What is Meant
The passage distinguishes between belief in God and the experimental scientific method, because God’s essence is transcendent of the domain of direct scientific proof. Therefore, knowledge of God is not attained by the same experimental method by which material phenomena are established.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: methodological
- Movement of the argument: scientific experimentation does not reach God’s transcendent essence.
- Central terms: God’s essence, experimental science, transcendent, knowledge.
- Degree of centrality: central.
It affirms that the tools of science are insufficient to encompass the divine unseen, and thereby preserves the independence of faith from the methods of verification that operate in the world of phenomena.
Links That Help Reading
- Muhammad Shahrur: The Qur’an in Contemporary Thought
- The Method of Contemporary Reading
- Islam in Shahrur’s account as a plural ethical framework, not a coercive ritual system
Basis
- Supporting text: “Belief in God is not established by the experimental scientific method, because God’s essence is transcendent of the domain of scientific proof.”
The Basis’s Location in the Book
- Book: The Qur’an in Contemporary Thought.
- Location: in the first section of the book, within the discussion of belief in God
- Type of basis: a close witness.
- Marker that helps verification: belief in God is an axiom that cannot be proven
- Reading note: the location is suitable because it states that belief in God is not proven by the same proof used to prove observable things, and it is very close to the atom.
Degree of Documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom rests on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted word for word.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is declarative; it establishes a result on which what follows in the argument depends.
Related to
Editorial Note
Very close to the previous atom, and the two can be combined in the structural arrangement.