In a recent discussion, someone posted a quote that, in
part, dealt with the issue of fate, and the quote cited seemed to suggest that
everything already had been written in the book of life. Someone responded to
the quote by wondering how choice fit into the matter. This latter individual also alluded to
the problem of how having to reconcile the idea of choice with the notion that
God’s foreknowledge of outcomes would seem to negate the possibility of choice.
There are a number of ways of critically reflecting on the
foregoing discussion. First, I remember reading a story about Bobby Fischer,
the former world chess champion, who indicated how there was one point in his
career when after a given match began, Fischer could see his way to the
conclusion of the game, but as Fischer got older, he indicated that he only
could see the unfolding of the game up to a couple of moves prior to its
endpoint.
With respect to the earlier part of his career – when he
could see the course of a game to its conclusion -- was Fischer saying that his
foreknowledge took away the free choices of his opponent? I don’t believe so.
In effect, he was saying that it didn’t matter what his
opponent did in the way of this or that move. Fischer understood the tactical
lines of the whole game and how that line of play would unfold over time. His
opponent was free to choose his or her moves in any way the individual cared
to, but those moves would not affect the outcome of the game.
Similarly – but in a much more complicated, richer, and subtle
manner – God’s understanding of the game of life is such that Divinity knows
the outcome of each of the simultaneous matches (trillions, or more, of them)
even as people are free to make whatever choices they like with respect to
their journey through life. People’s choices will not alter the overall
character of how the game of life unfolds.
Under the foregoing circumstances, choice becomes a matter
of trying to understand the tactical and strategic lines of play in the game of
life. One can work with those lines of play or one can proceed in opposition to
those lines of play, but however one decides to choose, those choices will not
alter the nature of the game or its outcome.
If one alters the character of one’s play by the choices one
makes, one can affect one’s standing at the end of the game – both for good and
ill. – because God is not in competition with us and prefers win-win situations
rather than zero-sum games in which there is only one winner. However,
irrespective of the choices we make, the overall character of the game won’t
change.
There is another way of thinking about how determinate
forces and the issue of choice might operate together amicably. More
specifically, ‘rizq’ is an Arabic word that some people have translated in terms
of the notion of fate.
However, the idea being given expression through ‘rizq’ has
more to do with the properties, gifts, events, people, and circumstances which
one has been given by God to work with in life. This is somewhat similar to the
way in which the pieces on a chessboard -- along with the properties of the
board on which the game is played, as well as the features of the place where
chess games are played -- are the things with which a chess player has to work.
Rizq is like an attractor basin in chaos theory. On the one
hand, the non-linear character of the attractor basin ensures that the overall
structure of the formation will be retained across time amidst the various
forces of existence (and this accounts for the aspects of one’s life that will
not change), while on the other hand, the non-linear dynamics of an attractor
basin also permit an array of micro-departures or degrees of freedom to exist
in conjunction with the basic properties of the attractor basin that describe
one’s life.
Chaos theory talks about such dual properties in terms of
self-similarity rather than self-sameness. Although the overall character of
the attractor basin is recognizable despite differences in the way things are
manifested from point to point within the attractor basin, the outcome at any
given instant is – at least for human beings -- difficult, if not impossible,
to predict because of the degrees of freedom which are inherent in an otherwise
determinate system.
These degrees of freedom have to do with the choices we make
concerning the elements of rizq through which one journeys during the course of
one’s lived existence on this plane of existence. One might not be able to
alter the general character of one’s existential attractor basin as a function
of the choices one makes, but one can have control over how we interact with,
or respond to, the forces that form and run through the attractor basin that
gives expression to the events of our lives … and this is what one will be held
accountable for – the way one responds to the ebb and flow of life.
Or, to take another analogy, life is like those bridge
tournaments in which the various contestants who have entered such a tournament
play the same preordained hands (i.e., hands that already have been dealt prior
to the tournament) at different tables. What matters is not the nature of the
hand one draws at any given table, but, rather, what matters is how the hand is
played.
Sufis use the term ‘ayn al-thabita’ to allude to the fixed
potential that marks the character of anyone’s rizq and through which the Names
and Attributes of God shine to bring forth the manifestations that constitute
the prism of one’s life. However, as indicated above, within that fixed
potential are the degrees of freedom that give expression to the gift of free
choice – but not free will (which is why one requires, and prays for, tawfiq,
or enabling assistance, from Allah).
God has an intimate, detailed understanding of the dynamics
of any given attractor basin (i.e., person’s life), as well as a detailed
understanding of the nature of the dynamics that result from the interplay of
billions of such attractor basins (i.e., humanity considered collectively).
