On the Bayesian arguments
All in all, I agree with the professor that this is certainly not an argument! There is no equation of mathematics that could prove the existence of “God” – or disprove it for that matter - any more than prove or disprove – for example – the existence of the human mind itself! And if the professor is one way or another, waiting on the hope that perhaps one day a Cosmologist or a physicist or a mathematician could come up with a theorem that “proves the existence of God”, he‟s fooling himself, and I‟m afraid he‟s going to wait forever! This is quite simply not what mathematics is “made” for! So I will not bother examine his refutation of this argument, for he clearly makes a good point there!
However, I find myself compelled to comment on this statement:
―On the other hand, Unwin thinks the existence of evil, especially natural catastrophes such as earthquakes and tsunamis, counts strongly against the likelihood that God exists. Here, Unwin's judgment is opposite to mine but goes along with many uncomfortable theologians. 'Theodicy' (the vindication of divine providence in the face of the existence of evil) keeps theologians awake at night. The authoritative Oxford Companion to Philosophy gives the problem of evil as 'the most powerful objection to traditional theism'. But it is an argument only against the existence of a good God. Goodness is no part of the definition of the God Hypothesis, merely a desirable add-on.‖
Again, an argument from ignorance! The problem of “evil” in the world is – as shall be elaborated in later sections - exclusively a problem in Christianity! This is simply because among much of the heavenly knowledge they lost and manipulated, they wasted scripture that could explain the necessity and purpose of creation of evil in the world! And since they forged a particular image of “God” that is not true, and they even forged scripture to support it, (take John 3:16 for a clear example) 12 they
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12 Note that when I say “Forged scripture” I‟m not by necessity accusing “John” for example of writing what he wrote and claiming it unto God! He probably didn‟t! The man just wrote down his own narrative of stories he heard, in the light of his own beliefs, which were later piled up, given the seal of divinity and canonized as the “word of God”!
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can no longer explain evil in a manner that goes consistently with the core of the Christian Creed (The God of unconditional love)! Hence you get the famous escape argument: “God works in mysterious ways”! They simply don‟t know!
The answer to this problem that „keeps theologians awake at night‟ is only to be found in a complete content of heavenly knowledge and wisdom that is there to teach a man what exactly he is supposed to do and how to deal with every impact – positive or negative - of this world on his life! Let it be clear, my respectable reader, that the question of why there is “evil” in the world under authority of a perfect creator, is just like the question: Why does there have to be death in the world; cannot be answered by philosophical hypothesis, nor can it be answered in a lab! It has to be delivered and explained in clear scripture that is evidently the Lord‟s own!
Only the creator of the world can tell you why there has to be so many things in the world that you do not like, and how you are supposed to deal with them! So if we are to obtain any answer to such questions, we first have to identify the right authority of knowledge thereof! The right way to seek those answers is not to make them up as theory of philosophy; the truth on those issues is not to be invented or hypothesized: it is to be obtained! An honest seeker of the truth in answer to such questions should only be searching for a body of scripture that is indeed what it claims to be: the word of God! Clearly we, humans, need the creator Himself to tell us why He made us, and why He made the world this way, and what exactly – in fair detail - we‟re supposed to do with it! The search for the truth thus should only be the search for what scripture is indeed the message of the creator, the Supreme Being to which reason necessitates all attributes of perfectness!
So, if a legacy of scripture in any religion lacks this explicit answer, or puts it in an unclear, irrational, or incomprehensible manner, or a manner that lacks a perfectly rational consistency with all necessary attributes of the Lord, then that scripture is evidently not the word of God or of any of His prophets! The creator of man will not do him injustice by asking him to comprehend something that is beyond a simple man‟s thinking, as a
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prerequisite for this man‟s redemption! After all, the majority of students around Jesus were just simple fishermen and tax collectors, weren‟t they? They were not Greek philosophers or church theologians!
