On the Argument from Personal Experience
I do not have to reconfirm the fact that the earth is so full of false religions, and people who are fooled by following blindly – regardless of excuse or lack thereof - the faith of their fathers and their communities, into assuming that their false religion is true, and is self-evident!
So if the professor rejoices in mocking and ridiculing false beliefs of false doctrines, I have to say that we all share the same sentiment with him! The only difference is that we know where the truth is; while he insists on denying it!
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Whoever makes any fallacious claims about a “relationship” with the creator that makes him believe in a personal God, is just another follower of myth and fallacy!
However, my question to the professor is this: By what evidence does he hold that it is – for example – impossible for a man to get spoken to by the creator? I mean, accepting the least possibility of the existence of a creator, if then somebody comes to claim that the creator did indeed talk to him, how does he, the professor, prove him to be a liar?
He would probably say: it is easy to assume that he or she is delusional or suffers from hallucinations of some sort, imagining things that are not there! Well, yes of course it is possible, and dead easy! But it is equally possible and even easier to claim that he is indeed in contact with a supernatural being of some sort – whether or not it is indeed the creator is another question! Isn‟t it?
At this point the atheist would resort to probability, saying, what are the odds that it really is a supernatural being? I would say even if the odds are one to ten billion! Isn‟t it possible?
That man claiming to be spoken to by God could he or could he not be that one in a ten billion? It is amazing how atheists would apply probability as though it disproves their opponents‟ claims, when in fact it does not! The claim that it is highly unlikely that this be the case – regardless of where exactly this position itself comes from and what evidence substantiates it – does NOT deny the possibility that it is indeed the case! So how do you know?
They don‟t!
Well I say there is indeed a bulk of knowledge that comes from the creator Himself, evidently so, that tells us what this “being” encountered by those poor people really is, - if it is in many cases not some form of hallucination, which is certainly a possibility that we do recognize - and how to protect oneself against it. Like I said earlier, having stood at the point where we see the necessity of a creator, the next logical step is to start examining doctrines
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of knowledge that are ascribed to Him!9 And on accepting the true religion to be indeed His word, and His given knowledge to mankind, in that knowledge we will find the only reliable teachings that tell us what exactly it is that‟s going on with those people, and whether or not they are delusional!
However, the point is that so long as the atheist continues to deny the existence of the creator altogether, or admits Him, but refuses to examine religions that are claimed to be His teaching, in search for knowledge that he lacks about Him, never will he manage to tell for certain what the truth is in those cases of people claiming to have spoken to God or to angels or to dead people or so forth! And his position there will never be one of evident verifiable knowledge, but rather one of speculation and probabilistic assumptions! He “feels” like considering those people to be delusional, so such is how he chooses to judge them! … Their evidence? Well, he‟d say: “They are more likely to be so than not”! That‟s all he has, nothing more!
I now ask every reasonable reader; is this by any standard of reason to be called knowledge? And more essentially; are those claims by those people to be used against the argument of the existence of the creator Himself?
This is the point! You can‟t use them to disprove the creator! Just because you don‟t feel “comfortable” thinking of a creator who can listen to your innermost thoughts despite your will, doesn‟t make it “unlikely” or “improbable” that He CAN! I mean how probable is it – applying your own conception of probability - , really, that all this perfectness of order that you see in the universe around you and in your own body, just happened to come about eventually through a gradual accumulation of unplanned events of chance? Is it any less probable that those guys really did see something that is supernatural (regardless of what it really is)? And even if it is less probable, by what reason do you take it to mean that they are delusional, much less disprove the existence of the supernatural?
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9 How we make that proof is not our point here, and as you proceed reading this literature, my reader, you will realize that the question of what religion on this earth is the truth, is not in need for any proof at all!
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Atheists clearly have nothing to stand upon here! Nothing at all! And they never will! In denial of the perfectly clear truth, nothing could possibly qualify for proof!