Divinity can see how the character of our choices amidst the forces inherent in
those attractor basins will play out over time, and this sort of understanding
does not undermine a person’s freedom to choose how to proceed from moment to
moment.
When a parent has an intimate understanding of his or her
child, the parent knows what that child is likely to do in any given set of
circumstances. That knowledge does not cause a child to choose in this or that
way, rather the parent’s knowledge reflects the manner in which the child does,
in fact, go about making choices … and so it is with God’s knowledge of the
choices we will make in life.
Does the foregoing mean that, for example, prayer does not
work? I don’t believe so since the decision to pray or not to pray is a choice
one makes.
Prayer operates within the context of the forces at work in
the existential attractor basin that describes our lives. Prayer, itself, is
one of those forces, and the decision of whether, or not, to pray is one of the
choices a person can make.
Amidst the non-linear properties of a chaotic attractor
basin, there are degrees of freedom with respect to the how the flow of events
can transpire at any given point within such attractor basin dynamics. Those
degrees of freedom will not affect the overall character of how the attractor
basin will operate across time, but such degrees of freedom are capable of
impacting and altering – within limits -- what takes place at certain points
within the generally fixed character of the attractor basin dynamics considered
as a whole.
Choosing to pray places one in a position to potentially
affect what takes place at a given point within the overall dynamics of
attractor basin activity. Whether things will be altered in some way depends on
the One Who is in charge of those dynamics, and, since, as indicated previously,
there are degrees of freedom within the dynamics of any given attractor basin,
then alterations can be introduced into the dynamics without actually changing
the fixed features of overall attractor basin dynamics.
In other words, prayers can be answered even if the
answering of those prayers will not alter the fixed features of the general
dynamics of life. Reinhold Niebuhr once uttered a prayer that sought assistance
from God: to understand the things that can be changed, as well as to learn to
accept the things that cannot be changed and, finally, to develop the wisdom
needed to appreciate the difference between the two possibilities.
------------
At this point in the discussion, someone voiced some
objections to what was being outlined. The individual indicated that it seemed
irrational to suppose that there could be uncaused phenomena like choice. This
person went on to describe how science is rooted in, and cannot operate,
without the assumption that every effect must have a cause, and, therefore,
there must be something else which caused choice to occur – whether this
‘something else’ was God or physical/material events.
I responded to the foregoing objections in the following
manner. First, I suggested that the notions of rationality and irrationality
are often a function of what we believe we understand about the nature of
reality. As one’s understanding changes, so too, do one’s ideas about what the
terms such as: ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’, give expression to, and this is
quite independent of whether such an understanding is actually correct.
A person’s perspective concerning causality tends to be
colored, shaped and oriented by the conceptual framework through which she or
he engages the issue of causality. Before 1900, scientists had a very
mechanistic notion of causality that formed the heart of classical mechanics.
After 1900, beginning with the work of Max Planck, the concept of causality was
turned upside down to such an extent that Richard Feynman once advised a young
physicists who was trying to understand what was transpiring in the quantum
world to not bother with understanding quantum dynamics because no one
understands what is going on … just do the calculations.
Einstein was certain that there were hidden variables in quantum
mechanics, but none of his gedanken or ‘thought’ experiments was capable of
winning the day and proving the existence of such hidden variables. Then, along came the phenomenon of quantum
entanglement – something that has been experimentally verified in a variety of
ways through extremely sophisticated experimental set-ups – and the notion of
causality became even more elusive because while quantum entanglement might go
some way toward vindicating Einstein’s position on the matter of hidden
variable, his ideas also take a hit because the phenomenon of quantum
entanglement seems to suggest that something is being communicated in a
superluminal manner – that is, faster than the speed of light which is a
verboten (forbidden) possibility in modern science – and, consequently, one’s
understanding of how reality works as far as cause and effect are concerned
become somewhat unstable, blurred and amorphous.
Or, consider the so-called Higgs boson issue (which Leon
Lederman misleadingly and problematically dubbed the ‘God particle’). Everyone
at CERN in Europe, as well as in many other parts of the world, were excited a
number of months ago when the analysis of evidence gathered in 2012 seemed to
indicate that the boson had been found. The reason for the excitement is that
the Higgs boson has long been considered to be a telltale sign of a field
process through which mass was believed to arise.
However, no one has, yet, talked about what properties a
particle must have in order for it to be able to interact with the Higgs field –
after all, there mass-less particles do exist and, therefore, do not appear to
interact with such a field. In short, it takes two to tango, and the presence
of a Higgs field is not enough to account for mass since the particle that
derives mass through such a field must have certain properties to be receptive
to the influences of that kind of field.
