Commemorating the Birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Imam Ja’far Sadiq (AS); The Position of Religion in Human Knowledge

Greetings and Blessings,

I hereby extend my felicitations on the blessed birthday of the Holy Prophet of Islam (PBUH) to all Muslims in the world, as well as to those who are familiar with the “philosophy of religion” and well-understand the path of human intellectual evolution and discoveries; those who believe in intuitive knowledge (the world of mental spark, inspiration, and…); the birthday of the one who played a fundamental role in the field of such knowledge.

To those who recognize that acquired science and philosophy alone do not answer all of humanity’s eternal questions (questions such as: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where will I go? What is the purpose of my coming? And…?). Because science, regardless of being absolutely incapable of entering into such subjects and answering such questions, is increasingly faced with more unanswered questions day by day and is moving towards the era of the “crisis of questions.” And philosophy, which relies on our intellect, can never provide an answer to such questions due to the limitations of human reason and knowledge and the lack of access to the necessary information to answer these types of questions.

In this case, such a field that has long presented intuitive knowledge, alongside science and philosophy, has been called faith (regardless of the type and titles such as Islam, Judaism, Christianity, etc.) from the heart of which religion and mysticism have emerged; undoubtedly, without faith, mankind will face an epistemological void and a lack of intuitive knowledge, in a way that nothing can compensate for this loss (as in historical experiences, after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, such a void was evident and it became clear that all the moral bases of society had been destroyed and irreparable losses and damages were inflicted on the body of society, and the complete and absolute separation of religion from politics had not helped humanity in any way. What was thought to be the cause of human misery, according to scientologists, was religion. Whereas [as the saying goes] one must break the erroneous self instead of the reflecting mirror. Absolute scientism has also been experienced and fortunately all have been tested; pure materialistic and scientific thinking have also been tested!!!). Even though throughout history, religion has always been a pawn in the hands of powers to be manipulated as a tool on the one hand and to suppress mysticism on the other, and in the courts of all kings and sultans and alongside all powerful figures in history, ceremonial religious officials have always been present to pave the way for the kings’ sanctification as the shadow of God, and to help suppress the people by using religious tools and issuing fatwas, ordering the murder of mystics, etc. in order to further consolidate those powers. In cases where, unfortunately, power has fallen directly into the hands of religious authorities throughout history, it has also led to catastrophes in the history of the world, the most prominent examples have been the Middle Ages and the current [Islamic Republic] system, and history will undoubtedly never forget these painful memories.

Here, in view of the extreme anti-religious sentiments resulting from the ambitious and power-hungry political games of the worldly obsessives, who have used religion as a means and tool to achieve their goals, and have caused people in general to be inclined to separate from spirituality and the epistemological knowledge under the misconception that eliminating religion from people’s lives and replacing it with science and technology will lead to happiness, I will refer to a topic in the book Humankind and Marefat published in 2006, discussed and studied for decades, for the sake of recalling and re-reading:

Experience, Knowledge, and Question

What human being knows, understands, and comprehends is the product of a triangle, where the three vertices of experience, knowledge, and question meet (Figure 32).

At the beginning of human’s journey, which of these three existed before the other to be used and benefited from?

We might instantly respond that experience was first encountered and known by human. It is true that we have undoubtedly always been gaining experience, but for an experience to lead to knowledge and understanding, the human being must be equipped with a processing system to play the necessary intellectual games with the acquired experiences and finally bring them to a certain result that can be called “experience”. This processing system itself requires “knowledge”, and without knowledge no processing system can record and register an experience.

Therefore, we conclude that in order to benefit from experiences, there must be “knowledge”, but for knowledge to come into existence, there must be unknowns for humans in advance, so that by answering them, science and knowledge are created, and without facing “questions”, “knowledge” cannot have come into existence. So, before reaching “knowledge”, the human being dealt with questions so that by answering them, knowledge can come into existence. In fact, without facing “questions”, there is no answer that can develop into “knowledge.”

That means, knowledge cannot exist without “question”. But the answer to the “question” itself requires the existence of “knowledge”, and until we do not have “knowledge”, we cannot answer the “question”.

On the other hand, as long as the human being does not encounter a phenomenon, no question arises, while the encounter with happenings leads to reflections that generate questions; in short, until “experiencing” occurs, no question arises.

