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Studying Atheism
I am attempting to study Atheism as a subject. Starting from philosophical reasoning to history of atheistic ideas and finally understand the arguments for and against atheism.
Atheism is fastest growing ideology and it appears that it has very solid philosophical, scientific basis.
I always felt that theological arguments fall short, they answer satisfactorily but only partly. For e.g. particle physicists /string theorist claim there’s no God, we reply but never question that how do we know particle physics or string theory can answer this question? in other words, does the data derived from particle physics or string theory satisfies scientific method of inquiry and does it have the ability to find out a non-material and superior intelligence being (God) ?
Any guidance would be appreciated greatly
1. Method / strategy of study
2. Questions that need to be answered
3. Sources
4. Personal questions / experiences
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43 Replies
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Studying Atheism
updated 2 years, 5 months ago
4 Members
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43
Replies
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“appears that it has very solid philosophical, scientific basis”
If you dig a bit deeper, I’m certain that you will find otherwise. Atheism (conclusive denial of God) actually has no basis whatsoever, except conjecture.
Scientific atheism finds its roots in an age old philosophy of materialism, according to which this universe and everything that it contains is made out material substance and that no other immaterial substance can exist. It begs the question that what evidence can anyone ever have for this claim and how can science even begin to investigate it?
These days materialists generally call themselves physicalists because the claim that nothing except matter can exist has been pretty satisfactorily refuted. Still, physicalists hold that everything in this universe is physical in nature. They go as far as denying consciousness and free will because it leads to substance duality.
In contrast to materialism / physicalism the opposing ideology of idealism holds that matter is just an illusion, and that the real substance of this universe is consciousness. Once again, the problem is that this is a claim that can never be conclusively verified or falsified.
There are many philosophical theories out there with varying degrees of differences, including substance dualism, property dualism, epiphenomenalism, etc. Generally speaking, it’s hard to find a scientist or a philosopher who completely agrees with another one. As far as I’m concerned, the reason for this is that as humans we have an unlimited power of imagination and therefore if the basis of an argument (bina-e-istadlal) is forsaken, then any ideology can be made to look logical and coherent.
If I was starting out, I would start with the “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism i.e. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett. I would also investigate the counter arguments provided by theists such as Lennox, Collins, and Meyer. Also I would make sure that I have somewhat of a decent understanding of the history of philosophy, because I believe that proper context is necessary to be able to appreciate any knowledge. However, most importantly, I would spend time in understanding Quran’s ideology and arguments in this regard which I believe that Ghamidi sahab has done a wonderful job of explaining. A key thing that I have learned from him is that we must appreciate human constraints of knowledge when investigating or responding to any existential or metaphysical questions.
One last suggestion is that once you start investigating this subject, depending on your level of interest and appetite, you might find yourself in a rabbit hole because there are more ideologies out there than one can possibly consume in one lifetime. I would stick to surface level study of representative ideologies and dig deeper only in the ones that look promising.
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Thank you brother Faisal for such a clear perspective
I want to share how I feel about this
1. Atheism is just like how Greek philosophy was hundreds of yrs ago. Completely overtaking the ideology of Islam. Muslims and other religion’s followers r more and more apologetic and trying to prove atheistic values under the guise of “universal” or “human” values
2. Atheism is getting validity from physical sciences, social sciences, psychology, and projected as the “savior of human race” ideology from most if not all media platforms
3. Free will and consciousness are proven as nothing but illusion using modern scientific methods in neuroscience
4. If science can only prove matter and not metaphysical realities then religion also can not prove it either but claims to know it. The point is that the evidence for metaphysical has to come from the physical world. There’s no historical evidence for Joseph AS in Egyptology, historical/archeological evidence doesn’t prove Moses AS, the relics in Topkapi never been carbon dated for accurate time line etc
5. For Islam, same story, we can say that Muhammad SAW was a real person all we want but the truth is that there’s no “scientific” and reproducible evidence for his existence.
6. We have Quran, off course, the arguments Quran put forward r not understood using human agents of reason (logic, philosophy, scientific method) although Quran keeps asking to ponder over previous nations even then no efforts were made to excavate Aad, Thamud similar to, for e.g. City of Pompeii. Linguistic miracle of Quran is not relevant in today’s age
I am not saying there r no reasons to believe Islam is true but they have to be presented in the language of the day
My aim is to read and understand atheistic ideology deeply. My hope is that, insha Allah, reading of Quran might open doors of understanding to refute atheistic belief system that does not require a “believers heart” but an objective mind. Study is primarily for myself and my children.