So, what happens to causality under such circumstances? The
Higgs field must have certain properties, and a particle must have certain properties
in order for mass to arise (at least, this is what the standard model
proclaims), so, what actually causes mass when the dynamic interaction of two
entities are required to generate mass.?
I had a professor (Morton White) many years ago who talked
about the issue of causality. He gave a much simpler example than the Higgs
field. He talked about the lighting of a match.
Some might want to point to the force of striking a match as
that which causes the match to light. However, if there is not sufficient
oxygen, or if the match is not made with the right proportions of sulfur and
phosphorus, or if the match is damp, or if the striking surface is not
sufficiently irregular, or if the handle of the match is not strong enough, or
if there is a stiff wind blowing, or if the person did not use sufficient
force, then, the match will not light.
So, where is causality in the foregoing scenario? There is a
complex dynamic in which a variety of variables have to work in consort with
one another under the right set of circumstances in order for something to
happen.
Choice is also a complex dynamic. When the set of potentials
inherent in ayn al-thabita (the fixed potential of a human being) combines with
the ‘Fields’ generated by the Divine Names and Attributes that are encountered
by our fixed potential on this plane of existence, then like the lighting of a
match, the possibility of choice is put into play but not as a function of any
simple set of mechanistic notions of cause and effect. To use the words of
modern science, choice arises as a field phenomenon that is a function of
interacting potentials.
In fact, one can conjecture that the capacity to choose is
inherent in the array of possibilities that constitute the potential of one’s
ayn al-thabita. When that potential is activated, we become able to make
uncaused choices within certain parameters of possibility which engage the
Fields of Being and generate a dynamic within the context of the attractor
basins that help give expression to lived life.
From the Sufi/Islamic point of view, God is, of course, the
first cause without cause. Rationalists and scientists, naturally, find this
sort of idea to be ‘irrational’, but here we all are and, yet, scientists
(cosmologists, evolutionists, and neurobiologists) do not have any tenable
ideas with respect to how the laws of the universe, or the origins of the
universe, or the origins of life, or the origins of consciousness, or the
origins of reason, or language, or creativity came into being (and this claim could
be backed up but it would take too much space).
It seems irrational to me for so many scientists and
rationalists to proclaim that there cannot possibly be an uncaused cause when
there is so much that they don’t know about the nature of reality. Moreover,
and perhaps more germane to the current discussion, the issue of causality – as
indicated earlier -- is not really all that straightforward an issue.
In the Qur’an we are told that God says to a thing “kun” and
it becomes. What is the nature of
the ‘thing’ to which God gives the command of ‘kun’?
What the foregoing means or how the dynamics of such
causality works or what the structural character of that sort of causality
entails is a mystery. Consequently, whether, or not, choice is a phenomenon that
could – within limits – be uncaused remains an open issue.
Certainly, if God is the One Who gave ayn al-thabita its
possibilities, then, God caused that potential to be what it is with the
characteristics that it has. Nonetheless, there is nothing in all of this indicating
that one of the dimensions of such a potential couldn’t be the capacity to
choose freely … the capacity might be caused, but the character of what has
been caused operates in its own fashion without any further input from Divinity
… like a person who is hired by Someone to do work and who is, then, authorized
to be his or her own person with respect to subsequent decision-making.
Are we the ‘seeker’ or are we the ‘sought’? Maybe like the
issue of causality, it is not a matter of either-or logic … maybe both
statements are true. In other words, just as we are simultaneously both caused
and free, so too, we are the seekers of Divinity while, simultaneously, God is
seeking us as a function of the potentials which have been placed in us and are
either are, or are not, realized depending on the nature of the dynamic of
seeking and being sought … and the choices we make within that dynamic.
If a quantum entity can be both a wave and a particle, then,
why can’t a human being be both caused and free? Given that physicists have not
let their ignorance about how wave-particle duality is possible stop their
explorations into the mysteries of the physical world, then why should any
person let her or his ignorance concerning who and what a human being is stop
him or her exploring the mysteries of the spiritual world.
Scientists and rationalists like to refer to spiritual
exploration as being quixotic and rife with irrationalities. And, while, undoubtedly, there are many theological discussions which, admittedly, are steeped in
such irrationalities, nevertheless, perhaps, scientists and rationalists should
take a look in the mirror at their own quixotic meanderings with respect to
trying – and utterly failing – to explain the origin of almost anything of
importance (e.g., the universe, the physical constants, life, consciousness,
intelligence, reason, creativity, language, morality, or the mystical).
Theories are plentiful with respect to such issues, but truths are few and far
between.
