God and the Infinite Regress of Contingent Dependencies

Traditional Islamic arguments for the existence of God demonstrate the impossibility of two kinds of infinite regress. The first kind is the infinite regress of contingent dependencies. This arises in the argument from contingency. In this video, Hamza Karamali demonstrates part of the formal argument from contingency as it would be studied by an advanced student of Islamic theology who has also been trained in Islamic logic.

[imaz]

appreciate the work. May Allah SWT reward you for your efforts.

[oeshkoer]

Shaykh Muhammad Bukhayt al-Muti‘i, the former Grand Mufti of Egypt, said:

“There is no proof to suggest that it is not possible that there has been a sequence of creations from past eternity, even when the famous view suggests that this sequence is impossible. Believing that there is a sequence of creations after creations from eternity does not contradict ‘aqidah (Islamic belief), unless we say that a particular creation has no beginning, in the sense that there is no beginning to its existence. This is something that no one has ever said; rather everyone agrees that everything other than Allah, may He be exalted, that existed or exists now, is contingent, meaning that it came into existence after it did not exist, regardless of whether the sequence of creation has a particular time at which it started in the past and a particular time at which it will end in the future, or it, or it does not have a particular time either in the past or in the future, or it does not have one of them.

Do you not see that there is consensus that the delights of paradise are infinite and will not cease to exist at any point in the future, after they had been contingent in the sense that they existed after they did not exist? So it does not matter if you say that there is no end to it, in the sense that the delights of paradise will not cease to exist and will not have an end. But if we say that there is no end to them (the delights of paradise), in the sense that their existence is necessary because of what they are, then that constitutes disbelief.

Similarly, when we refer to the past, we may say that there was a series of creations that had no beginning, in the sense that the sequence of creations does not have a starting point in the past, yet each of them existed after it did not exist. 

If we say these creations have no beginning to their existence and no starting point, that suggests that they existed from eternity, and this constitutes disbelief (kufr).

You should read two books: al-Qawl al-Mufid and Hawashi al-Kharidah.” (Nihayat as-Sul fi Sharh Minhaj al-Usool, 2/103)

[somayabarakat]

Two questions then that you may be able to address in future videos:
The domino example doesn't hold for the circular argument because if you have dominos in a circle they won't fall although they're dependent on each other.
The second is, Is everything contingent? I mean the universe, not human beings. It might be easy to answer but I'm curious to see how it can be articulated.