Food for Thought: We Believe in God; But What Do We Actually Know About God?
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There is a question that has been troubling and fascinating me for some time.
Suppose a person reaches the conclusion that there must be a Creator.
The next questions arise almost automatically:
What is this Creator?
What does He look like?
Does the idea of "looking like something" even apply to Him?
Does He have a form?
What is He made of?
Where is He?
How does He exist?
These are completely natural human questions. But this is precisely where I think we reach a wall.
We simply do not know.
In fact, asking what God is "made of" may itself expose the limitation of the human mind. Everything we encounter is made of something, located somewhere, exists within time, changes from one state to another, and can somehow be compared with something else.
So naturally we try to apply the same categories to God.
But God is supposed to be the Creator of those categories in the first place.
Matter is created.
Energy is created.
Space is created.
Time is part of creation.
Shape, dimension, movement and physical location belong to the reality in which we exist.
So asking whether God is matter, energy, physical, non-physical, inside something or outside something may be like trying to describe something completely beyond our dimensional existence using vocabulary developed entirely inside that existence.
The Quran gives us descriptions of God. He is Merciful, Knowing, Just, Forgiving, Powerful. The Quran speaks of God seeing, hearing, speaking, loving, being displeased, creating, judging and willing.
These descriptions are meaningful; otherwise revelation would be meaningless.
But how far can we take them?
When I understand "mercy," my only experience of mercy comes from creatures.
When I understand "anger," I know human anger.
When I understand "knowledge," I know what it means for a human being to know something.
When I hear "seeing" and "hearing," my mind immediately thinks of sensory experience.
Yet the Quran simultaneously says:
"There is nothing like Him." (42:11)
That creates a very interesting tension.
God communicates with us through concepts that our minds can understand, while at the same time telling us not to imagine that He is comparable to anything within our experience.
Therefore I can know something about God without comprehending what God is.
And I think those are two very different things.
The same limitation appears when we discuss death, resurrection, the ruh, destiny, Paradise, Hell, divine intervention and the unseen.
We know whatever God has chosen to tell us.
But once we move beyond that information, how much are we discovering and how much are we imagining?
Take the story of Moses and the mysterious servant in Surah al-Kahf.
Moses sees a boat damaged.
He sees a young person killed.
He sees a wall repaired for people who had refused hospitality.
According to everything available to Moses at that moment, these actions seem unreasonable or even wrong.
Only afterward is another layer of reality revealed to him.
That story has always struck me as much bigger than those three incidents.
Moses was not unintelligent.
He simply did not possess the information necessary to understand what he was seeing.
If Moses could misunderstand events happening directly in front of him because part of reality was hidden from him, what does that say about us when we confidently explain why God allowed this event, punished that person, blessed another person, caused this tragedy, prevented that outcome, or intends something particular through events around us?
We see a tiny section.
God, according to the Quran, sees the whole.
This is also why the subject of destiny becomes difficult for me.
History appears to us one second at a time.
Something happens, then something else happens, then another thing happens.
We describe this as past, present and future because that is how consciousness experiences existence.
But we have no basis for assuming that God's relationship with time resembles ours.
The Quran sometimes speaks of God giving people respite, allowing events to proceed, telling people to wait, and describing a future Judgment as absolutely certain.
We understand these statements through human language because there is no other language available to us.
But what the reality behind that language looks like from God's perspective is something else entirely.
And this brings me to something more practical.
The greatest danger may not be that we fail to understand God's physical nature.
The greater danger may be what happens when human beings begin behaving as though they possess God's viewpoint.
We decide who God loves.
We decide who God hates.
We decide whose prayer God accepts.
We decide who is condemned.
We decide exactly why someone's suffering occurred.
We decide that some disaster was God's punishment.
We decide who is "guided" and who is beyond hope.
We sometimes speak with extraordinary confidence about another person's standing before God.
At that moment, without realizing it, we have crossed an enormous boundary.
We are no longer merely believing in God.
We are placing ourselves in the position of knowing what God knows.
And we do not.
We are extraordinarily small creatures inside an enormous reality.
Our entire awareness depends upon a consciousness that we did not create.
We appeared in this world without choosing to appear.
We will leave it without being able to prevent ourselves from leaving.