I’ll get the four horsemen book insha Allah. Thanks again for your suggestions
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All discussions on existence of God leads to one single question at the end and that is if the one who’s created and running the universe is the nature law or it is a supreme power outside of the domain of the natural law. The question who’s created the natural law or who’s created God are not relevant as one of them has to be outside of the causal chain of the cause and effect law. What makes it more challenging is the fact that when you check the natural law as an entity against the criteria of concept of God given in Surah Ikhlas it’s hard to find any gaps.
Therefore the real question that need to be answered is not whether God or Supreme power exists but it’s whether the supreme power, whoever be it, is interested in humans or not. If yes what is the evidence that it’s communicating with us and it’s not indifferent to whatever we do or whatever is happening to us.
This is where Sir Ghamidi reasoning on existence of God helps a lot. The argument is based on witnesses of our innate instinct, history, prophets and rationale. The evidence is far stronger than what is generally needed in a court of law to convict someone of the capital punishment.
If you are choosing atheism as a subject, i would suggest you investigate into the above question whether God is indifferent or not rather than whether God exists or not.
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Faraz sahab
1. I couldn’t unpack it to understand what you really mean.
2. This is by design. Science relies on “observations”. It’s quite natural that all “sciences” seem to be in agreement with an ideology that restricts their worldview to only the empirical domain.
3. Although some scientists would like us to believe this, it’s far from being true.
4-6. These are only concerns because of not understanding epistemology, which within itself has been long debated in the world of philosophy without reaching any conclusions. When we understand the Quranic viewpoint in this regard ‘in the context’ of such debates, I think that things begin to fall into place pretty quickly.
I conclude by suggesting that you may want to reconsider the goal of your study. There’s nothing wrong with a ‘believer’s heart’, as you put it. In fact it is a natural state of human existence. Quran makes it very clear right in the beginning verses that it’s a book meant to provide guidance for those who are conscious of God. In verse 30:30 God equates His religion with the innate / natural disposition. With that, I think that a better approach would be to understand the fundamental arguments of religion on an objective basis, however insisting that religion could be understood without having a believer’s heart would not only be an unnatural discourse, but one that won’t yield any useful results. To the contrary, one should investigate atheism with a certain degree of skepticism because it requires us to go against our natural tendency to believe. This is precisely the reason why I suggested in my previous response that having a good grasp of the constraints posed by human knowledge is a necessary pre-condition to arriving at any useful conclusions.
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Any discussions on metaphysical or abstract theories with no basis in scientific reality is irrelevant and not important unless there is an agreement with atheists on who’s God and how, if at all, He interacts with mankind.
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Following comments of Ghamidi Sahab might also be helpful:
Please refer to the video below from 1:39:18 to 1:46:37
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Please also refer to the video below from 1:16:04 to 1:22:57
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Please also refer to the video below from 43:12 to 48:59
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Thank you brother Umer
1st video: agree with Ghamidi sahab. Science doesn’t know how matter is formed, or how lifeless matter became alive but religion also doesn’t offer an explanation of these facts either but claims that God did that
2nd video: that’s exactly how I want to study atheism. Understand the root causes.
3rd video: Ghamidi sahab is true that if we do not believe in God then we have to believe in laws of physics to be eternal. This was the idea in Lawrence Krauss’s book, Universe from nothing.
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Regarding your comments on 1st video, I would like to clarify one thing. Asking religion to answer how matter came into existence, how matter became alive etc. is similar to asking science to prove existence of consciousness, morality and justice. Religion’s primary point of discussion is the ‘Why‘ of human existence, while science focuses on ‘How‘ of material world. But Quran, while discussing this ‘Why‘ actually touches the topic of ‘How‘ in some instances e.g. creation of human beings, creation of the universe and the end of times. Thus combining the ‘Whys‘ and ‘Hows‘ of Quran, one gets a complete set of ideology, one complete loop if you will, without any open-ends. Atheism on the other hand, cannot be termed as a complete set of beliefs or a complete ideology.
Quran does discuss how human creation happened and what gave him the consciousness, and what is it that we can find through observation and experimentation and what is beyond the reach of our knowledge. Similarly, the reason for billions of galaxies has been explained and how it will all end i.e. through creation of a new universe; just to name a few.
