“He who is above all else”: A Logical Argument for the Existence of God – Ismaili Gnosis

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““I think that monotheistic religions, having a common reference to a single God, should and must dialogue. The three religions which Abraham inspired have many more common facets than those which divide them. Religion must be the means by which to affirm the ethical significance of existence, regardless of one’s profession of faith.”

– Imām Shāh Karīm al-Ḥusaynī Āgā Khān IV,
(Interview with Correre della Sera, Massimo Nava, October 22, 2001)

The concept of one God who transcends space, time, multiplicity, and contingency, and gives existence to all things is the foundation of the shared worldview of the monotheistic traditions including Hinduism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam. It is also the pivot around which people of all faiths should rally in order to oppose the atheistic, materialist, relativist and naturalist ideologies appealing to many people today. This article offers a strong logical and philosophical argument for the existence of God.

“You must have in every walk of your life a logical concept. This does not mean to wipe away faith, but the real principle of Islam is that faith is logical. Islam would not be what it is if it were not logical and this is something you must keep in mind. Because the very heart of Islam is logical. There is no hocus-pocus. There is no nonsense. It is clear and it is lucid and it is understandable.”

– Imām Shāh Karīm al-Ḥusaynī Āgā Khān IV.

This argument will demonstrate that there is one, single Absolute Reality upon which all existing things depend in all moments in which they exist; this Reality does not depend on anything else for its existence. It is therefore called “Unconditioned Reality” or “God”. The argument will further demonstrate that God or Unconditional Reality is absolutely simple, absolutely one or single, unrestricted and unbounded, and transcending time, space, and matter. This is the concept of God common to the classical tradition of Plato, Aristotle and, Plotinus, the medieval Islamic philosophical traditions of the Peripatetics and the Ismā‘īlīs, the Islamic mystical tradition of Ibn al-‘Arabī and the Akbarī school, the school of Mulla Sadra, the medieval Christian scholastic and mystical traditions of St. Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart, the modern Christian theological tradition of Paul Tillich, Karl Rahner, and Elizabeth Johnson, and the contemporary Sufi, Twelver, and Ismā‘īlī Tariqahs of Islam.

“This Ultimate Reality is often conceived as ‘transcendent’, or described as ‘He who is above all else’ — not because it is a reality spatially above the human habitat, but because it is above, i.e. goes beyond or transcends, all human categories. Being free from and prior to the dichotomy between subject and object, it is therefore also outside the frame of human discourse.”

– Aziz Esmail, (‘Reason and Religion: The Old Argument Revisited’, Ilm, Vol. 7, No. 3, Dec. 1981-Feb. 1982, pp. 32-40)

“A man must be at one with God. This may sound old-fashioned to some people. A few may think that they do not believe in God, and some others that it matters little to the individual in his daily life how he stand with regard to Him. Ruling out the atheist, with whom a believer can no more argue than he can discuss color with a blind man, it is surely strange that a believer in an omnipotent and ever-present Deity should fail to realise that how we stand this instant and every instant toward Him matters to us more than anything else in the Universe. This is the fundamental question: Are you in harmony with God? If you are – you are happy.”

– Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III

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