They rely on wishful thinking just as much as those deluded poor fellows who may think they have seen Jesus or Mary or some dead saint talking to them in the Church! I do have evident knowledge that neither Jesus nor Mary nor Muhammad nor any dead man for that matter could appear to any living man, much less teach him to further revere that dead person or do more “Rosaries” or tell him about the future or heal him or so forth! Is this only because I‟m not a Christian? No! It is because I claim that the knowledge I have in Islam in this respect is evidently the truth. However, since Dawkins is only trying to ridicule the entire concept of people witnessing supernatural sightings or revelations, for the sake of disproving the divine, I will suffice for now in taking the position of proving him lacking of any form of evidence to back up his arrogant attitude! And I think that by far, I have made this point quite clearly!
Just watch how ascertained Sam Harris sounds in the quotation that Dawkins cites here from his book “The end of faith”:
―And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are. …‖
Absolutely? What a magnanimous statement!
Excuse me Mr. Harris, I‟m sorry to disappoint you, but not only are you ignorant, you are extremely arrogant at that!
With the drag of a pencil, this man made it a position of certainty that all “Religious people” suffer from beliefs that are „mad‟ in the „core‟! Why? Because he finds the idea of a being that is capable of listening to his innermost thoughts, as „mad‟ as any claim made by any mentally sick fellow in a mental health institution, even though he knows it is clearly not impossible in concept, that there actually be such an entity with such ability, and that it is in fact a rationally necessary ability in the being that created us! However, he‟s too proud to even give the concept – at the very least - the
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benefit of a doubt! Denial is much easier indeed, isn‟t it? Lack of courtesy and disrespect to everything that spells “religion” is far more self-gratifying than otherwise, isn‟t it?
It‟s noteworthy that while an atheist dares not make such a blind general conclusion regarding certain branches of knowledge he knows little about, he easily dares to put all forms of religious knowledge in one basket and call it “mad in the core”!
I hope I need not say much more to show my respectable reader how arrogant and extremely off-limits, such a blind statement is, by all measures of rational integrity and self-respect!
The professor then goes in an interesting – really interesting - explanation of some optical illusion that is seen in a hollow mask that he hangs on his windowsill! He makes the point that the mind works in extremely sophisticated ways, and comes to this conclusion:
―To simulate a ghost or an angel or a Virgin Mary would be child's play to software of this sophistication.‖
I say yes indeed you‟re right! I – for myself, as a Muslim – do not by any means deny the possibility that a great deal of those “apparitions” or “sightings” is actually nothing more than this! So how does this disprove the supernatural altogether? Shouldn‟t we ask them to offer their evidence? and more essentially: what evidence does any of this raise against the existence of the creator?
He states: “Such visions and manifestations are certainly not good grounds for believing that ghosts or angels, gods or virgins, are actually there.‖ (Dawkins, p. 91)
And I say; yes indeed they‟re not! And whoever takes them for evidence is indeed ignorant, feeble-minded, and deserves to be fooled!
I may even mention that unfortunately many ignorant Muslims are often impressed by such constructs of the brain when they see – for example - a cloud that reads something like the Arabic word (ALLAH) or something of

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the sort, and they sometimes call it a miracle! It‟s a psychological phenomenon of perception known as (Pareidolia) where people tend to see meanings in images intended for no such meanings! And while a Muslim may view such an image as an extraordinary sign with the name of “Allah”, people from other faiths will hardly see it the way he sees it! So from a sound scholarly position; such “sightings” qualify as nothing in Islam! And although they may do good work in the hearts of some Muslims and strengthen their passion for faith, they certainly have nothing to do with miracles or with the correct Muslim knowledge of what miracles are, and they are not at all to be encouraged or to be taken seriously!
The professor then comes to a very slippery place when he tries to claim that in mass sightings, thousands of people could somehow share a common hallucination, or an experience of “mirage” or so! He says:
―On the face of it mass visions, such as the report that seventy thousand pilgrims at Fatima in Portugal in 1917 saw the sun 'tear itself from the heavens and come crashing down upon the multitude',49 are harder to write off. It is not easy to explain how seventy thousand people could share the same hallucination. But it is even harder to accept that it really happened without the rest of the world, outside Fatima, seeing it too - and not just seeing it, but feeling it as the catastrophic destruction of the solar system, including acceleration forces sufficient to hurl everybody into space.‖ (Dawkins, p. 91)
Well, first of all, one has to point out that when seventy thousand people are reported to have all seen something, then you CANNOT dismiss that claim! And this – by the way – is a form of reliable evidence in granting approval of narrations and stories of historical events. We accept a story from any source either because we have no doubt in the honesty and truthfulness of its narrator, or because we receive it from a huge number of sources, the quantity of which makes it impossible that they would deliberately lie or conspire to manipulate the story.
