The Reality of God by Abdullah Al-Andalusi

Aarij Anwer

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model, just just pursuing the truth generally asking asking questions. Now, of course, that doesn't mean that I was always perfectly rational, there was so many assumptions that I have made assumptions I'm still getting rid of, and still discovering in myself, I've often discovered that whenever the universe doesn't make sense, or even when I read some heavy four verse of Quran that doesn't initially make sense, it's always due to some assumption buried in me that I've made about the text, some baggage that I brought into the text, my baggage, I brought into, let's say, reading about science and the observable universe that causes me to have this this misunderstanding or to

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view it as a conflict. So

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one of the things I tried to advise many Muslims, and even non Muslims is that they shouldn't confuse their assumptions with somehow some irrationality in either their religion or in the in the universe. And I just give you a little example for this. Well, so I mean, this is, this will be covered in an upcoming kind, of course that I'm doing for the Quran Institute, on the Dow masterclass. And in essence, it distills kind of my 20 years of experience into into this kind of 10 week course, but it's one of the segments in that course, is dealing with quantum mechanics and the Copenhagen interpretation, which has been much often used and abused to argue that, at the

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fundamental level, or deep down in this universe, things don't make sense, things are just irrational, they're contradictions occur. Retro causality is possible, as in things can cause themselves. And often I try to

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clear up for people, including people who are criticizing theism, who often resort to, I call the argument from irrationality, and then again, not only them, and people who are defending any kind of irrational doctrine will always run to this to the current ignorance in quantum mechanics and say, Oh, well, you know, there isn't a fundamental contradiction in the universe, for example, how comes you have, you know, quantum entanglement to kind of particles, which are entangled, if you if you, let's say, you know, measure the spin on one or two effect, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of its behavior, what it's doing, you will also affect something that is far away faster than the speed of

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light, which is meant to be impossible, due to Einstein. And it's not and we are used to the kind of Newtonian understanding where one particle has to be next to another particle, and they somehow interact usually, with the interactions is based on their forces, electromagnetic force, and strong weak force, but electromagnetic force for the most part, and this, this effect has to be proximity and proximity, one particle next to the other. So then people would say, this shows that fundamental universe is cause and effect without what we understand this cause and effects. And so therefore, you know, causality is out the window, and therefore, you don't need, it's pointless to discuss

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causality of the universe or everything that exists because surely causality has been refuted by quantum mechanics, observed from quantum mechanics, and they simply point out that will no, it hasn't been, hasn't been kind of negated because the very fact that if you if you affect one particle, and at a distance, it affects another one. So because you affected this particle in some way, shape or form, you cause a change in the state of another particle, that's cause and effect, right? All that all that's been shown is that the understanding of what is proximity in the quantum level may be different, or the universe might be connected in some way that we just don't know. But

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it's perfectly within line of causality. Right? It's just a speculation, by certain over zealous and enthusiastic individuals who take these these experimental results, and then start to concoct

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these eccentric models, or argue that this goes against intuition, therefore, the universe of irrational as they were, it's not, it goes against your assumption. You're usually Newtonian basic assumption of how things work in universe but, I mean, in the Medieval Ages, if you said to somebody, hey, if you did some action here, and it would affect something, you know, far away, they'd say, yeah, of course, you know, we used that, that understanding, maybe it's magic. It's magic does that right? And and it's part of the universe, it's, it's magic is part of something, you know, affecting something in the universe, and that's just normal. Okay, and that's part I'm sure

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that's part of causality magic will be particles on its own in the medieval world might say that. Whereas they wouldn't say, Oh, well, you know, because you could you could, you could do magic spells I distance this this proves causality. Well, no one would would would say that while you dance, and of course,

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suddenly, when the you know, the ancient Greeks would use to think

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That the planets revolve around the earth. And they would revolve around in perfect orbits because the sun's going to go around, then you think circular orbits, right? They think, you know, the perfect shape circular orbits. But the problem with this, you know, circular orbit understanding is that it doesn't match the observable, obviously, relative planets aren't, don't appear to be in the positions predicted by the model circular orbits, right. But they appear to us to be going around, so to speak, as in, you know, they seem to come up off the horizon, you know, from the west coast, you know, and then from the east and come back and West, I mean, these kind of things are observed.

