On the Argument from scripture!
Well, this is, perhaps, the part where it shows – in the full and to the utmost clarity – that the professor is seriously ignorant in the knowledge of religion; the very thing he is waging his war against! You‟d think that as a “scholarly” man who has eventually come to the conclusion that there‟s not a single volume of scripture anywhere in the world that is worth taking seriously, the professor would examine in this part – at least – all major bodies of scripture venerated by their followers and are ascribed one way or another to the Lord! (i.e.: The bible, the Talmud, the Quran, the books of Sunnah, the Avista, the Vedas, … etc.). After all the conclusion he reaches at the end of this part is clearly that whoever finds any reason to think of his book of scripture – any holy book at all - as evidence for the existence of the creator, is seriously deluded!
Clearly he knows very little about any religion other than Christianity! Fact of the matter is that on examining this part it shows clearly that he knows very little even about Christianity itself!
Yes, my reader should expect that as a Muslim, I will agree with Dawkins in a great deal of his objections against Christianity; but he should not expect
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me to be indifferent with respect to any uninformed fallacy that he speaks about Christianity or any other religion!
So the clear corruption of reason here on the part of the professor is simply that he makes the argument that: since the Christian book is contradictory and inconsistent, then there is no argument for God in all scripture, any scripture!
Now when at the start of it, he mentions “scriptural evidence for God” one cannot escape but wonder, what does he view of scriptural evidence? What is the nature of a scripture that could, if any at all, be called in his view; scriptural evidence? Well naturally, a mere text where a deity claims to be the almighty creator is not in itself, by any means; evidence! We still need to prove that this text is indeed a word of “God”! Now in the eyes of every rational person, not to mention Muslim scholars, this is achieved through two basic roots:
1 – Examining the authenticity of the text, all the way back to the followed apostle of the religion!
2 – Examining the knowledge revealed in the text itself!
Of course it has to be maintained that only as long as a clearly detailed and reliable record of history of the scripture – especially through the very first century after the apostle of the faith – is kept and verified for authenticity and continuity, may the scripture be deemed as an authentic authorship of the historical author or narrator to which it is originally ascribed.
Among the qualities we should expect to find in a body of scripture that is rightfully ascribed to the creator is:
1 – Its texts do not contradict with one another, according to the single unified authority of understanding of those texts, which is: the direct students of the prophet himself, not later philosophers or theologians.
2 – They include no information that could ever be PROVEN false in any way.
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3 – They paint a consistent image of the creator‟s attributes, one that comes in perfect accordance with what every sane man should expect the attributes of the Lord of all creation to be. They do not teach irrational or incoherent meanings about the creator, His deeds, His intent or His attributes. (This is should actually come as number one, because if the basic tenets of a religion are rationally corrupt or incoherent; the scripture is certainly corrupt and the case is settled; no need to proceed!)
4 – They establish a binding moral code for mankind that defines ultimate justice and morality in no uncertain terms and on all levels: Right and wrong are definitive criteria of whatever it is that man is created to do on this Earth!
5 – They offer consistent meanings for all aspects of good and bad, pain and pleasure, purpose and justification in life and death and the afterlife that cannot be otherwise explained or understood properly!
6 – They are all evidently preserved and are easily accessible in the verifiably original tongue (language) of their revelation (alongside with complete knowledge of that tongue itself and the way students of the prophet understood it as well back in their time); otherwise translations and manipulations and the natural shortcomings of linguistic rephrasing can never be avoided, and would eventually leave the scripture valueless!
Those are some of the least characteristics any sane man should expect to find in a volume of scripture that is said (today) to be the word of “God”! If it is indeed a book left on Earth by a prophet of the Lord for the guidance of mankind, then it has to be a book of perfect wisdom, with everything in its right place and for its correct purpose, and essentially we have to be positive as we examine that book, that the way we understand its meanings, is the same way direct students of the Apostle himself understood it; we must be capable of verifying this, otherwise there can be no limit to the number of baseless interpretations every text or set of texts could be presumed to have!
