Urgent Essay Help: Is God both immanent and transcendant?

First question first, what do those words mean?

From what I have read, the problem with saying "God is everywhere" or "God is over there" is that both of them involve issues of time and space, both of which are created.

There is an interesting read on this over at sunnipath: Pantheism Contradicts Islamic Belief.

[quote=You]First question first, what do those words mean?[/quote]

Transcendent: Exceeds all bounds.

Immanent: Present everywhere all the time

.... I think.

[quote=MakeMeRawr_6TeenF][quote=You]First question first, what do those words mean?[/quote]

Transcendent: Exceeds all bounds.

Immanent: Present everywhere all the time

.... I think.
[/quote]

well, immanent then seems to be pantheist, which according to my other link is not what we believe (though I can see how especially for kids, the whole concept can be simplified to that to make it "easier" to explain...).

Isn't the thing with sufis that 'everywhere they look they see the face of God'?

Not literally, obviously. But I always understood it that they saw the evidence of God - His handiwork etc in everything.

Personally I understand God as transcendent, and can't understand Him in terms of being immanent. But I acknowledge that all understandings of God that everybody has will be flawed/incomplete.

There is one school of thought that says we can only use words/names to describe Allah (swt), that He Himself has used in the Qur'an, any other words (no matter how positive/heartfelt/loving) are not allowed because that would involve ascribing characteristics to Allah (swt) of which we have no knowledge.

The other school of thought is that we can use any words/names in regards to God which are good characteristics, because Allah (swt) is 'Good' in it's purest sense.

Not exactly related to the question, but just something I've found interesting.

I think transcendant means beyond all things, and immanent means very close by.

As for transcendancy, that's not a problem. The phrase SubhanAllah means 'God is transcendant' (transcendant beyond all negativeness). Immanent is interesting. God's closeness is from His Mercy to His creation. He comes near to them out of kindness. However its harder to understand because we can't see God, so we have to understand almost all the scriptural referances of God's immanence in a figurative sense.

But God is both transcendant and immanent.

[quote=wednesday]Hamza's latest article: Who Designed the Designer?[/quote]

From there:

Firstly, anyone with a basic understanding of the philosophy of science will conclude that in the inference to the best explanation, the best explanation doesn’t require an explanation! The following example illustrates this point.

Imagine 500 years from now a group of archaeologists where to start digging in London’s Hyde Park only to find parts of a car and a bus. They would be completely justified in inferring that these finds were not a result of sedimentation and metamorphosis but products of an unknown civilization. However if some skeptics were to argue that we can’t make such inferences because we do not know anything about this civilization, how they lived and who created them, would that make the archaeologists conclusions untrue? Of course not!

Secondly if we take this contention seriously it could undermine the very foundations of science and philosophy themselves. Because if we require an explanation for the basic assumptions of science, for example that the external world exists, where do you think our level of scientific progress would be?

Additionally if we were to apply this type of question to every attempt at explaining the explanation, we would end up with an infinite regress of explanations. And an infinite regress of explanations would defeat the whole purpose of science in the first place, which is to provide an explanation!

[quote=MakeMeRawr_6TeenF]So what d'you think?

Taken to their logical extremes, can God be both those things at the same time?

What do you believe about God's immanence?[/quote]

He is "close to us"but at the same time, the physical world in its entirety is creation and God is not creation.

(How do you define closeness when distance itself is a creation? I think in the Qur'an it says that God is closer to you than your jugular vein.)

[quote=MakeMeRawr_6TeenF]What do you believe about God's transcendance?[/quote]

Seems pretty close to ashari aqeedah.

[quote=MakeMeRawr_6TeenF]Do you rate any one of them higher than the other?

General opinions?[/quote]

More transcendent than immanent (where immanent can be neglible in the traditional sense - it is more metaphorical in my understanding).

How did the essay go Rawry?

[quote=Dawud]How did the essay go Rawry?[/quote]

Good thank you :]

I did well in it, coz i did it from a vair philosophical perspective and i think that impressed her as it's an RS class and most essays in RS tend to be quite soppy. In a nice way x]

Ty for help, like with all essays once you've found your foundations, fleshing it out's easy, almost fun :]