Do people believe in God through trust or through evidence?

Islam does not place evidence behind faith but before it. There is strong evidence for God, and true faith is trust that is built on knowledge and reflection.

Many people think that faith is a matter of feeling and science a matter of proof. Believing in something you cannot touch, see or measure is often especially hard for educated people. But this contrast is not correct. The Holy Qur’an does not ask for blind faith. Again and again it calls on us to reflect and to examine the evidence.

One such piece of evidence comes from physics itself. In every exchange of energy, part of it is lost. It spreads out in a way that can no longer be used. In the long run, therefore, everything that exists should slowly fade away. If the universe had simply always been there, without a beginning and without a cause, it would have run down long ago. We could not be here today.

The fact that we are here calls for a first cause. That cause must not itself be subject to decay, or it would face the same problem. The Greek thinker Aristotle already reasoned his way to a first cause that loses nothing. The two verses above say the same thing in simple words. Everything created passes away, and only God remains.

Nor does the Holy Qur’an describe God’s creating as laborious work. God wills something, and it comes into being. We cannot understand God’s own nature, because we only know what is created. Yet what is created shows us that there must be a Creator.

So we face a clear choice. Whoever denies God would really have to regard their own existence as unexplainable. Faith is therefore not a leap in the dark. It begins with reflection and then becomes a trust that grows throughout life.