What is an Accident?

Was world an accident? What do we mean by this term? What is its logic and nature? Answers to these questions or alike can alter paradigms of mind, in a positive way. How can we differentiate between two events as intentional and accidental? I learned the logic of accident a time ago from a philosopher, logician, psychiatrist, meta physician and a mystic, all in one. Beware, I have weak memory. I rue.

Accidents have three main characteristics which help us differentiate between an accidental event or intentional:

1. It has no sequence. No series of panned events are linked with an accident. It is utterly random.

2. There is no order in an accidental event. Take for instance the example of train crash. If a train gets hit at a targeted point and as a result of which two of its bogeys fall on one side and other two on the other side, we see an order in this event. And that is for two reasons - one, that train strikes at a predestined point and, secondly, it falls apart in an orderly manner. Therefore such a crash cannot be labeled as an accident. In an accident, no order is necessary.

3. There is no one behind an accident. It is unguided, unplanned. It is completely chaotic, precisely.

Was the creation of this world an accident? I leave that matter for you to decide (for me). But there is another plane on which this logic can be applied, that is, of intelligence and technology.

Intelligence exists in its primordial form. Aristotle's intellect bears no differences from mine, although his intellection may be much higher than mine. But as for technology, as it exists today or in the past, it is accidental to the true nature of human beings. The profound intellectual orientations of mind are to observed in each human being. But a car or a machine that can perform complex mathematical purposes or planes that can fly are not as much important to attain the highest purpose form human being as is his or her ability to discern between what is right or wrong for him or her. And this is where man feels a need of revelation. In the words of S. H. Nasr:

"The most profound reason for the need of revelation is the presence of obstacles before the intelligence which prevents its correct functioning, or more directly the fact that although man is made in the 'image of God' and has a theomorphic being he is always in the process of forgetting it. He has in himself the possibility of being God-like but he is always in the state of neglecting this possibility. That is why the cardinal in Islam is forgetfulness. It is negligence (ghaflah) of what we really are. It is a going to sleep and creating world around us, which makes us forget who we really are and what we should be doing in this world. Revelation is there to awaken man from his dream and remind him what it really means to be man." (Ideals and Realities of Islam.)