Now, speaking of the Christian books of scripture, many Christian scholars would argue that the multitude of Aramaic and Greek manuscripts that have been discovered and piled up by far, of both the Old and the New Testament, increases their confidence in the reliability of the translations they now use,
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since they prove to be rather identical! Well, this is great! But it still does not prove the authenticity of the original source from which all those manuscripts themselves are taking! I mean yes I now believe that the copies in your hands of those books are identical with the versions adopted in the fourth century by the church! But I say that even if you one day found the remains of a manuscript as ancient as the first century; this still doesn‟t prove that manuscript itself to be authentic in its origins! This is why we need to speak of the history of scripture in the first century under a well recorded and reliable authority of the disciples themselves! Christians do not have such an evidently continuous and undisturbed authority! The first century to them is admittedly a historical blur! They cannot even verify the authorship of any of those books to begin with!
I mean if religion X is indeed supposed to be the one religion of God that all humans should accept and live by till the end of times; is it rationally possible that the omniscient Lord almighty would make its book the one code for all generations to come, without leaving anywhere in the legacy of this religion or in that book itself a single document that could be proven today without a speck of doubt, and with no room for any scholarly debate to be the actual words of an actual messenger of His? How then would He demand that people accept this body of scripture as His own true word, and to the end of times? More essentially, if religion X was indeed true, and all humans to the end of times are supposed to accept it; is it possible that the very basic fundamentals of faith concerning the nature of the deity itself be left in religion X without a reliably clear, unambiguous and unquestionably authentic textual reference that stands the challenge of refutation by any of its opponents? Is it okay with Christians that after a fierce debate that went on for three centuries between radically different „religions‟ concerning the very nature of God and Jesus; the faith only comes to be determined and sanctioned eventually by means of some voting under the command of an emperor in a religious council?
Christians often argue wishfully that the texts of the bible have always been at the heart of the Christian nation, so they cannot have been altered or lost! Well I have then to say: How far back in history can you prove this nation to
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go? What is the Christian nation in the first place, when and where did it begin, and how do you define it? What form of a Christian nation – at all - can you speak of in the first century AD, or even in the first three centuries after Christ, before the foundation of the Roman Catholic Church in Pagan Rome? You do not have that “nation” in those early crucial centuries in the lifetime of your doctrine! Nowhere in history before the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine, did any “nation” of Christianity really come to existence, one that could be thought to have put the original authentic teachings of Christ at its heart as you would easily claim, and worked with all its power to preserve them; teachings that are indeed authorized by the true disciples of Jesus himself!
In fact Disciples of Christ were notoriously persecuted by both the Romans and the Jews in the first century, and most of them had to hide their faith and pray in their homes! There was no such a thing as “church” back then! So by what evidence can we accept a particular manuscript - even if it dates back to the first century – as evidently authentic, and as an authority of direct followers of Christ? How could there possibly be any continuous line of narration where we can determine with confidence that X listened to this text from Y, and Y, from Z, and Z from A, and A from B, all the way up to whoever it is that is said to be its author? This is nowhere to be found in Christianity, and the reason is clear! Our explanation for this fact is that the real religion of Jesus was never meant by the Lord to be the final religion to all mankind to the end of times, like most Christians believe! Jesus was not sent to teach the whole world about God, he was sent in a precise mission to the „lost sheep‟ of Israel! If it were true that his teaching was supposed to be preached to the whole world, then God would‟ve commanded him to take it on himself to do that, like Muhammad did; to gather around him an army and fight for the sake of the truth, or to take his followers and migrate to another land where he could found a new nation that would really work on spreading the message as it is - under his own direct authority, and that of his immediate students after him – to all nations of the world, and keep it preserved from then on!
