What is meant
What is meant is that belief in God is not established by the empirical scientific method, because God’s Essence is beyond the scope of scientific proof. The universe alone is the subject that can be studied scientifically through classification, naming, and analysis; as for God’s Essence, it transcends that.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: methodological
- Argument movement: knowledge of God is separated from empirical scientific proof.
- Key terms: God’s Essence, scientific proof, the universe, experience.
- Degree of centrality: foundational.
It draws a methodological boundary between the object of empirical science and the object of faith, isolating God’s Essence from the tools of material proof and leaving the universe as a field for study and analysis.
Reading aids
- Muhammad Shahrur, The Qur’an in Contemporary Thought
- The method of contemporary reading
- Islam, in Shahrur’s view, is a pluralistic value framework, not a coercive ritual system
Grounding
- Supporting text: «Belief in God is not established by the empirical scientific method, because God’s Essence is transcendent from the domain of scientific proof. The universe is a scientific object of knowledge and can be studied through classification, naming, and analysis, unlike God’s Essence».
Place of the grounding in the book
- Book: The Qur’an in Contemporary Thought.
- Location: within the book’s first section in the discussion of knowledge and proof
- Type of grounding: close witness.
- Marker to help verification: scientific proof
- Reading note: this passage is suitable as evidence because it sets the limits of scientific proof when studying the universe and human consciousness.
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 wording above is an analytical summary and is not treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is transmitted 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
This atom establishes the methodological separation between two distinct fields of knowledge.