Even the mind with which we are trying to understand God was given to us by God.
The Quran tells us that resurrection will happen, so as believers in the Quran we accept that. But what resurrection actually feels like, what consciousness is at that stage, what the reality of the next existence is, and how existence itself operates outside this present world we do not know except for what has been revealed.
That, to me, is the real meaning and seriousness of believing in the ghayb.
Not abandoning reason.
Not believing something simply because it is mysterious.
Rather, recognizing that reason itself operates within limits.
There are things we can investigate.
There are things we can infer.
There are things revelation tells us.
And then there is a boundary beyond which human confidence becomes speculation.
Maybe the humility demanded by belief in God is much deeper than bowing, fasting, reciting or performing religious rituals.
Those things can have enormous value.
But a person can perform every ritual and still carry inside himself an exaggerated certainty about God, other people and the unseen.
Perhaps real humility begins when a human being truly realizes:
I am not God.
I do not see what God sees.
I do not know what God knows.
I cannot judge existence from God's position.
I know only what has reached me through revelation, observation and the limited consciousness I have been given.
And outside that small circle lies an unimaginable amount that I simply do not know.
So my question is not, "Can we know God?"
Clearly the Quran teaches us something about God.
My question is:
Where does legitimate knowledge about God end, and where does the human imagination begin?
And perhaps even more importantly:
How often do we unknowingly cross that boundary and begin speaking, judging and acting as though we are standing where only God can stand?
Another thing that keeps coming to my mind is the question of time and God's relationship with events.
When we read the Quran in ordinary human language, God sometimes appears to be waiting, responding, becoming displeased, being pleased, giving people time, seeing what they will do, and then judging them according to what they did.
There are also narratives such as the people of the town in Surah Ya-Sin, where messengers are rejected and a man comes running from the farthest part of the city urging his people to follow them. He dies and is told, "Enter Paradise," and wishes his people knew what his Lord had done for him. The whole event unfolds before us like a human story: warning, rejection, death, consequence.
But this creates a philosophical difficulty for me.
If God already knows the ghayb, including what every person will eventually choose, then what exactly does it mean when we say that human beings were created "to see" who will obey, who will reject, who will do good, or who will do evil?
The word "see" or "know" becomes difficult here.
A human being tests something because he does not know the result beforehand.
But God cannot be learning the result.
If God already knows the outcome completely, then creation cannot be an experiment through which God acquires information He previously lacked.
Similarly, when the Quran speaks of waiting, watching, testing, deciding, becoming angry or being pleased, we naturally understand those expressions according to our own experience. A human being waits because the future has not arrived yet. A human reacts because something has just happened. A human becomes angry because an event has affected him.
But does any of that describe the actual reality of God?
Or is this simply the only kind of language through which a creature living inside time can understand something about a Being whose relationship with time may be completely different?
Even the Quranic statement that God "knows the ghayb" raises this strange thought in my mind.
We hear the expression and unconsciously imagine the ghayb as some hidden territory containing secret information, with God being the only One who has access to it.
But surely that mental picture cannot be quite right either.
The ghayb is hidden from us.
It is not necessarily a mysterious external database which exists independently of God and which God happens to know better than everyone else.
The very distinction between visible and unseen may be a distinction belonging to creatures like us.
This is where language begins to fail me.
We say God "knows the future." But the word future itself belongs to beings who experience time sequentially.
Does God have a "future"?
Does God wait for tomorrow?
Does an event become known to God when it happens?
Obviously, if God truly knows the ghayb, that cannot be what is meant.
And then an even more unsettling thought appears.
Our existence itself is completely dependent.
God did not owe us consciousness.
He did not owe us resurrection.
He did not owe us Paradise.
If God had created conscious creatures who lived for a short period and then permanently ceased to exist, what independent power could have demanded otherwise?
Of course, this is not to say that resurrection might not happen. The Quran repeatedly promises resurrection, judgment and the Hereafter, and the Quran also says that God does not break His promise.
My point is different.
The fact that resurrection will happen is something we know because God has told us.
It is not something that creation could impose upon God.
There is no external authority above God requiring Him to create an Akhirah, a Judgment Day or a Paradise.