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So how do they explain it, that the Greeks just say, Oh, well, the universe is just irrational and contradictory and contradictions possible. So, you know, let's just throw out logic or throw out rationality? Well, no,

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they didn't know why it was presenting results. They couldn't understand what their current models, but they knew that there must have been some explanation. They just don't know it just yet. And of course, they're on, you know, we have Kepler talking about elliptical orbits. And of course, the heliocentric model is presented to show that, you know, the heavenly bodies will revolve around the sun, with the exception of the moon, of course.

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And this is just, this is this is obviously not accepted a size, no one would say that this is, you know, proof proves that the universe is counter intuitive. No, it's counter assumptions, right? The universe is counter your assumptions. And the same, you know, when I'm advising Muslims, who are facing, you know, Shahada doubts about Islam. It's always, always, always always an assumption they made about Islam or religion. I remember once, you know, many times when people say, you know, they will talk about Islam, and they'll say, you know, the Quran is preserved, every letter of it is preserved, right from the time of Prophet Mohammed Salah. And you say, well, well, wait a second,

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the current Arabic language wasn't standardized. In fact, the Quran actually helped to standardize the the Arabic language, there was no agreed spelling convention at the time of the Prophet Mohammed sauce on them. But between all the you know, the, the Arabic speakers of Arabia, who, it was an oral culture, it wasn't a written culture. I mean, sure, they could write but it, you know, they had different different areas of Arabia have different conventions and how to spell the same word, for example. So it's kind of overzealousness led to people inserting assumptions. And then when he discovered that, while there was no there are variations in spelling of the same word in, you know,

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old manuscripts in Quran, they starts to impact them, I say, Well, what are you impacted by this? You made the assumption that somehow the Arabic language was standardized prior to the Quran? And then, and then every letter of the Quran is, it was preserved when there was no agreed spelling convention, out from the outset. And anyway, between all the different dialects of Arabic That was spoken in Arabia, so but but then, but then a written version became standardized. And that's what we use. But what we are interested in, of course, is that what the prophet Muhammad SAW some, you know, related to the Sahaba, which wasn't abrogated by memory and wasn't abrogated by another one, I

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did not abrogate these verses, but verses that were kept that were intended to be passed down, that all these verses that were to be passed down, that the Prophet Mohammed Hassan certainly intend to be passed back down, reach us, and that we don't have any there's no doubt about that. So what we have is the Quran as intended by the Russell la sala, but to argue that every letter is preserved from the Quran, it doesn't just really misunderstands history and the Arabic language at the time in seventh century Arabia. So this is an example of assumptions are the other other other the problem, the root of all human misunderstanding. And again, it reminded me of something I saw, there was this

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medieval documentary called inside the medieval mind, it was produced in England, and they were talking about in Europe, people were speculating on the possibility. In fact, they started to believe a rumor that there were dog headed humans might so well, maybe not fully human, but they had the body of human beings but the heads of dogs, and there was all these pictures, illustrations, there was theological discussions about whether they have souls, whether they you can they can be saved by Jesus and

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all this discussion about and it seemed obviously completely irrational to ourselves. But what the

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what the kind of the rate and the producer of the show was it was kind of made interesting point. And what they were trying to show is that they said, the people in medieval Europe, Western Europe weren't any less rational than we are today. It was just their starting assumptions. Right that people are rational based on the assumptions that they are

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working off of, right? They always think, Okay, well how do I, how do I create the maximum achieve my interests or do the most logical thing or rational thing on the base of the starting premises? Okay. And that is, I think the root of all falsehood is his assumptions. And sometimes and the worst of the worst falsehoods and why they become assumptions is because they are mixed with a little bit of truth. So all falsehood is a mixed with a little bit of truth, to swallow that pill. So, in essence,

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since I, you know, before I became Muslim, I was was inculcated with so many assumptions about how reality is about what truth would look like, what a cosmic truth would look like, I you know, kind of, you know, Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy was, was kind of quite popular in the West, it probably still is in some areas. And this idea of, certainly when you see these, these movies where, you know, you have this hero, and they have to go on a quest to reflect and meditate and discover the truth, like six minutes, 60 or 80 years old, or something, and only then they discover the truth, after reflection and meditation, and then they reach some kind of enlightenment, right. And

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then because the truth, or the point of this enlightenment is to find this hidden truth that's is very hard to find, but you can only find it through intense reflection that takes decades. This was sold to us, as well, you know, if you want to know the purpose of life, that's the purpose, you know, that's how you find it, it's like it's too long winded.