In the Quran, the purpose of creation of good and bad is explained as simply and clearly and consistently with all attributes of perfectness of the Lord as in no other book of scripture that now exists on Earth! Just read this verse for example:
((Every soul must taste death, and We test you with evil and with good, for ordeal. And to Us you will be returned.)) (Translation of the Qur‟an verse (21|35))
Just watch how elegantly, simply and conclusively the purpose of creation of both good and bad in this world is explained in the clear words of the creator! All life, with everything in it, good and bad, is but a test for man, so that he makes choices for which he shall be judged on a day of “return”, which in turn justifies death! End of story! Pure and simple! The meaning of „choice‟ and consequentially „evil‟, is problematic only to a theology that presupposes the belief in a dramatic act that was made by God at a certain point in history, to bestow unconditional love and forgiveness upon humans, with no regards whatsoever to their deeds or their choices! This theology is false, and this is exactly why it keeps them up at night!
In this verse from the Quran, we can see the purpose of life, death, good, evil, pain, catastrophe, war, disease…. etc., explained in a single eloquent verse! Of course, this is not the only verse that deals with this issue; I just put it here as example. I only wish my reader could read it in Arabic, in its original tongue, to sense the richness, the power and the magnificence of the way the Lord addresses His creatures in the Quran!
I shall further elaborate in another section on this meaning to answer to some relevant misconceptions, and to show that there is indeed elaborate teaching on what exactly man should do with respect to disease, evil, war, and so forth, to pass the test of life! The reason I quote this verse in this context here is not to offer the explanation of good and evil in the Qur‟an and the way it goes in perfect coherence with all Attributes of perfectness of Allah, I
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only wanted to offer the reader an example of how simply and clearly a book that is ascribed to the creator and claims to be the word of “God” should answer to such a fundamental question of meaning and purpose! A sane man should expect no less of a book that is ascribed to the omniscient all-wise creator Himself!
So again my kind reader I repeat: Problems with a certain religion and its scripture are problems only with that religion in particular! They are not to be stretched out to encompass all scripture and all religion, and ultimately, they are not to be used as arguments against the existence of the creator! As I shall elaborate in another part of this literature, the clear spread of superstition and pseudoscience against all forms of proper rational thinking in today‟s Western society – or any other society - is not the natural result of any faith or any religious belief as claimed by the professor; it is particularly the outcome or influence of any form of false belief system (especially the pagan (wisdom) of eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism!), atheism included!
This is no surprise! After all, a false religion or belief system is itself a highly revered and hallowed structure of myth and fallacy, which stands in the most part on no reliable evidence whatsoever! The further away a society gets with its religious beliefs from the truth in the direction of paganism (“shirk” in Muslim Jargon), the more they are inclined to believing baseless superstition, branching from their already baseless belief systems! One can see that for example, a society where the core religion has gone with paganism to as far as worshipping virtually everything in the universe, and taking millions of things for gods, would find no problem in grasping every mystical claim in the metaphysical, without any evidence whatsoever! Just tell a pagan that there‟s say X energy in this room, and if you contemplate long enough you will sense it, and there you go: you create a believer in X energy! This inclination is an extreme, the opposite of which at the other end is atheism! Both extremes are indeed anti-reason! And as I shall elaborate, both extremes open a man for myth and nonsense, only under different tags and of different nature!
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While pagans are prepared (stemming from irrational tenets of faith) to believe and readily accept any claim about a spiritual supernatural without any verifiable evidence, atheists on the other hand – whose core philosophy was actually nothing but a natural historical reaction to paganism (spiritualism Vs. materialism) – have chosen to dismiss every metaphysical claim or belief in the supernatural, assuming that this pagan nonsense they see around them is the only way humans approach questions of the spiritual and of what‟s beyond! They were – and understandably so – tempted by the nature of blind “faith” and false “religion” they saw in their societies, to dismiss all ancient religions and faith in God altogether and stretch the tag of superstition and irrational thinking to cover it all! However, this attitude is every bit as irrational and fundamentally false and extremist, as the pagan conception of the deity to which it was a natural reaction! There are those who say everything is god or god is everywhere, and those who say nothing is god and god is nowhere! Both are irrational extremes, and the truth is to be found in none of them! Both parties have no evidence to support their position, both sides create evidence from delusion and irrational thinking, and they both have gone too far in denying what may be right and true in what the opposite group may have! The only place where you should expect to find a perfect rational balance between the material and the spiritual, the physical and the metaphysical, is in the only true body of wisdom and knowledge that is delivered from the creator himself! Only in a verifiably divine body of knowledge is this wisdom to be found!