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Yes brother Umer I do not disagree with you. My only concern is that when we say science doesn’t know and imply that religion does, this isn’t true at all.
If religion say God created matter, taught idea of Justice etc, it remains a claim and only claim with 0 objective evidence. Just because science can not explain these things doesn’t mean religion can. Religion talks about metaphysics but the evidence has to come from this physical world and our reasoning based on physical and social sciences.
We can not find gaps in science and claim religion knows, the god of gaps analogy.
Atheism by No means answers anything.
all the “whys” of morality, justice, beauty etc are termed evolutionary and hence without any meaning.
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Something is true not because science confirms it but because it passed the sanity check.
Science is only one of the tools available for sanity checks to figure out truth. The domain of sanity, rationale or logic is far beyond the scope of science. That’s why sanity can figure out metaphysical entities while the science cannot. One example is our self-awareness, consciousness or soul – even tho science can’t prove it no one in his right mind can deny it.
Similarly, belief in God and Divine message comes thru a ladder of inference. At a certain step of the ladder one begins to see why God can’t lie (as he’s so powerful that he does not have to) and then one begins believing in the info about future and the world we have come from and have to return after death.
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Brother Wudud, can u give an example where science proved something and rejected by sanity check?
I am not discussing this term, sanity check, in order to keep the discussion centered around atheism
Atheism isn’t science alone. It involves all human faculties of thought, science is only a tool of discovery of facts.
If god doesn’t exist then it is pointless to discuss His attributes or afterlife
Consciousness is very well under the scope of science, psychology, it involves psychological experiments coupled with neuroimaging techniques.
A scholar told of this website, ilhaad.com, found this article by Ahmed Javed. Very good read, plz do take sometime out to read it, at least part 1
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I am not saying sanity check can disapprove science, rather I am saying science is its subset and has a much smaller domain.
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Again brother, what is your proof of this sanity check u mentioned?
If it’s bigger than science then there should be an example where sanity check superseded science
If sanity check doesn’t go against science then why do we need it? Whatever science proves is fact and that’s it!
I am strictly speaking about human knowledge and not including any revelation in it
My aim is to show you that all such things like rationality, logic philosophy etc sounds good but when u attempt to test it against objective reasoning aka science, every human effort fails to explain it using same logic philosophy rationality.
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Metaphysics, mysticism, telepathy, hypnotism, astronomy, palmistry, magic, etc
ideas, dreams etc.
science is a study of natural laws – it can’t prove or disprove existence of the maker of of universal laws just like windows operating system cannot prove or disprove existence of Bill Gates.
However, logic can infer existence of a maker of the universe – a maker who is not created as He is outside the causal chain.
Observation is a scientific way of validating truth but relying on observation without a sanity check may be misleading.
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Science has not evidence of existence of extra territorial life like aliens or jinns etc. but logic says we can’t be alone in such a big universe. Similarly all metaphysical faculties of knowledge can’t be totally baseless jus because science couldn’t find an evidence yet.
Hope it is clearer now what I mean by a sanity check.
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Exactly!!
When we give up objective reasoning we end up with conjecture
Think, how can we prove Allah is the only God and Muhammad SAW is his messenger using metaphysics, palmistry, telepathy, hypnotism, astronomy or dreams??
If we can, then someone else can prove Zeus as the true god and so on and so forth
If we can not then who cares if they r true or not or someone believes it or not.
If your logic can tell u that universe is so vast so there must be other life forms, so be it. It’s not a proof of aliens etc but conjecture or belief. I or no one has to refute it because it doesn’t affect anything.
Windows example is flawed because windows is not self-aware or conscious while humans doing science are
Brother, I am well aware of science, its limitations but any discussion about Allah, Muhammad SAW and shariah can not happen without using reasoning of today. Imam Ghazali, Ibn Taimiyyah RA did the same, used philosophy to refute falsehood of their time.
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Conjecture and beliefs can be both true and false. Science can help us validate truth in many cases but science is not enough in other cases. One must use the power of inference logic or rationale to arrive at a conclusion, conjecture or belief with varying degrees if certainty. The evolution theory is another example. There is a lot of science that is involved in collecting data and facts but every piece of data is a piece of trash if not connected in a way that makes sense. Bear in mind we can connect the dots in many other ways and create as many stories as we like but it the sanity check that decide which one of those stories is plausible and makes sense.