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But this was never the case with Jesus and his students! Jesus was never told to migrate to a place where he is not persecuted or where he could charge power and set up a keep for his followers, he was never told to fight the tyrants of the temple and other sworn enemies of the truth; this was not his mission! Instead he was told to keep warning the Israelites and preaching the truth to them until the time came and he was literally picked up; saved by Allah from his persecutors when they were charging at his doorstep! His true followers had to flee and hide their faith after he was raised in heaven lest the Romans or the Jews would kill them! There was no „church‟, no state, no war, and no religious assignment by Jesus to his students to secure his teachings in the stronghold of a powerful nation and to spread them to the world after him, quite simply because that‟s not why Jesus was sent! The book of God that Jesus taught to the Israelites was never meant by God to be the final book for all mankind! And by claiming that that book in their hands today is the final book for all mankind, Christians are indeed offending the creator because this means that He could not take the necessary measures – by commandment to His prophet and by preparing the necessary historical circumstances - for the sake of preserving this book and keeping it unaltered and untouched since the time of its revelation and for generations to follow! This mission (delivering a final religion and a universal law to all mankind and to the end of times, setting up a kingdom under the word of God) was appointed to Muhammad (sallalah Alihi wa sallam)! And this is precisely why the history of the first century of the Muslim nation under Muhammad himself was written in this particular way!
This is the fundamental problem that Christians face whenever they attempt to prove the authenticity of their books! There is a point in their history beyond which is nothing but darkness and ambiguity: All sorts of claims by all sorts of people, relating to Jesus and his followers; none of which is in the least verifiable or even traceable!
There were those who kept the laws of Moses, kept the Sabbath, as taught by Jesus himself, and claimed that to be the teaching of Jesus the human prophet of God, and others who claimed Jesus to be God himself incarnate, and to have laid off the law after his crucifixion, and to have drawn a totally
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different path for his followers by his proclaimed resurrection! There were those who took Saul of Tarsus for an apostle and those who viewed him as an imposter! He reportedly had his fair share of arguments on faith with many disciples! So whose witness is to be trusted on those dark uncertain times? And how can it be obtained, this witness? It is simply: unaccountable; unverifiable!
It was a time of difference on the very foundations of the faith; a radical difference of religion that is! So to not be able to prove in a sound and reliable manner the authorship of those books, in relevance to the immediate students of Jesus, is to really stand upon nothing but wishful thinking; just like all followers of false religions do!
Now I‟m not saying this because I‟m a Muslim, for as a Muslim I certainly believe that Christianity has much more “reason” in it than Atheism, even with its irrational trinity doctrine! I‟m saying this as a rational human being examining the Christian claim of validity for its sources of knowledge! I‟m addressing with it not Christians alone, but every blind follower of an ancient book that ascribes itself to the creator of the universe!
((Say Bring forth your evidence, if thy are truthful))
A Christian just presumes – “romantically” if I may say - that since this is the faith that eventually prevailed under the name of Christianity, and under the power of the great Roman Church, then it must be the truth! Well, it mustn‟t! They can‟t help but wonder what if Arius really was right? And what if Constantine chose to favor his view over that of Athanasius rather than otherwise? Can such a fundamental difference be settled by a mere voting in a congress? Does the fact that more church leaders voted for X than those who voted for Y, make X by any kind of reason: the truth?
Scholars of Christianity would argue that the truth had to prevail in that particular congress because God must have wanted it to! I say you don‟t know that! First you have to verify the source of knowledge from whence you make this claim!
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To claim that the congress there was guided by the Holy Ghost, is to apply circular logic here, because it is only through those very texts that were canonized and granted approval by a particular authority of religion, and interpreted in accordance with its selected faith, do you prove that the holy ghost had anything at all to do with the decision to canonize the texts! You still need to present evidence for the authenticity of the text, not to mention its interpretation! So no you cannot get away with claiming that the agreement the congress in Nicaea reached was guided by “God”!
