Al-Ghazali folly.

Mary Jackson^[1] has posted about something by Spengler on Muslim apostates and atheism. She quotes this by Spengler on the Muslim Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's views on the existence of natural laws:

In the normative doctrine of the 11th-century Muslim sage Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Allah does not limit himself by ordering the world through natural law, for natural laws would impinge on his absolute freedom of action.

There are no intermediate causes, in the sense of laws of nature. Mars traverses an ellipse around the sun not because God has instituted laws of motion that require Mars to traverse an ellipse, but because Allah at every instant directs the angular velocity of Mars. Today, Allah happens to feel like pushing Mars about in an ellipse; tomorrow he might just as well do figure-eights.^[2]

Now just about anything gets one into blasphemy territory in Muslim theology, of course. Thus, I presume I'm on solid ground when I say that al-Ghasaliists would think it blasphemous to argue that Allah is constrained in any way. Yet, according to their view, Allah has to be jumping around like a chaperone at a USO dance adjusting planetary orbits, blinking eyelids, firing spark plugs, forming rain drops, and moving individual grains of sand in each ocean wave crashing on the beach.

Apparently, the rule is not that Allah could do this but that he does do this.

Of the two theories (Allah created matter, devised natural laws, and then set things in motion v. Allah concerns himself with lengthening your hair each second of your existence) which makes Allah look more ridiculous? In human terms, it might be entertaining to move billiard balls around on a table exactly as it pleases us. Personally, I think I'd get bored doing that after, oh, 16 or 17 hours. I don't think I'd want to do it for eternity. That's just me, it's true, but it's not clear to me that Allah would be that interested in that sort of exercise either.

But, no, al-Ghazaliism simply can't countenance natural laws (reformable 24/7 at Allah's pleasure presumably) and it effectively "sentences" Allah to an absurd preoccupation with moving things around. Positing that Allah is absurd seems more like blasphemy to me than positing natural laws. To al-Ghazali this made sense. Slamologic at its very best.^[3]

Here's a thought: saying that Allah's absolute freedom of action is limited by what a mere human says about the existence of natural laws is itself blasphemy. And how about this: anything any man says about natural laws is exactly what Allah wants him to say? This inshallah/puppet-on-a-string concept is tricky.

The silly idea that Allah concerns himself with the orbit of individual electrons, the flight of individual gamma rays/particles through the interstellar vastness, or whether I want fries with my Big Mac is one that illustrates the profound insight behind the exquisite Yiddish expression, "Send a fool to close the window, and he'll close them all over town." One putz centuries ago starts with the idea "God is omnipotent" and hippity hop he formulates an absurd idea, the end result of which has been a moribund and pestilential social, economic, spiritual, political, scientific and technological community that has lived off plunder and conquered people for 1,000+ years. Even its present prominence (prominence in the sense that Mohammed Atta, Charlie Manson, or OBL are "prominent") is completely unconnected to anything that is even remotely the result of study, discipline, and effort.

Mohammed sent many millions of Muslims off on an earthly window closing mission and the world has been dealing with the consequences ever since. No wonder you have to threaten to kill people who want to bail from this Krazee Kiddee Kastle.

Notes
^[1] "Godless Islam." By Mary Jackson, New English Review, 2/2/08.
^[2] "Hirsi Ali, atheism and Islam." Spengler, Asia Times, 12/3/07.
^[3] Other prime examples: that there is medicinal value to drinking camel urine (Sahih al-Bukhari); that sexual contact with infants is permissible (Ayatollah Khomeini); that saliva with imperceptible amounts of blood therein is pure but pus known to have been mixed with blood is not (Al-Islam.org); that infidels like Buddhists and Hindus are unclean and on the same level as dead bodies, excrement, dogs, and pigs (Ayatollah Al-Qazwini and Imam Ruhollah Khomeini); that excrement of mosquitoes and flies is pure but urine and excrement of a goat nursed by a pig is not (Al_islam.org); and that the earth cannot purify automobile tires (Grand Ayatollah Sistani).