Even if you add AI or seri like knowledgable bot to windows it can’t figure out its creator just by studying the codes of the operating system. Seri has to look outside to find out about the creator. When we go beyond the natural laws its no more science.
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Ok brother Wudud, good luck with your sanity check
AI is not like Siri
Siri is algorithm based machine learning protocol.
Allah didn’t ask us to go outside the universe to find Him. Allah put His signs in the physical world around us. We also only need to study the universe we inhabit
Lastly, if u r interested in AI then a book called Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark is a very good read
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bhai gusha na khhaoo. i’m not good at explaining things in a single attempt so just bear with me.
By analogy of windows, what i am trying to explain is that science can only help us form a plausible theory about existence of God but not prove it as God exists outside the domain of natural laws. Let’s say we task a team of high caliber people (to replace AI) to study windows and try to figure out the creator. They might conclude that it’s a great salable software and whoever is the creator must be a rich person. In the 2nd phase of the research they find only Bill Gates is rich he must be the owner of windows. You can see the role of science here is so limited (yet important) to reach the truth.
Similarly, we can study the universe both at macro and micro level and conclude that it a gigantic creation machine. Then we can infer the Owner must be someone who loves Creation.
This is how science can probably help “prove” God in a best case scenario.
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Not at all angry brother
I am discussing atheism and not science and it’s applications and shortcomings that’s why I didn’t answer the window analogy except identifying that it’s not conscious
Science is not equal to atheism but a tool to understand this universe
If science can’t explain something doesn’t mean religion can
For example Science say that we don’t know how life originated and we say God did it. It adds nothing objective but mere conjecture. Even with ur sanity check ( not sure what it means) it remains a conjecture
In world of reason, conjecture/belief is not evidence of any sort.
I see that Atheism is finding evidence (may be false evidence) in every sphere of knowledge and religion is being reduced to superstitions and rituals to get married, die and some holidays
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“If science can’t explain something doesn’t mean religion can”
You are missing a point here and that is “ladder of inference”. Let’s say i am a scientist but I don’t know how to cure my ahead ache. A friend of mine refers me to a doctor. I interview the doctor to evaluate his ability and past success stories and agree to be his patient. He asks me to walk in the morning for 40 minutes and that would cure my headache. I can’t find any link between the two but the idea works. This is how religion help reach the truth. You first appreciate the divine wisdom through verifiable data points and then place a trust or belief on the rest. This is also referred to as ladder of inference.
“In world of reason, conjecture/belief is not evidence of any sort.”
You are refuting your own argument here. You are confusing reason with science – both are two different things.
Reason is logic, rational and “sanity check” as a branch of philosophy. Science is a tool to find out and collect data on how the natural laws work.
Truth is always inferred sometime with 100% certainty and sometimes less. The five sense that science is based on are incapable of proving any thing true or false on their own without “reason or sanity checks”.
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Your analogy is God of gaps analogy. Whatever verifiable data can not be explained, put God there. This would work of any god of any religion or belief system
You keep using sanity check and ladder of inference, first is used in mathematics to check if a calculation is right and the second is to describe a way human brain thinks, unconsciously , to derive conclusions and they r often false. First can not be used to prove metaphysical truths and second one can not be used to define conscious thinking or reasoning although some mind coaches try to teach it in that way.
Point is, in sanity check there’s a calculation to verify and doesn’t assume anything, ladder of inference requires one to interpret a reality followed by assuming another reality and then do an action based on the “assumed reality”
May be you r using them in a different way and that may be thats the reason i am unable to get my point across
We already discussed reason and logic, u take out observational data and you r left with things like telepathy palmistry etc
What is truth, different discussion altogether
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I never said god of gaps.
Twins in their mother womb can argue all 9 months regarding existence of their mother, one can infer from her voice and movements and other without ability to infer can go in the state of denial and keep looking for irrefutable evidences but he can’t find one until he comes out of the womb – not even if he’s a Harvard graduate with a zillion year work experience at Nasa.
It is not moving so lets end it here. I am gonna hit the unsubscribe button. See you in another discussion next time.
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Yes you didn’t but that’s the analogy u use
Twins in the womb is also false analogy, implying they only know the mother once outside the womb meaning we can only know God when we go outside the world (after death)
I agree, thank you for your time and effort. My aim is to understand atheism at it roots and, with this discussion, I hope u can see that God can’t be proven to a theist (myself) let alone an atheist
Apologize for any words that may have bothered u in any way
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Brother Faisal, I agree with you that a having a believers heart is nothing but natural state of being.