With that in mind, we come across a paradox which makes it impossible to say which of the three vertices of the discussed triangle appeared first. The only response is that in fact, mankind was a unique being who, with special capabilities, from the very beginning began to access all three vertices of the triangle simultaneously and continued to improve them in parallel. This actually shows the uniqueness of human being among the infinite creatures on earth.

In this regard, it is much more difficult for those who claim that humans do not have free will to show and prove how this difficult and complex process could have proceeded and completed itself without the existence of human free will, leading to the creation of information, knowledge, and experience.

     Science and the Answer to the Mystery of Creation

Now we pose another question: Can the world of science provide us with the answer to the mystery of creation?

To answer this question, we draw a graph that shows the horizontal axis of time and the vertical axis of the number of human questions.

The above graph shows that at the beginning of their journey, humans did not have many questions, and gradually, as they progressed, their questions increased, and the answers to these questions gradually turned into numerous scientific branches, and those branches again led to the raising of new questions, and over time, the number of questions and the number of scientific branches multiplied.

 In the last few decades, the number of questions raised has exceeded the number of questions in the entire history of mankind, and currently the situation is such that before having answered a single question, hundreds of other questions are being raised by new scientific branches. With this trend, humans will soon reach a threshold that we call the “question crisis.” At this critical point, the ratio of the number of new questions raised to the answers given increases day by day and tends towards infinity; that means:  

On this threshold, human beings will forever realize that science will never be able to bring about a situation in which one can say: “I have found the answers to all my questions.” All the mystics of Iran understood this, and although they were all scholars of their time, they expressed their despair over science’s ability to answer questions and solve the mystery of creation, and they realized that science could not give them the answer to the mystery of existence.

Narrate the tale of Motreb and wine, less quest the mystery of divine
As nobody ever solved or is to solve this riddle on their wisdom line

(Hafez)

Or Mawlana Jalal al-Din (Rumi) writes:

The trifles of geometry, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, as science
They all do belong to this world, not the seventh heaven’s reliance

Sohrab Sepehri invites us to camp behind the fence of knowledge, because he realized very well that our knowledge leads nowhere and the secret of the red rose cannot be identified with our limited intellect and knowing:

We are not about identifying the secret of the red rose
We are perhaps to float in the charm of the red rose
To camp behind the knowing
We are perhaps to chase after the song of the truth
Between the century and the water lily

Since more knowledge means more questions, because knowledge is from the question and the question is from knowledge (we discussed in detail whether questions existed first or knowledge); therefore, Ibn Sina, through his extensive knowledge, encounters a world of questions and therefore realizes that he does not yet know anything and in fact realizes his ignorance (in relation to the vastness of knowledge):

My knowledge reached up to that point
To know that I don’t actually know

 Or:

Although the heart roamed endlessly in this desert, in despair
It split many hairs, without knowing a single hair
Although a thousand suns rose from my heart, so bright
It did not reach the perfection of a particle, in that light

(Abu Sa’id Abu’l-Khayr)

Hafez also writes:

The arches and porticos of the school, the hustle and bustle of the knowledge
We have set aside for the divine cup and the moon-faced cupbearer

Or:

Wash away our tablet of knowledge, all in divine wine
For I have seen the heavens crushing the wise heart

Therefore, despite all its numerous enlightenments, science will never be able to solve the mystery of creation, and every day the ratio of humanity’s unknowns to knowns will grow larger and larger.

Beyond this, with the arrival of the era of “modern slavery” (within the next five years), which I’ve spoken about for decades, a time will come when humans suddenly realize they have lost everything and become soulless beings, identified only by a number and an international code, with no more value than a number, and their uniqueness in this universe, their dignity and status, will be completely gone. It is then that humanity will realize the preciousness of what they have lost, and that returning to it will be the only solution: a field called “spirituality and the pursuit of Marefat.” This is where humanity will finally grasp the “philosophy of religion.” It will be a day when all human efforts will be focused on destroying all manifestations of technology to save oneself from its clutches, and…

Therefore, let us not allow religion, as a tool of political systems—a pattern that has been repeated throughout history—to disgust us with the truth of spiritual knowledge and spirituality itself, and to drive us away from it; because without spirituality, humanity will simply become an empty and hollow being.

Also: I congratulate all Shiites on the birthday of Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (AS), the founder of the Ja’fari school of thought.

Mohammad Ali Taheri
The Founder of Erfan Keyhani Halgheh School & Taheri Peace Organization
Toronto, September 10, 2025 / Shahrivar 19, 1404