And when you think about it, actually a great deal of what every one of us knows about the world today comes from documented sources that tell us
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“stories” about it! I never saw – for instance – the Sydney opera house with my own two eyes! Had I not been told about it – in concept – by a source that I trust, I may have never known it existed! Well of course the media, and the way documentation of knowledge has advanced, made it much easier to access knowledge of certain events, stories, discoveries and so forth, everywhere in the world! But the concept itself remains true, that as a human, you cannot escape the dire need to obtain knowledge from direct narration from a source that you trust! I would say that at least 90% of the sum of everything you know, my reader, came to you through other sources than direct perception and experience.
So in fact, when we speak of evidence for the occurrence of a certain historical event – which is naturally a crucial necessity for identifying truth from fallacy regarding claims about prophets of God, and examining the authenticity of scripture – we are ultimately examining the way the news reached us!
When somebody comes to tell me: “didn‟t you know? One of your friends has had a stroke and is now in the hospital!” I‟d either trust this man and take it for granted and start acting upon it, or I would say in suspicion – for reasons that should be examined – “Who told you so?” Or “How do you know?” Naturally if he is likely to lie to me, I should not believe him, I have to confirm the news beforehand!
Now suppose I‟m walking in the street and every passerby that I know keeps telling me: “Hurry up, there‟s a friend waiting for you in your place!” … would I feel the same way about this piece of information, if only one man that I may not really trust, told me this news? Of course not! And, naturally, the bigger the number of generally trustworthy sources, the much less likely they are to be all telling a lie, or to have all miss-perceived the event!
I bring this up here to make it clear that in cases of Mass visions, when so many people say they all saw something then they MUST have seen something! There is no room for the claim that the entire story of Fatima (for example) could be forged by some historian, and that it never happened that so many people witnessed the event, because the proclaimed event was not
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that far away back in the past, and people still have their parents, grandparents and people they trust telling them that they did witness the event themselves! The continuous sources of the narrative are still plentiful, and the chain was never broken!
Now, it is of course needless to say that the event they witnessed that day was not and cannot have been the actual drop down of the sun, for obvious reasons that are discussed fairly well by the professor! But then, what was it? What did they really see? It must have been something extra-ordinary perhaps even supernatural that appeared to them as though the sun had fallen from its place; not just a “mirage”!
Well, I really couldn‟t care less what it was that they actually saw that day, because what they – as Christians – claim it to be, is evidently false under the knowledge of Islam. However, my intent is to point out that although the professor may find it inevitable to admit that they must have seen something, he would insist on readily overruling the possibility that it be anything supernatural, only because he hates to admit that there could be anything supernatural at all! Yes I agree that it was not what they thought it was – I know it wasn‟t; but it could still be a supernatural sighting nonetheless; and it most probably was! The knowledge that I take from Islam is the only way for a man to understand how they could all be telling the truth when they claim that they – for example – saw the image of Mary talking to them! An atheist – on the other hand – will have no choice but to deny it entirely, or propose some “science fiction” explanation that really only qualifies as “supernatural”! He‟d say it could be a time traveler with holographic technologies, an alien from an advanced civilization toying with us, or perhaps the quantum interference between our universe and a parallel universe… etc.) But to claim that there is a species of invisible intelligent beings that live on this Earth amongst us, those we call (Jinn) or (demons), and they have always enjoyed the ability to play such games; that‟s readily a ludicrous superstition! No further questions!
Anyway, to get out of all this, I leave you, my reader, with this open question: In what way does any of this “disprove” the existence of the creator? And what is it that the professor has really done in this part against
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what he calls the argument from personal experience: visions, sightings and so forth? This is the conclusion he comes up with:
―That is really all that needs to be said about personal 'experiences' of gods or other religious phenomena. If you've had such an experience, you may well find yourself believing firmly that it was real. But don't expect the rest of us to take your word for it, especially if we have the slightest familiarity with the brain and its powerful workings.‖
In a word, he means to say: You people may have really seen something significant indeed; but I do not find any reason to believe you, or to think of whatever it is that you saw as anything more than hallucination!