That realization makes existence itself rather extraordinary.
We appear.
We become conscious.
We experience love, fear, pain, pleasure, morality, choices and relationships.
Then consciousness apparently disappears at death from our present perspective.
Anyone who has been deeply asleep or under anesthesia knows how strange this is: hours can disappear completely from subjective awareness. There is no experienced passage of time.
So even the concept of "waiting until resurrection" may only make sense from the viewpoint of those who remain alive. For the person who has lost consciousness, whether the interval is one second or ten thousand years may have no experienced duration at all.
All of this makes me wonder whether reality is vastly stranger than the simplified picture we naturally construct while reading religious language.
Sometimes we speak as though God created humanity and is now observing the experiment to discover what happens.
But that cannot easily fit with the idea that God already knows the outcome.
Sometimes we speak as though God is waiting for Judgment Day.
But waiting implies experiencing time.
Sometimes we speak as though God reacts to our actions.
But reaction suggests receiving new information.
So what is actually happening?
I don't have an answer.
Maybe words such as waiting, testing, knowing, anger, pleasure, before, after, future and even ghayb are perfectly meaningful at our level of existence, while the reality they point toward at God's level is something our minds cannot reconstruct.
And this is ultimately what makes the subject so profound for me.
The more deeply I think about God, the less comfortable I become with overly confident descriptions of how God's "mind" works.
At some point I reach the boundary of the human imagination.
I believe there is a Creator.
I believe what He has revealed.
But what this Creator actually is, how His existence relates to time, how knowledge operates without learning, how action operates without reacting to new information, and what reality looks like outside the categories of creation—I genuinely do not know.
I just thought I would share this because these questions sometimes come into my mind when reading the Qur'an at a more philosophical level. I would be interested to know how others understand this.
-
There is a question that has been troubling and fascinating me for some time.
Suppose a person reaches the conclusion that there must be a Creator.
The next questions arise almost automatically:
What is this Creator?
What does He look like?
Does the idea of "looking like something" even apply to Him?
Does He have a form?
What is He made of?
Where is He?
How does He exist?
These are completely natural human questions. But this is precisely where I think we reach a wall.
We simply do not know.
In fact, asking what God is "made of" may itself expose the limitation of the human mind. Everything we encounter is made of something, located somewhere, exists within time, changes from one state to another, and can somehow be compared with something else.
So naturally we try to apply the same categories to God.
But God is supposed to be the Creator of those categories in the first place.
Matter is created.
Energy is created.
Space is created.
Time is part of creation.
Shape, dimension, movement and physical location belong to the reality in which we exist.
So asking whether God is matter, energy, physical, non-physical, inside something or outside something may be like trying to describe something completely beyond our dimensional existence using vocabulary developed entirely inside that existence.
The Quran gives us descriptions of God. He is Merciful, Knowing, Just, Forgiving, Powerful. The Quran speaks of God seeing, hearing, speaking, loving, being displeased, creating, judging and willing.
These descriptions are meaningful; otherwise revelation would be meaningless.
But how far can we take them?
When I understand "mercy," my only experience of mercy comes from creatures.
When I understand "anger," I know human anger.
When I understand "knowledge," I know what it means for a human being to know something.
When I hear "seeing" and "hearing," my mind immediately thinks of sensory experience.
Yet the Quran simultaneously says:
"There is nothing like Him." (42:11)
That creates a very interesting tension.
God communicates with us through concepts that our minds can understand, while at the same time telling us not to imagine that He is comparable to anything within our experience.
Therefore I can know something about God without comprehending what God is.
And I think those are two very different things.
The same limitation appears when we discuss death, resurrection, the ruh, destiny, Paradise, Hell, divine intervention and the unseen.
We know whatever God has chosen to tell us.
But once we move beyond that information, how much are we discovering and how much are we imagining?
Take the story of Moses and the mysterious servant in Surah al-Kahf.
Moses sees a boat damaged.
He sees a young person killed.
He sees a wall repaired for people who had refused hospitality.
According to everything available to Moses at that moment, these actions seem unreasonable or even wrong.
Only afterward is another layer of reality revealed to him.
That story has always struck me as much bigger than those three incidents.
Moses was not unintelligent.
