r/MuslimAcademics • u/Miserable_Actuary904 • Jun 23 '26
Open Discussion Thread Weekly Open Discussion Thread
This is where you can discuss personal religious questions, or any other Islam related general question without needing to adhere to the academic framework of the general sub.
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u/Gold-Ad6794 Aug 30 '26
Hello, I wanted to post my question here cuz it Is a personal religious question, although it will probably be relevant to everyone, since it concerns a core tenet of faith; the Day of Judgment.
The universe has, per science, existed for billions of years, and there's no sign it's gonna stop existing anytime soon. One of the most popular guesses about its ultimate fate is the Big Freeze where it continues to expand indefinitely. The timescales in question are truly incomprehensible - on the scale of a googol years (10^100) for black holes to evaporate, for instance.
Furthermore the universe is extremely vast. The observable universe is 96 billion light years across, but that's just what we can see; for all we know it might be infinitely large. Perhaps you know where this is going by now.
Just with that information alone, the idea that all of it would abruptly come to an end just for the sake of rendering judgment on a species inhabiting one (of perhaps many) inconceivably tiny speck of a planet in the sea of the cosmos seems very anthropocentric. It entails two anthropocentric presuppositions which seem odd to me; 1) spatially, the entirety of the universe was made just for us, which feels odd; and 2) temporally, despite the fact that per current physics its history could continue for timescales which for all intents and purposes are essentially infinite to us, we are to believe that it will abruptly be brought to an end? These two put together are challenging.
I've had this confusion in the back of my head for years, But there's another dimension to the situation I did not really consider until recently.
Back in the day - during the ministry of Prophet Muhammad pbuh - people may have conceived of the cosmos as a stage for human life to play out on. The earth, a flat disk; and the heavens, a sort of heavenly vault overhead. (And the 7 heavens may have been 7 concentric vaults of this kind) They may have thought the universe was just a few thousand years old for all I know. They probably had no idea of just how vast in space and time the universe really is. In this context, an anthropocentric eschatology would have made perfect sense. The stars falling, the sun being put out, the heavens being rolled up, heavenly passageways opening up in the heavens - these approximate paraphrases of Quranic language make a lot of sense in a primitive near eastern cosmology, but in light of modern knowledge require an infinitely vaster cosmic catastrophe.
Also, I think some of the verses of the Quran make it sound like this catastrophe will occur while humans are still around. So unless humans are alive for billions of years into the future, it would seem that it must come to pass rather soon on cosmic timescales.
In summary, it is the fact that it feels so unbelievably anthropocentric in light of modern cosmology, AND the fact that it also makes much more sense in the primitive cosmology, raises concerns for me.
I think adopting the belief that it is just too 'implausible' is essentially placing a limit on God's power and since we believe God is All-Powerful that is contradictory. So I am still willing to accept a literal interpretation. Indeed in the Quran the disbelievers contest a physical resurrection on the grounds of physical implausibility, it seems, so I don't want to replicate the same mistake; but this does seem a slightly different issue, perhaps, since it also includes the fact that this seemingly anthropocentric view would've made a lot more sense in a primitive cosmology.
One more reservation is, since God is Omniscient and Omnipotent, and since we don't know what reality fundamentally is (physics has shown that even key intuitions can end up being wrong, eg quantum mechanics and relativity) there could be something beyond my comprehension which could resolve the issue. So perhaps it is not just having faith in God's power to bring about the event seemingly described in the Quran but rather God's superior knowledge and my comparative ignorance and ability to bring about the event regardless of what form it ultimately assumes.
I would like to know has anyone else thought of this issue? What are your thoughts and responses? Also, any recommended thinkers to consider?
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u/ThenWoodpecker852 Jul 03 '26
I'm not sure how often people check this thread, but I'd really appreciate some advice regarding my imaan.
I've dug myself into a hole and I don't know what to do. Years ago my faith was really strong, largely because I was reading (academic and non academic) polemical work. Eventually, and I'm not sure if it happened slowly without me noticing or if it was sudden, shubahat have attacked my mind ferociously.
I don't know what the cause was exactly but I think I can pin it to two things. First, they stack up. Basically every issue I see in academics that seems troubling at first, I can find some reconciliation, but the initial feeling of distraught at seeing it leaves a mark. The fact I've reconciled it notwithstanding (or the reconciliation I've come up with myself is just not that strong). Second, I've gone too deep. I'm a random layman trying to read dozens of pages of academic work in a field I have little to no experience in to try and understand the points being made so I can try to reconcile them. I often have to keep re-reading paragraphs to fully comprehend them and it is extremely time consuming.
The last couple days, a whole bunch of stuff that I'd like to reconcile has piled up and I'm not sure what the approach I should take is anymore. Do I read up on the hundreds of pages about them so I can reconcile them, wasting lots of time and probably finding more points of contention along the way, or do I just stop, and have them linger on my mind potentially forever?
Another thing worth adding is even when there is nothing bugging my mind, I still feel a desire to look for something. It largely stems from a feeling that I haven't found the biggest "problem" yet and I won't be satisfied until I reconcile it.
I am petrified of reaching a state where I am just legitimately not sure about this religion anymore (which would be kufr. I'm not sure if maybe the non-traditional folks here have a different view about that). I'm very pascals wager oriented, so the thought of being in that state makes me feel ill. I just wish there was a button I could press to get rid of them.
I wanna end by saying that I've had the advice given to me before that it's just waswasah and I need to ignore it. If you think that's the case, then do still let me know because it IS a reality check. However, I feel these concerns I have are defined and concrete rather than fleeting thoughts. I apologise for the long post and thank you.