The point you made about not understanding epistemology, could you suggest any way to understand it? like a book or lecture series or way of thinking
Main objective of the study is to see what led human beings to conclude that there’s no God. We believe that God is eternally merciful and He has placed evidences of His existence everywhere and yet there is evidences, patterns in this physical world of ours that conclusively (to a very large no of humans) prove non-existence of God. I am not interested in people converted to atheism because of what they saw religious people do or politics or any such thing involving human-human interaction. But my concern is how to conclude existence / non existence of God when human being looks out to the physical world and within him self (i.e. looks at universe outside and working of his brain or “self” inside).
Religion was the natural way throughout history with few outliers. But for the past 2-300 yrs, most educated among us chose to be atheist or agnostic or their concept of God is much different than 3 monotheistic religions. I want to understand the origin of this shift of ideas and why?
Brother Wudud, thank you for your answer
I could not understand what you meant by laws of nature and Surah Ikhlas, please explain
There’s no such thing as law of cause and effect, cause and effect emerge at macro level only. Doesn’t mean thing do not cause other things but it does not happen every single time but appear as such.
Innate nature is a highly debatable topic, science and established history has yet to prove its existence. Innate nature has to be same in all humans but it doesn’t seem that way so far. All we have in common in consciousness and ability to reason.
I am not denying innate nature’s existence but I can’t use it as an argument for tauheed. I made the point earlier that history has to be established by some form of physical evidence.
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” laws of nature and Surah Ikhlas”
If you take natural laws an entity i.e. an operating system like android or iOS, you can define it using Surah Ikhlas and even other verse like ” no leaf fall but he knows about it ” etc. All of them are as much true for the natural law as for God. For example, God is one so is the natural law as you can’t have two operating systems in your phone concurrently. So it’s hard to refute natural law as God in Islam until it’s proven that the natural law is not conscious and living entity which would be against Quran and therefore it would necessitate existence of a Creator of the natural laws. The only thing that can provide an evidence of whether or not natural law is living and conscious entity is the “intelligent design” or “natural selection” theory. Atheists believe the design part of the creation is also governed by the natural laws and therefore their “God” is the natural law (and therefore the natural law is a conscious being and we can’t refute it as Quran is not very clear on this to my limited knowledge). Although we believe there is a Creator of natural laws and He is the one who decides what to create using the natural laws and that’s our God yet there is no evidence that He is the same or separate entity from the natural laws. The only difference (that matters) we have with atheist is that whether “God” (no matter which one) is interested in mankind on Earth or not and if He is how he interacts with us. The only answer i can think of is that God communicates with us through ideas, dreams and revelations (or may be miracles). None of them fall in the domain of physical science and therefore here your innate belief come handy to decide what you want to believe in. Those who do not acknowledge the innate instinct can never agree with us.
“There’s no such thing as law of cause and effect”
This is something new to me and that might be because i have some serious gaps in my knowledge for my random learning habits instead of taking a complete course. Please share some video or Wikipedia links.
“there is no such thing as cause n effect” at macro level kills the premise of the argument of existence of God in Quran as I understand it.
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Natural law only captures the principles according to which matter behaves given certain conditions. I don’t think that it’s accurate to consider the law itself as conscious entity. In my knowledge no one claims as such either.
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True, no one claims as such but by claiming “natural selection” they imply it. Whether natural selection is intelligent design or not is irrelevant as it’s not human domain to judge the creator’s decisions particularly when one insists there is no purpose of creation.
I am just trying to highlight the core of the disagreement as per my understanding without going into the theists vs atheist debate assuming we already know it.
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Brother Wudud i can not accept your understanding of natural law. It can not be implied as conscious by intelligent design. Natural law is relative to nature and emerges from it and since nature isn’t conscious itself how can the law governing nature be conscious?
Following videos might be helpful in understanding causation from science and philosophy perspective, both kinda superficial but gives u a good general idea
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“how can the law governing nature be conscious”
This is how we theists reason. There has to be a conscious being making design decision in the creation process. The atheist say that’s “natural selection” – meaning the natural law is capable of making such decision like AI. That’s possible only if the natural law is as good as a conscious being with a freewill. The real question that you should investigate in your study is how, if at all, the designer (be it natural law or God) is interacting with mankind.