He simply did not possess the information necessary to understand what he was seeing.
If Moses could misunderstand events happening directly in front of him because part of reality was hidden from him, what does that say about us when we confidently explain why God allowed this event, punished that person, blessed another person, caused this tragedy, prevented that outcome, or intends something particular through events around us?
We see a tiny section.
God, according to the Quran, sees the whole.
This is also why the subject of destiny becomes difficult for me.
History appears to us one second at a time.
Something happens, then something else happens, then another thing happens.
We describe this as past, present and future because that is how consciousness experiences existence.
But we have no basis for assuming that God's relationship with time resembles ours.
The Quran sometimes speaks of God giving people respite, allowing events to proceed, telling people to wait, and describing a future Judgment as absolutely certain.
We understand these statements through human language because there is no other language available to us.
But what the reality behind that language looks like from God's perspective is something else entirely.
And this brings me to something more practical.
The greatest danger may not be that we fail to understand God's physical nature.
The greater danger may be what happens when human beings begin behaving as though they possess God's viewpoint.
We decide who God loves.
We decide who God hates.
We decide whose prayer God accepts.
We decide who is condemned.
We decide exactly why someone's suffering occurred.
We decide that some disaster was God's punishment.
We decide who is "guided" and who is beyond hope.
We sometimes speak with extraordinary confidence about another person's standing before God.
At that moment, without realizing it, we have crossed an enormous boundary.
We are no longer merely believing in God.
We are placing ourselves in the position of knowing what God knows.
And we do not.
We are extraordinarily small creatures inside an enormous reality.
Our entire awareness depends upon a consciousness that we did not create.
We appeared in this world without choosing to appear.
We will leave it without being able to prevent ourselves from leaving.
Even the mind with which we are trying to understand God was given to us by God.
The Quran tells us that resurrection will happen, so as believers in the Quran we accept that. But what resurrection actually feels like, what consciousness is at that stage, what the reality of the next existence is, and how existence itself operates outside this present world we do not know except for what has been revealed.
That, to me, is the real meaning and seriousness of believing in the ghayb.
Not abandoning reason.
Not believing something simply because it is mysterious.
Rather, recognizing that reason itself operates within limits.
There are things we can investigate.
There are things we can infer.
There are things revelation tells us.
And then there is a boundary beyond which human confidence becomes speculation.
Maybe the humility demanded by belief in God is much deeper than bowing, fasting, reciting or performing religious rituals.
Those things can have enormous value.
But a person can perform every ritual and still carry inside himself an exaggerated certainty about God, other people and the unseen.
Perhaps real humility begins when a human being truly realizes:
I am not God.
I do not see what God sees.
I do not know what God knows.
I cannot judge existence from God's position.
I know only what has reached me through revelation, observation and the limited consciousness I have been given.
And outside that small circle lies an unimaginable amount that I simply do not know.
So my question is not, "Can we know God?"
Clearly the Quran teaches us something about God.
My question is:
Where does legitimate knowledge about God end, and where does the human imagination begin?
And perhaps even more importantly:
How often do we unknowingly cross that boundary and begin speaking, judging and acting as though we are standing where only God can stand?
Another thing that keeps coming to my mind is the question of time and God's relationship with events.
When we read the Quran in ordinary human language, God sometimes appears to be waiting, responding, becoming displeased, being pleased, giving people time, seeing what they will do, and then judging them according to what they did.
There are also narratives such as the people of the town in Surah Ya-Sin, where messengers are rejected and a man comes running from the farthest part of the city urging his people to follow them. He dies and is told, "Enter Paradise," and wishes his people knew what his Lord had done for him. The whole event unfolds before us like a human story: warning, rejection, death, consequence.
But this creates a philosophical difficulty for me.
If God already knows the ghayb, including what every person will eventually choose, then what exactly does it mean when we say that human beings were created "to see" who will obey, who will reject, who will do good, or who will do evil?
The word "see" or "know" becomes difficult here.
A human being tests something because he does not know the result beforehand.
But God cannot be learning the result.
If God already knows the outcome completely, then creation cannot be an experiment through which God acquires information He previously lacked.
