Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part III — Page 43
Footnote Number Eleven 43 errors and created hundreds of controversies but passed away without resolving them. Their lives came to such a restless end that they, having harboured thousands of doubts and misgivings, died as atheists, nat- uralists and heretics, and the paper boat of philosophy was unable to carry them ashore. For, on the one hand, they were overwhelmed by the love of the world, and on the other, they did not possess any definite knowledge of the Hereafter. So they departed from this world in great anguish, having been deprived and far removed from true certainty. They themselves admit that their knowledge of the Creator of the universe and of the Hereafter is not by way of certainty; rather, it is based on plausibility. That is, their ‘knowledge’ is like the knowledge of someone who, without any factual basis, conjectures that something should be like this, whereas he really does not know whether it is like this or not. Likewise, philosophers first presume that, under given cir- cumstances, certain facts should exist, and then concoct those facts in their own imagination and jump to the conclusion that they do exist. This is like someone saying, for example, that Person X ought to visit him, and then arbitrarily concluding that Person X must surely be on his way. Then he imagines that Person X ought to come on horseback and proceeds to believe that he must indeed have come on horseback. Such have been the conjectures employed by these philosophers. Never did they have the good fortune of being certain that God truly exists. Their intellect, even when it moved in the right direction, could only arrive at the conclusion that the universe calls for a creator. In fact, even with regard to this weak inference they always remained in uncertainty and doubt, like those devoid of faith, and they never walked the path of truth. Some of them do not believe that God is the Regulator of affairs and the Creator who creates as He wills. Others took primordial substance to be co-eternal with God. Some declared all souls to be eternal and virtually partners with Him—a doctrine advocated by the A ryah Sam a jists to this day. Others refused to accept the survival of the human soul [after death] or the next life of reward and punishment. Some regarded time to be the prime mover, like God.