Whosoever thinks that to engage in a disputation for refuting such a theory is a religious duty harms religion and weakens it.
After describing the scientific facts of the Solar eclipse resulting from the Moon coming between the Sun and Earth and the Lunar eclipse from the Earth coming between the Sun and Moon, he writes: Ghazali expressed support for a scientific methodology based on demonstration and mathematics, while discussing astronomy. Properly speaking, however, these are not laws of nature but laws by which God chooses to govern his own behaviour (his autonomy, in the strict sense) – in other words, his rational will. He argued that because God is usually seen as rational, rather than arbitrary, his behaviour in normally causing events in the same instance they are witnessed (i.e., what appears to us to be efficient causation) can be understood as a natural outworking of that principle of reason, which we then describe as the laws of nature. Ghazali famously claimed that when fire and cotton are placed in contact, the cotton is burned directly by God Who simultaneously willed the fire to burn, a claim which he defended using logic. The Incoherence of the Philosophers is famous for proposing and defending the Asharite theory of occasionalism. Ghazali denounced Aristotle, Socrates and other Greek writers as non-believers and labeled those who employed their methods and ideas as corrupters of the Islamic faith. The book took aim at the falsafa, a loosely defined group of Islamic philosophers from the 8th through the 11th centuries (most notable among them Avicenna and Al-Farabi) who drew intellectually upon the Ancient Greeks. The Incoherence of the Philosophers marked a turning point in Islamic philosophy in its vehement rejections of Aristotle and Plato. He is viewed as the key member of the influential Asharite school of early Muslim philosophy and the most important refuter of Mutazilites. Work include: The Incoherence of the Philosophers, The Deliverance From Error Al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl, The Revival of Religious Sciences احياء علوم الدين Ihya 'Ulum al-Din or Ihya'ul Ulumuddin.Areas of expertise: Islamic theologian, jurist, philosopher, cosmologist, psychologist and Sufi mystic of Persian origin.
#Al ghazali deliverance from error summary full
Full name: Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Ghazālī (aka Algazel).