Similarly, when the Quran speaks of waiting, watching, testing, deciding, becoming angry or being pleased, we naturally understand those expressions according to our own experience. A human being waits because the future has not arrived yet. A human reacts because something has just happened. A human becomes angry because an event has affected him.
But does any of that describe the actual reality of God?
Or is this simply the only kind of language through which a creature living inside time can understand something about a Being whose relationship with time may be completely different?
Even the Quranic statement that God "knows the ghayb" raises this strange thought in my mind.
We hear the expression and unconsciously imagine the ghayb as some hidden territory containing secret information, with God being the only One who has access to it.
But surely that mental picture cannot be quite right either.
The ghayb is hidden from us.
It is not necessarily a mysterious external database which exists independently of God and which God happens to know better than everyone else.
The very distinction between visible and unseen may be a distinction belonging to creatures like us.
This is where language begins to fail me.
We say God "knows the future." But the word future itself belongs to beings who experience time sequentially.
Does God have a "future"?
Does God wait for tomorrow?
Does an event become known to God when it happens?
Obviously, if God truly knows the ghayb, that cannot be what is meant.
And then an even more unsettling thought appears.
Our existence itself is completely dependent.
God did not owe us consciousness.
He did not owe us resurrection.
He did not owe us Paradise.
If God had created conscious creatures who lived for a short period and then permanently ceased to exist, what independent power could have demanded otherwise?
Of course, this is not to say that resurrection might not happen. The Quran repeatedly promises resurrection, judgment and the Hereafter, and the Quran also says that God does not break His promise.
My point is different.
The fact that resurrection will happen is something we know because God has told us.
It is not something that creation could impose upon God.
There is no external authority above God requiring Him to create an Akhirah, a Judgment Day or a Paradise.
That realization makes existence itself rather extraordinary.
We appear.
We become conscious.
We experience love, fear, pain, pleasure, morality, choices and relationships.
Then consciousness apparently disappears at death from our present perspective.
Anyone who has been deeply asleep or under anesthesia knows how strange this is: hours can disappear completely from subjective awareness. There is no experienced passage of time.
So even the concept of "waiting until resurrection" may only make sense from the viewpoint of those who remain alive. For the person who has lost consciousness, whether the interval is one second or ten thousand years may have no experienced duration at all.
All of this makes me wonder whether reality is vastly stranger than the simplified picture we naturally construct while reading religious language.
Sometimes we speak as though God created humanity and is now observing the experiment to discover what happens.
But that cannot easily fit with the idea that God already knows the outcome.
Sometimes we speak as though God is waiting for Judgment Day.
But waiting implies experiencing time.
Sometimes we speak as though God reacts to our actions.
But reaction suggests receiving new information.
So what is actually happening?
I don't have an answer.
Maybe words such as waiting, testing, knowing, anger, pleasure, before, after, future and even ghayb are perfectly meaningful at our level of existence, while the reality they point toward at God's level is something our minds cannot reconstruct.
And this is ultimately what makes the subject so profound for me.
The more deeply I think about God, the less comfortable I become with overly confident descriptions of how God's "mind" works.
At some point I reach the boundary of the human imagination.
I believe there is a Creator.
I believe what He has revealed.
But what this Creator actually is, how His existence relates to time, how knowledge operates without learning, how action operates without reacting to new information, and what reality looks like outside the categories of creation—I genuinely do not know.
I just thought I would share this because these questions sometimes come into my mind when reading the Qur'an at a more philosophical level. I would be interested to know how others understand this.
@Fusion said in Food for Thought: We Believe in God; But What Do We Actually Know About God?:
Therefore I can know something about God without comprehending what God is.
Peace Fusion.
Faith and reason coexist together , and still we struggle to comprehend "GOD", quote:"..The darkness sacramental of the Eucharist is unfathomable. Besides, if it were intelligible, it would not be divine. If the God we serve could be understood by reason, he would not worth to be served, said Tauler *; ... if the works of God were such that the intelligence of man could easily grasp them, they cease to be wonderful and could not be described as ineffable. "
- John Tauler, theologian of the 14th.
When we reason, we think we are following logic and therefore we will reach certain conclusions that are backed up by evidence, yet reason itself has been provided for us.
So reason that does not lead to faith in a Supreme Authority does not reveal the entire truth. It is flawed since it cannot be fully traced, backed up and verified.