So while on one hand you have irrational followers of blind faith who believe in false gods, and even view everything in the world to be “God”, you have on the other hand irrational followers of blind faith in a world with no creator at all, and a total denial of everything divine; both “faiths” rely on pseudoscience and propagate it! A pseudoscience may simply be defined as a “science” that builds on a radically false philosophy! So just like astrology and is an example of pagan pseudoscience, abiogenesis– at the other extreme – is an example of an atheist pseudoscience! Both „sciences‟ stem from false philosophy.
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The point is; atheists must understand that we – Muslims - do share their attitude and sentiment towards every baseless irrational superstition that is spread around only because it is said to have been a form of ancient wisdom, or something of the sort, when it is nothing but the work of some arrogant philosopher or storyteller of old who was made into a god or a false prophet! In fact, our position against it is much stricter and far more serious than atheists could ever be! It is part of the wisdom we evidently received from the creator, to save humanity from all forms of superstition and falsehood! And while atheists would never observe a law to keep such fallacies from damaging the knowledge and beliefs of commoners and laypeople, Islamic Sharee‟a law on the other hand places the purification and safekeeping of people‟s knowledge among its basic ideals. It‟s our noble mission! It is exactly why the concept of the Muslim nation and the work to spread Islam, is a core concept in the Muslim thinking! Because the way this nation is built, and the way it is assigned to spread the Lordly wisdom over the face of the earth, is indeed part of what this final message of mercy to humanity is all about!
So as much as I sympathize and join forces with intellectual leaders of science in the west in their war against superstition and irrationality, I absolutely detest their blind generalizations and assumptions that all religion is superstition and that all faith is blind! There is somewhere in the middle where true wisdom and the only truly rational position is expected to be found, and this is where you will find Islam! Only in the words of the ONE source of both, nature and reason; material and the wisdom behind it, the here, the beyond, and the hereafter, is the correct human position towards the whole thing to be found! Not in the teachings of a priest or a Guru or a philosopher that bears nothing unto evidence; and not in the speculations and desperate irrational attempts of a scientist who has overestimated his methods and was deluded to see evidence where there‟s none at all, but in the evidently true teachings of the creator Himself!
Those people of science, who wage intellectual wars for the sake of reason and rationality, would admit repeatedly that there are indeed questions that cannot be answered by “science”! So where on earth do they expect to find
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their answer? Very often you‟d hear professor Dawkins say: „I know that science cannot answer those questions but I don‟t think there‟s any reason to believe that religion can either!‟ And thus I find myself compelled to comment: „Well then, will you please do us the courtesy of proving the validity of this ultimate generalization that you so easily declare about all „religion‟, professor? Or should we just take your word for it, because you‟re an oxford professor of Zoology?‟! And now what do you atheists suggest? That we just make up any answer and go to our graves with it, to somehow mute that urge deep within? Or simply throw it all behind and proceed with eating, drinking, reproducing, in total abandon, in submission to our flesh, and use science to have as much fun as we can, and burn out a meaningless lifetime like the intelligent “apes” you believe us to be?
In their campaign against irrationality and pseudoscience, people like Dawkins, Shermer, Randi, and others do indeed hit quite a lot of truth and expose a great deal of fakery and fallacy for what it really is, and they are to be credited for that! But when they take a position in testing people‟s claims that is much like looking in a telescope and saying: “since I can‟t see any God out there; then there can‟t be any!”; this is where they are certainly, and by all means of reason and rationality: wrong! And whatever method they apply at that; is every bit a form of pseudoscience!