesimally small in proportion to what he knows not. Hence man's quest for knowledge must always continue because the ocean of the secrets of nature is inexhaustible. . For rational decision making the only tools at the disposal of human intellect are its subjective and objective impressions. Hence, even if the integrity of the decision maker is beyond question, his decisions could still be wrong because of such factors as are not within his control. . Misinformation, misunderstanding, deception and inadequacy of mental faculties can adversely influence the quality of his decision making. Again, as the vantage points of different observers are most often diverse, so also the nature of their observations vary. Despite these inherent flaws and possible margins of error, it cannot be denied that the human faculty of rationality has been largely responsible for guiding his steps, age after age, from eras of darkness to eras of comparative light. 277