Religious Experience, Design and Cosmological Arguments
Religious Experience in Islam
Muslims in the Sunni, Shi’a and Sufi traditions all affirm the possibility of religious experience as a real encounter with the divine. Surah 2:118 states: “Those who do not know say: ‘Why does Allah not speak to us directly, or why does a sign not come to us?’” — implying that signs and communication from Allah do occur, but those who have not experienced them may not recognise them. For Muslims, the history of prophecy is itself a record of divine-human encounter: Allah speaking to Ibrahim, Musa, Dawud, Isa and finally Muhammad.
Within Sunni Islam, religious experience is understood primarily through the lens of prophetic tradition — the prophets’ experiences are the model for understanding divine communication. Personal religious experiences are evaluated against the standard of Qur’an and Sunnah. Shi’a Islam attributes a special intercessory and illuminating role to the Imams, who are understood as having privileged access to divine guidance. Sufi Islam places the greatest emphasis on personal religious experience — practices like dhikr (rhythmic remembrance of Allah’s names) and sama (devotional music and poetry) are designed to bring the practitioner into direct awareness of Allah’s presence.
Atheists and Humanists argue that religious experiences are subjective inner states that cannot serve as objective evidence for Allah’s existence. They point out that people in every religious tradition report experiences they interpret as encounters with their own deity — this suggests that the experiences are culturally conditioned rather than genuine encounters with a particular divine being. Richard Dawkins and other atheist writers argue that the human brain is evolved to detect patterns and agency, which produces vivid experiences of presence and meaning even when no real agent is present. Muslims respond that the consistency of spiritual experience across diverse cultures and centuries, the moral transformation it produces, and the fact that such experiences have historically galvanised extraordinary lives points to a real source beyond the individual mind.
The Design Argument in Islam
The design argument is strongly supported by the Qur’an. Surah 2:164 lists the signs of Allah’s creative power: “In the creation of the heavens and the earth, in the alternation of night and day, in the ships that sail through the sea with what benefits people, in the water Allah sends down from the sky, giving life to the earth after it has died... in the movement of the winds, and the clouds that run their appointed courses between sky and earth — in all of these are signs for those who use their reason.”
This verse is a cornerstone of the Islamic design argument. Every feature of the natural world — the rotation of the earth, the water cycle, the ecosystem of living things — is understood as a ayat (sign) pointing to Allah. The intricate interdependence of natural systems, the fact that the universe’s physical constants are precisely tuned to permit life, and the beauty of living organisms all lead Muslims to conclude that a wise and powerful Creator designed them. Unlike Paley’s watchmaker analogy, which is a philosophical argument from analogy, the Islamic design argument is grounded in Qur’anic theology — creation is a witness to Allah because Allah himself says so.
Surah 2:164 lists the alternation of night and day, the water cycle, the movement of ships, the winds and clouds as signs (ayat) of Allah for those who reason. The Islamic design argument is rooted in this Qur’anic witness to creation, not just philosophical argument from analogy.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument
The most important cosmological argument in Islam is the kalam cosmological argument. The word kalam means “speech” or “rational theology” in Arabic. The argument was developed within the Islamic scholarly tradition, and its most famous formulation comes from al-Ghazali (1058–1111 CE), in his work Kitab al-Iqtisad fil’Itiqad (“The Middle Path in Theology”).
The kalam argument runs as follows: (1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause. (2) The universe began to exist. (3) Therefore the universe has a cause. Al-Ghazali then argues that this cause must be timeless, uncaused, immensely powerful, and personal — because a non-personal cause could not “decide” to begin creating at a particular moment. Muslims identify this first cause with Allah.
The kalam cosmological argument: (1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause. (2) The universe began to exist. (3) Therefore the universe has a cause — identified as Allah. Developed by al-Ghazali (1058–1111 CE) in Kitab al-Iqtisad fil’Itiqad. This is NOT the same as Aquinas’s Five Ways — Aquinas and al-Ghazali made distinct arguments in different intellectual traditions.
Students regularly confuse the kalam cosmological argument with Aquinas’s Five Ways. They are distinct in origin, structure and tradition. The kalam argument originates in Islamic rational theology (ilm al-kalam), with al-Ghazali (1058–1111 CE) as its most influential developer. Aquinas’s First Three Ways (motion, causation, contingency) originate in Catholic scholastic theology, drawing on Aristotle. The kalam argument focuses specifically on the beginning of the universe (“everything that begins to exist has a cause”); Aquinas’s Third Way focuses on contingency (“things might not exist”). Never attribute the kalam argument to Aquinas. In the Islam routes of your exam, al-Ghazali is the named figure — use his name and his text.