A thread outlining what I take to be the strongest arguments for occasionalism, the dominant Islamic view of causality. /1

Occasionalism is the view that for every event - ie for every single thing that happens - God is the direct (and only) cause.

For example, the reason cotton combusts when fire is brought to it is that God makes it combust. Nothing more, nothing less. /2

More precisely:

It is the view that all of reality is composed of discrete units of matter - ie you can't keep dividing reality into smaller and smaller chunks, eventually you'll reach fundamental building blocks - and /3

that the same is true of time: you can't keep dividing time into smaller and smaller units, eventually you'll reach a smallest unit of time. /4

Occasionalism states that every single one of these fundamental units of matter is constantly created and recreated at every single one of these fundamental points of time. /5

All the change in the world we see (eg cotton combusting when fire is brought to it) is due to God recreating reality differently from the previous moment. /6

Under occasionalism, the "laws of science" are explained in terms of God's consistent habit.

God doesn't cause things randomly, but consistently. Eg every time fire is brought to cotton, God makes the cotton combust. All the laws can be understood in this way, ie as what God /7

always does. (The one exception to this is miracles, which Islamic theologians typically defined as instances where God breaks His regular habit.) /8

I think these are the strongest arguments for occasionalism:

1. We only observe consistent conjunction

2. There isn't any logically necessary link between purported causes and effects

3. Parsimony

4. It gives us a more omnipotent and 'immediate' God than rival views /9

I will go through each of these in turn.

(1): We never seem to actually observe causation. We only see one thing (B) always following another thing (A), and when this pattern holds even when no other variables are present, we say that 'A "causes" B'. /10

To give an example, we don't actually see fire "causing" cotton to combust, we just see cotton always combusting when fire is brought to it. /11

David Hume - writing several centuries after our theologians developed the doctrine of occasionalism - is content to leave the story there. All there is in the world around us are regularities ("consistent conjunction"), we don't need to talk about there being any causes. /12

The problem with Hume is this doesn't explain:

(a) Why there are regularities there are, rather than other regularities. Eg why does cotton combust when fire is brought to it, rather than something else, or nothing at all? /13

(b) Why there are any regularities at all. Why isn't reality just endless random flux? Or why isn't reality just completely static, no movement or any other sort of change whatsoever? /14

Occasionalism answers both of these problems. The reason there are regularities (and the specific regularities there are) is because God has a consistent habit, He doesn't act randomly but according to rules He has chosen. /15

So the cause of the regularities in the world is God.

The fact that this cause is unobservable is actually a strength of occasionalism: remember from above, we don't observe causation, so whatever causes there are must be unobservable. /16

(2): There doesn't seem to be any logically necessary relationship between purported causes and effects.

It doesn't follow from 'fire' and 'cotton' that fire being brought to cotton will make cotton combust, in the same way that '4' follows from '2+2', or that /17

'four equal sides' follows from 'square'.

This seems to support occasionalism in two ways:

(a) Given we can't observe causality in the world, nor can we deduce it logically, this suggests that causality is not a property of the world. /18

This is some evidence that causality is a property of something outside the world, ie God.

(b) If the relationship between a purported cause and a purported effect is not logically necessary, then it is contingent. /19

('Necessary' = must be the case; 'contingent' = it can be the case, but doesn't have to be.)

A debatable but plausible principle that many philosophers have made is that 'a contingent fact can't explain itself, and so requires another fact(s) to explain it.' /20

Let's apply this to a specific example: if the relationship between a purported cause ('fire being brought to cotton) and its purported effect ('cotton combusting') is contingent - which it seems to be - and the above principle is true, then it must be explained by /21

another fact. Either this fact is necessary or contingent.

If this fact is necessary, then hey presto, we get occasionalism. God is by definition 'the necessary existent' (our theologians say that when they utter the word "God", they're referring to "the necessary existent") /22

and so He is the explanation for the contingent relationship between 'fire being brought to cotton' and 'cotton combusting'. (Mathematics and logic are also - probably - necessary facts, but it doesn't seem that we can derive fire combusting cotton merely from the structure /23

of mathematics or logic. How can relationships between symbols be sufficient to give rise to fire combusting cotton?)

If, on the other hand, the fact explaining why cotton combusting follows fire being brought to cotton is contingent, then we need a further explanation for /24

this fact. If this explanation is a necessary fact, then once again, we get God - and the question is raised, why did we need this intermediary contingent fact? It seems more plausible to suppose there wasn't any intermediary contingent fact, and thus we get occasionalism. /25

But what if it is posited that rather than an immediate necessary fact, or a chain or one or more intermediate contingent facts terminating in a necessary fact, the explanation for the relationship between fire being brought to cotton and cotton combusting is /26

an infinite chain of contingent facts?

There seem to be three flaws with this view:

(a) Infinite regresses may be impossible. (There are a whole number of paradoxes associated with them.)

(b) Even if they are possible, surely it's simpler and more elegant to merely /27

posit one necessary fact rather than an infinite number of contingent facts. Why should we choose an infinitely long explanation for why cotton combusts, when a short and simple one would do?

(c) An infinite chain of contingent facts would still require an explanation: /28

why is there an infinite chain of facts rather than no facts at all?; and why is there this specific chain rather than any one of the infinitely many other possible chains there could have been?

It therefore seems that even an infinite chain of contingent facts would /29

require a necessary fact. Why not cut out the middle men, and just go straight for the necessary fact?

Thus, it seems more plausible to suppose God directly caused the cotton to combust (occasionalism), than that God caused it with infinitely many steps along the way. /30

(As an aside, note that (a)-(c) provide the grounds for a cosmological argument for God's existence.

Maybe that will be a future thread inshAllah.) /31

(3): Parsimony.

A common principle used in every discipline - whether explicitly or implicitly - is 'Ockham's razor'. This states that when two theories are otherwise equally good, you should go for the "simpler" or more "elegant" one. /32

What could be more simple and more elegant than explaining all causality only in terms of the existence of matter and God?

We don't need to posit any essences, teloses, formal/material/efficient/final causes, dispositions, powers, Platonic forms, monads, substances, minds, /33

wills, ontologically existing "laws of nature" (rather than just regularities we call "laws"), or whatever else rival theories of causality posit. /34

(4): Occasionalism holds God to be more omnipotent and "immediate" than rival theories.

(This argument is only relevant to theists, whereas the others establish the plausibility of occasionalism per se, and thus would provide some evidence to the atheist that God exists.) /35

On occasionalism, there is nothing alongside God's power, no forms or essences or wills or anything else in that above list.

Nor is there anything between God and creation, it's all the direct product of His will, at every point in space, at every point in time. /36

In Ghazali's words, "there is nothing in existence save God and His acts".

If, as Anselm states, "God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived", then it seems God must be occasionalist. Any other conception of God would not be as powerful or immediate. /37

This concludes what I take to be the four strongest arguments for God's existence.

There are other good arguments too.

There are also problems with these arguments, and arguments against occasionalism. Those may be discussed in the replies, or in future tweets. /38

I'm truly grateful for those of you who stuck with this thread until the end.

May Allah ﷻ guide us all to the truth. Amīn. /Fin

I meant to write "arguments for occasionalism", not "God's existence", here! https://twitter.com/Evollaqi/status/1032655731038801923?s=19

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