The difference in concept of God is not so important as the natural law concept as long as it has the designer role does not conflict with Quran in my views.
Guess i am repeating my self so i will stop now.
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No brother, natural selection is random and governed by chance transfer of gene pool that would render an animal fit to survive. There’s no intelligent designer deciding which specie to survive?
What’s ur proof there’s an intelligent decision is wiping out certain species and leaving the rest?
According to WWF the we r losing upto 0.01-0.1% species every yr. Why this is intelligent or conscious decision making? The number of mammals and birds r reduced by 40-60% since 1970. Which God is deciding that?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/aug/16/nature-economic-security
Yes, how God interacts with creation is also a very important question. No disagreement
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Random selection does not mean “by chance”. Random selection means only the right mutation survives. It’s like out of many jigsaw puzzle pieces, only the right one fits. That’s how the nature works, right? (e.g. only one of the sperms does the job). It doesn’t work the way many theist have understood it. So there is a designers mind that atheist believe is working behind the “natural selection” and they don’t find it an “intelligent” designer though as they foolishly point out many faults in the design despite insisting there is no purpose in creation.
They do believe in a supreme power but not in revelation or any kind of communication with mankind as they believe we are too tiny and insignificant to warrant any attention even if there is some kind consciousness. And that’s despite knowing how significant was the first cell – millions of time smaller than us – that triggered life on the planet and yet they believe the nature is busy doing its work i.e. running the universe and all the processes etc and it’s got no business with mankind. And if there was an interest, “why would God hide himself in so many layers”? That’s what Dawkins has planned to tell God if ever he meets Him after death. So most likely he’s gonna escape the hell despite being an atheist. 🙂
The likes of Richard Dawkins love to talk about a possibility of existence of a supreme power but not the false gods who come on earth to die on the cross or the one who slay apostates. That’s their problem and that’s our problem too, right?
The atheist are far closer to Islam than any other ideology or religion on Earth. That’s because they have rejected false gods (the first condition in Islam) and have accepted a supreme power (the 2nd condition) but just not sure if He’s talking to us. This is where you can go deeper if you choose atheism as a subject.
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That’s not how natural selection works. But this is your opinion and I respect that.
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A few comments I thought might be useful:
“The point you made about not understanding epistemology, could you suggest any way to understand it?”
You might have to go all the way back to Socrates and then move forward in the history of Philosophy through Post Modernist times in order to understand various viewpoints about truth. This can be beneficial in understanding the Farahi Theory of Knowledge and Ghamidi sahab’s viewpoint in this regard.
“But for the past 2-300 yrs, most educated among us chose to be atheist or agnostic“
Atheism and agnosticism have always been around, but the atheistic ideology has taken a stronger foothold only after Wallace and Darwin in the 19th century and more so in the 20th century. In my understanding the cause is very much political in nature. In the last few decades since 9/11, New Atheism has become popular and it has its own reasons. You might want to checkout a documentary on Youtube called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed“. A point worth mentioning here is that neither was Darwin nor any of the biggest scientific minds in the history of humankind, including Newton and Einstein were atheists.
“Innate nature is a highly debatable topic”
Apart from pop-science, in my knowledge it is not seriously contested in the academia. It’s very difficult to contest something that’s already common knowledge with everyday empirical evidence anyway. It might be useful if one draws a distinct line between pop-sci and academics right from the beginning in order to avoid confusion caused by two different and often opposing domains.
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Thank you brother Faisal
I’ve read history of western philosophy and understand how different people have viewed God and truth over the ages. It’s kind of interesting to see how human mind wanders without the guidance of revelation. Where do I find Imam Farahi RA viewpoint and Ghamidi Sahab’s viewpoint?
Yes, some of the famous scientist did believe in God
An older survey by PEW in 2009 showed 33% of USA scientist believed in God, 18% in higher consciousness or spirit and 49% were atheist. Philosophers would be similar I presume
Again, yes, politics do play a role in spread of atheism but a bigger part is played by mingling of cultures, advancement of science in explaining universe better and better and failure of religion, in general, to help people find happiness and solace.
We Muslims rejoice that Islam is fastest growing, true, only if u look at birth rate of Muslims, highest 3.9-4 children/woman compared to Christianity 2.7, Buddhist 1.9 and atheist 1.7. The number of people identify themselves as “religiously unaffiliated” is rising very sharply in Europe and USA. Only in 8-9 yrs, numbers almost doubled in USA. There’s no data in Islamic countries because of atheism being culturally unacceptable.