How far do we go about knowing GOD with both faith and reason?
What is necessary for us to know about GOD?
Is GOD hiding from us or is it dangerous for us ,as we are, to see GOD?
Why is GOD asking so many questions from us, like:
[Qoran 29:61] If you ask them, "Who created the heavens and the earth, and put the sun and the moon in your service," they will say, "God." Why then did they deviate?
[Qoran 29:62] God is the One who increases the provision for whomever He chooses from among His creatures, and withholds it. God is fully aware of all things.
[Qoran 29:63] If you ask them, "Who sends down from the sky water, to revive dead land," they will say, "God." Say, "Praise God." Most of them do not understand.
[Qoran 29:64] This worldly life is no more than vanity and play, while the abode of the Hereafter is the real life, if they only knew.[Qoran 31:29] Do you not realize that God merges the night into the day and merges the day into the night, and that He has committed the sun and the moon in your service, each running in its orbit for a specific life span, and that God is fully Cognizant of everything you do?
[Qoran 2:170] When they are told, "Follow what God has revealed herein," they say, "We follow only what we found our parents doing." What if their parents did not understand, and were not guided?
[Qoran 2:171] The example of such disbelievers is that of parrots who repeat what they hear of sounds and calls, without understanding. Deaf, dumb, and blind; they cannot understand.[Qoran 9:31] They have set up their religious leaders and scholars as lords, instead of God. Others deified the Messiah, son of Mary. They were all commanded to serve/ worship only one god. There is no god except He. Be He glorified, high above having any partners.
[Qoran 10:34] Say, "Can any of your idols initiate creation, then repeat it?" Say, "God initiates the creation, then repeats it. How could you deviate?"
[Qoran 10:35] Say, "Does any of your idols guide to the truth?" Say, "God guides to the truth. Is one who guides to the truth more worthy of being followed, or one who does not guide, and needs guidance for himself? What is wrong with your judgment?"Even both faith and reason are problematic for us. It seems the majority know of GOD but do not really know GOD. Those who think they know GOD need to know their own limit in knowledge and will always struggle in their imaginations and assumptions about the physical appearance/nature of GOD.
What can be known for sure is the traits/character of GOD . These will complete our certainty about GOD . The rest we will have to wait until we meet GOD. Quote:
The use of our brains is crucial to process what we hear, witness or observe. In other words, there is what we see and what we need to understand of what we see. There is what we hear and that we need to understand of what we hear. This is why God recommends and commands the use of brains as a basic step to grow in spirit and to strengthen the souls.Once we analyze and process given data, then, recognize and choose God, we need His guidance to understand, discern and perceive the reality beyond the materialistic illusion of this world. Those who choose to disbelieve are deprived of such divine guidance. Thus, the choice we make, belief or disbelief, will have a direct and a fundamental impact on our intellect (19:75-76, 10:33, 6:109-110, 21:79).
Then we can only attempt to get as close as possible to GOD and to know GOD more.
