It has become fashionable to appeal to logic in order to establish or "prove" the validity of an idea, and a matter of pride that one is logical. Faith is dismissed because it is equated with "blind belief" which is understood as prejudice or emotional attachment, wishful thinking, fantasy or illusion. It is advocated that people ought to rely only on Logic. It is claimed that there is no other way of reaching truth.

But this belief in Logic as an abstraction or in one's own logical processes is itself based on faith and is a form of Idolatry which also brings unjustified arrogance. There are, in fact, three sources of knowledge:-

(1) Sensory perception which depends on the accuracy and sensitivity of the senses, and on how much attention a person puts on something and where he directs his attention. This is controlled by his interests and desires. It also depends on what kind of environments he is in and the experiences he has in it and what he does because actions cause reactions which becomes data. People, therefore, differ in the amount and quality of the knowledge they have. The Data of experience is deposited into our memories in three interconnected forms as thought, feeling and action. But our memory and recall depends on the frequency and intensity of the experience and on the number of connections it makes with other data.

(2) The data so acquired has to be processed. That is, it is analyzed into parts, related, combined, common elements are abstracted to form concepts, ordered and systematized to find patterns. Reason can refer to these processes if they are deliberately and consciously done. But we are not conscious of all these processes and different people have different capacities for processing, in quantity and quality, according to their different intelligences, temperaments, and the efforts they make. Experiences and desires may create attachments, complexes and fixations, which prevent analysis. Training, conditioning and habits of thought, feeling and action may create "grooves" as on gramophone discs, which remove flexibility.

(3) The third source of knowledge comes from the quality of Consciousness. It gives us insight, inspiration or revelation. Consciousness varies in extensity, intensity and stability. It may be narrow or wide to different degrees; it may be integrated or disintegrated to various degrees; it may be changeable and distractible. There may be lack of discrimination between facts of outer and inner experiences, fantasies, wishful thinking and so on.

So differences of opinion can come about because people have different amounts and kinds of knowledge, or because they have processed them differently, or because they have different motives or different capacities for reasoning or for perception.

How do you establish the validity of logic? By logical argument? This is a vicious circle, itself illogical. You have faith in logic. The question of the nature and causes of faith and belief and their validity are questions for the science of Psychology.

The fact is that Logic deals in words. It consists of defining terms, putting these together to form premises, and combining premises to extract inferences from them. A logical argument will go wherever motives take us. If we wish to reach a conclusion then we need only define our terms appropriately and select the appropriate premises. That is why arguments between different people who have different motives will be endless and futile. We can see this in all departments of private and public life. In fact, we are not conscious of most of our motives. The intellect does not work by itself. Thought, feeling and action are interconnected and depend on the nature of the individual. This is why Islam is much more interested in human development than in particular faculties.

However, Logic has its uses. It is good for solving problems where the goal is already known and appropriate data is sought. Reason and Logic are tools like any other, which can be used correctly or incorrectly and for good or evil purposes. Perception requires receptivity and knowledge is a revelation. It cannot be invented. If a person is unable or unwilling to see all this, then further discussion is liable to be futile. One can merely beg to differ.

A critic writes:-

What is "truth"? Can you reach it? How would you know if you reach it?

Answer:-

According to the Quran, Allah (God) is the ultimate Reality. God created the Universe and all things with Truth (or His Word which is Truth). Truth then refers to the information or order which constitutes their structure, behavior and relationships. Knowledge refers to consciousness of Truth.

The purpose of life, from the Islamic point of view, is to progressively adjust or conform to Reality (Allah). To live life Objectively. Otherwise there is conflict and destruction. You know that you have reached the truth when there is harmony between you and Reality, between your knowledge of the external world and your inner reality, and there self-consistency in consciousness, in the system of thought, feeling and action.

Critic:-

That aside, trying to build up a logical argument in order to "bypass" logic is, dare I say, illogical.

Answer:-

Trying to prove logically that Logic is valid is also illogical. The above statements were not designed to prove "logically" that logic is false. As said before, Logic has its uses. It is an instrument which can be used or misused as any other. It was meant to convey the results of research and observation.

Critic:-

Unfortunately, (or fortunately) the process of acquiring knowledge is not a simple one, there are feedback loops of all sorts and nonlinear pathways (so claiming "There are in fact three sources of knowledge", is, how should I put it kindly, nonsense).

Comment:-

There are certainly feed back mechanisms and thought, feeling and action are connected. And most of the process by which a thought arises takes place at a sub or unconscious level.

To say that there are "three sources" of knowledge is to make a classification of types. We do distinguish between thought, feeling and action and all three do provide us with information, though they are inter-dependent. We also have external senses, reason and insights. To say that classifications are "nonsense" is merely to be negativistic or not to have understood their function.

As far as Islam is concerned there is Unity underlying all things. But as knowledge is relative (since it depends on comparisons and relationships), then distinctions do have to be made. The most fundamental way of doing it is to create a triad where we have two relata A and C, and a relating factor B. The triad refers to the relative world not to God, though relativity itself can only be understood relative to the Absolute.

Critic:-

Look at what works and what doesn't. Science (through the scientific method, which is normalization of basic reason and logic) has been advancing at an ever-increasing pace. Religions have not resulted in any new way of thinking or new understanding, let alone any concrete discoveries. One might as well believe he was created by the Invisible Pink Elephant than Allah or God or whatever. There is an undeniable placebo affect, but other than that, religion does not make for a more knowledgeable man or a better informed society.

Comment:-

Yes science has been successful but it is not like Philosophy which relies on Logic alone. It requires observation and experiment to provide data. And it also relies on insight and inspiration to synthesize the data.

Purely logical arguments are endless and inconclusive and get you no where because they depend on how you define terms, construct premises and combine them to get inferences. The sequence of arguments is governed by your motives. Therefore, given different motives and definitions of terms no agreement can, in fact be reached. That is why science abandons Philosophy based on pure logic and requires that Nature itself (Reality or God) shall settle the argument.

But science is about the external world and about facts and things, whereas religion is about the inner reality and about values and the process of living, about goals and motives, about consciousness, conscience and will and about adjustment of man to the Greater Reality of which he is part. Its subject, techniques, goals and results are quite different.

It is much easier to deal with impersonal things than with oneself, particularly as the observing mind has to be separated from the mind operating in the world.

Science and technology have not created happiness and that is not their aim. In fact as instruments they have aided conflict, oppression, cruelty, destruction and death as much as the opposite. Though it is also true that religions seem to have caused the same, the fact is that they do not teach such things - It is human nature which is at fault and requires rectification.

But this difference is quite obvious to many people and this awareness informs their priorities. This is so despite the fact that, in general, there is an overwhelming process of mental conditioning or hypnosis owing to the success of science and technology and the temptations presented by commerce in these products.

Apart from this Science does not exist in isolation but is connected with economics and politics and the rest of culture. The ideas, attitudes, feelings, values, motives, purposes, goals, modes of action and organization, rituals and institutions of a society are all interconnected and affect each other. The Spirit (consciousness, conscience and will) of a nation and its culture is defined by religion. That is why India, China, the Middle East and the West are different from each other. The scientific attitude as all other things arose by differentiation out of Religion, particularly Islam, which requires that we attribute nothing as true to Allah through speculation. The attention to nature, the idea that there are causes for things, that there is an underlying unity and something constant behind change and variety, and that the Universe is regulated by Laws and so on are attitudes derived from religion. They are pre-requisites even before science can begin.

However, we will not argue about these things. It is not possible for anyone to convince others by arguments for the reasons given in the article. Everyone has to verify these things for themselves or not as they wish or can.