Point is that atheism is the new dominant philosophy/ideology or it will be in 1-2 decades
Brother Faisal I respect your opinion about innate nature and I also know Allah mentioned it in the Quran and we believe it as a guiding source in Islam. But, unfortunately, Innate nature is not proven by scientific experiments of the highest caliber so far. Common knowledge or common experience doesn’t mean its true. It was common knowledge that earth is flat or center of the universe because it appeared as such to the naked eye. We all see and hear an ambulance driving by as singular experience and we all feel and see our body as a single experience but sounds travels slower than light and tactile and pain nerve fibers are also slower than light but our consciousness merges 2 signals and make them as 1 experience. So what everyone feels doesn’t mean its also “real”. I am not worried about it though, when Quran mentioned planets orbit or life started in water etc, science of the day didn’t prove it but much later. Innate nature will be proven as well Insha Allah in our life time.
Thank you, I will watch the documentary you suggested
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I took a course in Farahi Theory of Knowledge with Al-Mawrid a few years back, which unfortunately is not being taught any longer. I came across this paper which is extremely condensed and I don’t think that it does justice to the subject. Ghamidi sahab’s viewpoint, which is along the lines of Farahi can be inferred from his incomplete series Zaviya-e-Ghamidi on YouTube, as well as his book and lectures of Meezan.
I think the confusion regarding innate nature is due to not understanding what’s really being referred to. To understand this, please refer to the following videos of Ghamidi sahab.
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Thank you brother Faisal
yes, the paper does seem condensed. Not sure if u can grasp it on my own
What about the book Hujjajul quran by imam farahi? I know Sajid hameed taught it and it was been translated and explained in Ishraq, is this book relevent?
I havent watched Zaviya, will attempt to do that
I have gone through the initial lectures of Meezan, since i do not have much interest in fique so i stopped at Qanon-e-Muasharat
we discussed fitrah earlier and you said that you had to go through the fitrah lectures few times to grasp it. I have heard it twice so far, it makes perfect sense within the religious context alone but not when u examine its role in history of man and cultures. the main problem is that fitrah has no definition and since its not defined, we can not understand its limits or decide the framework or context fitrah works and when it gets corrupted. for e.g. hunter gatherers ate pythons, monkeys and mammoths, none is consumed by any human civilization. We can argue that hunter gatherers were before man was chosen as “Adam” and given consciousness or Ruh but how do we prove it?
thanks again for helping me deciding a guideline for my study,
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Yes sure, Farahi sahab’s Hujjajul Quran will be a great resource. I just checked and Sajid Hameed sahab’s course on this book is available for free on Youtube.
Meezan has no jurisprudence (fiqh) in it. Qanon-e-Muasharat is part of law (sharia). Even if discussions of law do not interest you, it might still be a useful exercise to go through them in order to understand Islam’s overall ideology. In my opinion laws really drive the point across in understanding the wisdom of the Quran.
Fitrah is just natural human disposition. It encompasses the very nature of human beings, so trying to prove it through science, in my opinion, is an inessential exercise. We don’t attain anything useful in using science to prove that a watermelon is a watermelon. In such cases empirical evidence is sufficient enough, which within itself is the basis of science.
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That’s great
I’ll try to go through Hujjajul Quran lectures insha Allah
Yes, Fitrah is natural disposition but it’s heavily influenced by culture, civilization etc. Either we do not take it as an ability to guide towards Tauheed or we have to define it. Like a watermelon, fitrah can’t be seen and examined to differentiate between what’s fitrah and what’s not
I just do not see fitrah seen at play in world history of religions the way Ghamidi sahab described it
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Again that’s a problem in understanding what’s being referred to as fitrah. Influence from culture and environment has been discussed and responded to in Ghamidi sahab’s lectures. Existence of God is also discussed in the same lectures. I suggest that you listen to those lectures again with a critical mind, and pinpoint anything that you think might be problematic. If you share a particular video with the reference timestamp and the nature of your confusion in a separate discussion, we can discuss it further Insha’allah.
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Yes brother Faisal, Ghamidi sahab did explain but, again, strictly Islamic
His explanation of child growing etc is not fitrah but learned behavior
But I will take ur advice and watch it again note down confusion elements insha Allah. It’ll be few months because of atheism studies
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