Yet GOD tells us a lot about Himself , everything that we need to know is here:[Qoran 1:1] In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. (Allah, Al-Rahman, Al-Raheem)
[Qoran 1:2] Praise be to God, Lord of the universe. (Rabbul-Alameen)
[Qoran 1:4] Master of the Day of Judgment. (Maliki yawmiddeen)
[Qoran 112:1] Proclaim, "He is the One and only God. (Ahad)
[Qoran 112:2] "The Absolute God. (Al-Samad)
[Qoran 57:3] He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the Outermost and the Innermost. He is fully aware of all things. (Al-Awwal, Al-Aakher, Al-Thaher, Al-Baten)
[Qoran 3:2] God: there is no god except He; the Living, the Eternal. (Al-Hay, Al-Qayioom)
[Qoran 59:23] He is the One God; there is no other god beside Him. The King, the Most Sacred, the Peace, the Most Faithful, the Supreme, the Almighty, the Most Powerful, the Most Dignified. God be glorified; far above having partners. (Al-Malik, Al- Quddoos, Al-Salaam, Al-Moumen, Al-Muhaymen, Al-Azeez, Al-Jabbar, Al-Mutakabber)
[Qoran 59:24] He is the One God; the Creator, the Initiator, the Designer. To Him belong the most beautiful names. Glorifying Him is everything in the heavens and the earth. He is the Almighty, Most Wise. (Al-Khaliq, Al-Barea, Al-Musawwer)
[Qoran 22:62] It is a fact that God is the Truth (Al-Haq), while the setting up of any idols beside Him constitutes a falsehood, and that God is the Most High, the Supreme. (Al- Alei, Al-Kabeer)
[Qoran 12:64] .... God is the best Protector, and, of all the merciful ones, He is the Most Merciful." (Khayru Hafethan)
[Qoran 22:58] Those who emigrate for the sake of God, then get killed, or die, God will surely shower them with good provisions. God is certainly the best Provider. (Khairul razeqeen)
[Qoran 22:59] Most assuredly, He will admit them an admittance that will please them. God is Omniscient, Clement. (Aleem, Haleem)
[Qoran 22:60] It is decreed that if one avenges an injustice that was inflicted upon him, equitably, then he is persecuted because of this, God will surely support him. God is Pardoner, Forgiving. (Afuw, Ghafoor)
[Qoran 22:63] Do you not see that God sends down from the sky water that turns the land green? God is Sublime, Cognizant. (Lateef, Khabeer) [Quran 22:64] To Him belongs everything in the heavens and everything on earth. Absolutely, God is the Most Rich, Most Praiseworthy. (Al-Ghanei, Al-Hameed)
[Qoran 2:115] To God belongs the east and the west; wherever you go there will be the presence of God. God is Omnipresent, Omniscient. (Wasea)
[Qoran 3:26] Say, "Our god: possessor of all sovereignty. You grant sovereignty to whomever You choose, You remove sovereignty from whomever You choose. You grant dignity to whomever You choose, and commit to humiliation whomever You choose. In Your hand are all provisions. You are Omnipotent. (Kadeer)
[Qoran 6:18] He is Supreme over His creatures. He is the Most Wise, the Cognizant. (Al-Qaher)
[Qoran 14:48] The day will come when this earth will be substituted with a new earth, and also the heavens, and everyone will be brought before God, the One, the Supreme. (Al-Wahed, Al-Qahhar)
[Qoran 33:39] Those who deliver God's messages, and who reverence Him alone, shall never fear anyone but God. God is the most efficient reckoner. (Haseeb)
[Qoran 4:1] O people, observe your Lord; the One who created you from one being, and created from it its mate, then spread from the two many men and women. You shall regard God, by whom you swear, and regard the parents. God is watching over you.* (Raqeeb)
[Qoran 11:61] To Thamoud we sent their brother Saaleh. He said, "O my people, serve/worship God; you have no other god beside Him. He initiated you from the earth, then settled you in it. You shall seek His forgiveness, then repent to Him. My Lord is always Near, Responsive." (Qareeb, Mujeeb)
[Qoran 41:53] We will show them our proofs in the horizons, and within themselves, until they realize that this is the truth.* Is your Lord not sufficient as a Witness of all things? (Shaheed)
[Qoran 13:9] The Knower of all secrets and declarations; the Supreme, the Most High. (Aalemul ghaybi washshahadah, Al-Mutaal)
[Qoran 56:96] You shall glorify the name of your Lord, the Great. ( Al-Atheem)
[Qoran 3:6] He is the One who shapes you in the wombs as He wills. There is no other god besides Him; the Almighty, Most Wise. ( Al-Azeez, Al-Hakeem)
[Qoran 22:74] They do not value God as He should be valued. God is the Most Powerful, the Almighty. (Al-Qawei)
[Qoran 3:4] before that, to guide the people, and He sent down the statute book. Those who disbelieve in God's revelations incur severe retribution. God is Almighty, Avenger. (Thu entiqan)
[Qoran 21:89] And Zachariah implored his Lord: "My Lord, do not keep me without an heir, though You are the best inheritor." ( Khayrul waretheen)