So it all goes down to this: Some ancient figures of religion who reportedly wrote down what they heard, their reflections, their personal letters, maybe even speculations, about some important events in the life of Christ and his direct followers, people whose exact relation to the true disciples cannot be verified, sometimes even their very identity cannot be verified, and yet, the Church picks and chooses from among those many records, not according to a verifiable authenticity, but according to a particular creed of faith they had already chosen to agree upon! And there you go; the canon that‟s currently in your hand, carrying the presumptuous title: “the word of God”!
Yes indeed it is possible – rationally - that a lot of those events accounted for in those records be true! And it is no surprise that four or five authors of different books would take their stories from a common source, and then write them down, each in his own words. But you still have to know who those authors are and who that original source really was! The mere fact that this is what Athanasius – for example - chose to call the holy book of “God”; is no proof that any of it has anything to do with Jesus‟ true teachings and the creed of his true followers! I am not accusing the fathers of the church in any way of bad will or conspiracy against religion! However, with this very same proclaimed good will, all forms of horrendous crimes have been committed in the world, and all kinds of fallacious myth have been taken for granted and embraced as religion as well!
Not only was that canon a work of unverified unauthenticated selection, (on a model of: “believe first, and then select the text that matches, and burn or re-interpret all incompatible writings”!) even worse, translators came afterwards to put layers of their own – mostly unintentional and good willed
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– manipulations; and yet it still remains to be called “the word of God” nevertheless!
It is interesting that I‟m writing this lengthy discussion of Christian scripture in particular in response to a book that claims to be refuting the existence of God! Had the professor been born and brought up in perhaps a Hindu culture, this section of his book would have probably been an all-out attack against the Vedas or the Puranas rather than the Bible, under the same heroic tag of refuting all forms of scripture and disproving the existence of the creator, and consequently, this part of my answer to it would have been discussing the history of Hindu scripture instead!
Thus I say it is supposed to be clear enough that he‟s not scoring anything at all – with regards to his particular objective – by disproving the Christian scripture! Because as we pointed out earlier, proving the invalidity of a particular book of scripture is one thing, and proving the invalidity of all scripture altogether is another, not to mention of course disproving the creator, which is the object of this chapter in Dawkins‟ book!
We do agree that there are indeed a whole lot of false and unverifiable volumes of scripture attributing their origins to the creator, containing all kinds of myth and legend, everywhere in the world! This doesn‟t in any way mean – by simple logic - that there isn‟t anywhere on Earth, a system of “religious knowledge” that actually applies strict rules of scrutiny in dealing with scriptures and evidence, and that is verifiably the true message of the creator to mankind!
I‟m almost certain that the professor doesn‟t know – for example – what the word (Isnad إس اٌد ) means, or that in Islam it is actually “Haram” (forbidden) for a Muslim to be a blind follower (muqallid هقلد ), and just copy the faith and deeds of a religious figure that he venerates, without learning his evidence! And only under conditions of incapability – for one reason or another - to learn enough of his religion (the minimum that every Muslim should learn, plus the ability to examine arguments of Imams of Fiqh on his own, weigh the evidence and decide what ruling to follow), may a Muslim be excused to follow a trustworthy Sheikh in Fatwa, just as he may be
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excused in eating the meat of “Maytah”: a dead un-slaughtered animal, in a condition of necessity where there is no other choice!
So professor, it wouldn‟t hurt you to just say: I don‟t know! In fact, we would respect your honesty if you did! But to make such arrogant claims and generalize them on everything that is religion and scripture in the world; this is by no means an acceptable scholarly position, neither does it have anything at all to do with rationality or scholarship!
It‟s quite easy indeed to make the brave unscholarly declaration that “All followers of all religions of the world are following nonsense, and they accept it only because they came to the world to find their parents following it”! Nothing is easier! But can the professor afford the burden of proof that he places over his head by making this claim, and attempting to prove it through the examination of “scripture”? Can he be honest enough and declare – at least – that proving the corruption of Christian scripture does not prove the corruption of all scripture from all religions in the world?