[Qoran 51:58] God is the Provider, the Possessor of all power, the Supreme. (Al-Razzaq, Thul quwwah, Al-Mateen)
[Qoran 55:78] Most exalted is the name of your Lord, Possessor of Majesty and Honor. (Thul jalaal, Thul Ikram)
[Qoran 40:15] Possessor of the highest ranks, and Ruler of the whole dominion. He sends inspiration, bearing His commands, to whomever He chooses from among His servants, to warn about the Day of Summoning. (Rafeeu al-daragat, Thul Arsh)
[Qoran 62:4] Such is God's grace that He bestows upon whomever He wills. God is Possessor of Infinite Grace. (Thul fadl alatheem)
[Qoran 34:26] Say, "Our Lord will gather us all together before Him, then He will judge between us equitably. He is the Judge, the Omniscient." (Al-Fattah)
[Qoran 2:160] As for those who repent, reform, and proclaim, I redeem them. I am the Redeemer, Most Merciful. (Al-Tawwab)
[Qoran 11:73] They said,"Do you find it strange for God? God has bestowed His mercy and blessings upon you, O inhabitants of the shrine. He is Praiseworthy, Glorious." (Hameed, Majeed)
[Qoran 85:14] And He is the Forgiving, Most Kind. (Al-Ghafoor, Al-Wadood)
[Qoran 64:17] If you lend God a loan of righteousness, He will multiply the reward for you manifold, and forgive you. God is Appreciative, Clement. (Al-Shakoor, Al-Haleem)
[Qoran 38:9] Do they own the treasures of mercy of your Lord, the Almighty, the Grantor. (Al-Wahhab)
[Qoran 82:6] O you human being, what diverted you from your Lord Most Honorable? (Al-Kareem)
[Qoran 6:102] Such is God your Lord, there is no god except He, the Creator of all things. You shall serve/worship Him alone. He is in control of all things.
[Qoran 10:3] Your only Lord is God; the One who created the heavens and the earth in six days, then assumed all authority. He controls all matters. There is no intercessor, except in accordance with His will. Such is God your Lord. You shall serve/worship Him. Would you not take heed?
[Qoran 35:13] He merges the night into the day, and merges the day into the night. He has committed the sun and the moon to run for a predetermined period of time. Such is God your Lord; to Him belongs all kingship. Any idols you set up beside Him do not possess as much as a seed's shell.
[Qoran 40:62] Such is God your Lord, the Creator of all things. There is no god except He. How could you deviate?
[Qoran 39:6] He created you from one person, then created from him his mate. He sent down to you eight kinds of livestock. He creates you in your mothers' bellies, creation after creation, in trimesters of darkness. Such is God your Lord. To Him belongs all sovereignty. There is no other god beside Him. How could you deviate?
[Qoran 40:64] God is the One who rendered the earth habitable for you, and the sky a formidable structure, and He designed you, and designed you well. He is the One who provides you with good provisions. Such is God your Lord; Most Exalted is God, Lord of the universe.
[Qoran 16:3] He created the heavens and the earth for a specific purpose. He is much too High, far above any idols they set up.
[Qoran 10:32] Such is God, your rightful Lord. What is there after the truth, except falsehood? How could you disregard all this?
[Qoran 22:74] They do not value God as He should be valued. God is the Most Powerful, the Almighty.
May the Lord give us more knowledge to get to know Him better.
GOD bless you brother.
Peace. - John Tauler, theologian of the 14th.
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Peace brother GL and thank you for the detailed reply.
I agree with much of what you wrote, especially that our reason has limits and that the Quran tells us many attributes of God.
But I think my question actually begins after accepting all those verses.
For example, I accept that God is All-Knowing, watching, judging, pleased, displeased, forgiving, etc. My difficulty is: what do these words really mean when applied to a Being who already knows the entire outcome and whose relationship with time cannot be like ours?
A human watches because something is unfolding before him. A human waits because the future has not arrived yet. A human tests because he wants to know the result. A human reacts because something new has happened.
But if God already knows the ghayb completely, then these words cannot carry exactly the same meaning when applied to God.
That is the part I am trying to understand.
Even when we say God “knows the ghayb,” perhaps ghayb is only “unseen” from our perspective. It is not some hidden information existing independently which God happens to have access to.
So my question is less about listing what the Quran says about God, and more about how far our human understanding of those descriptions can actually go before we start imagining God through human categories.
I think that is where the mystery really begins for me