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Most You know, it probably will never agree on it will never find it is unknowable, even that was another assumption that was fair to me as a young kid, that the purpose of life is actually unknowable. So Best Live your life, in essence, live for

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attaining pleasures, that you can, you can get attain as much pleasure as you can, in life by whatever legal means, of course, you can get in some cases, illegal means like drugs, and so on, and so forth. That's the kind of messages that was bombarding the youth. So, when I initially encountered Islam, it was deceptively simple. It was it was so simple, that I didn't think it could be the truth, because it was just so simple to understand.

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Because I made the assumption that the truth behind reality has to be something so complex, and so hidden, that it will require decades and decades of contemplation and meditation to arrive at that. But then if you think about it, right, why would why would the truth require most of a person's life which people not everyone can necessarily live that long.

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Most of us like to to discover, then, and then only when they maybe reach an advanced age, or now they can live that purpose of mine. It doesn't seem it doesn't seem to make, make it make any sense, at least

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do that the way that to discover truth was by some gnosis, which is via an hidden knowledge as inside, or that you have to find deep inside or from some kind of inspiration that comes many decades into the future that it didn't seem. But that was that made any sense. And that was practical for human beings, there has to been something that humans can access a bit earlier, where we humans have made it accessible with a different question. But there had to have been something that surely should have been accessible from the dawn of humanity. Anyway, so my little bit about my background, it was your bog standard, nominal, Anglican question. Of course.

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My mom's side of the family was was a devout Catholic, but I was really too young to notice the difference between Anglicans and Catholics, of course, the kind of ank, the Anglican Church that I attended, follows with Anglo Catholic Catholic rites. And so it's, it's the Church of England with a bit of a sprinkling of Catholic rituals and traditions. Not all of it, but a sprinkling of it, so and so that for me, I really didn't see the difference between between the two. But it did, it did seem to

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dawn upon me when I saw different religions, or I heard of different philosophies or different ideas, that well how do I know that basically, I'm following the truth. When in essence, I'm like, I was just, you know, kind of following the religion of society that I was I was in my father. It was was was very secular. And so religion was just basically on off the cards for him. And so I just followed being a Christian and attended mass to Communion. And so I didn't understand with any intellectual depth, maybe later on in life. Ironically, I knew I discovered more about Christianity as a Muslim than I did.

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As a Christian, but something but something seemed to make sense to me as a Christian, that Jesus was not God. In fact, no one really told me no, they they took me aside and said, oh, by the way, did you know that Jesus is God, and he's got in the flesh kingdom is in His incarnation, and that his, when he died for your sins, that was literally him dying for your sins. I always thought that was like metaphorical or when it's referred to the, you know, the Son of God, I always thought that was metaphorical. They like, you know, like, he's not he's not actually God, because in the Bible, Jesus praying to God, okay, he is, you know, speaking to God, he talks about the the father, which

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is always kind of associated with the God of the Old Testament. And so there was God on this side, and Jesus on the other side, so to speak. So as I was a kid, I would never think that they were the same thing it just wouldn't make didn't make any sense.

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And now, obviously, a devout Christian today who's learned intelligible to say I was an ignorant and naive Christian. And of course, I would never advance that I was any expert on Christianity, just because I was an ex Christian, as I said, I was a nominal Christian, like most, most people in many Western countries, but most Christian kids growing up unless you're a type of Baptist or North American, kind of Christian, which they're very strong on, emphasizing Jesus more than anything else. You wouldn't think that Jesus and God is the other same thing. In fact, I once had this very surreal debate, just one on one debate with my son for my friends in Portugal, who were Catholics.

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When I was, you know, they were just asking about, you know, we're talking about Islam. And they were asking about the differences between Islam and Christianity. And I said, Well, you know, one of the things that, well, we believe in Jesus as the Messiah,

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we, you know, we revere him as a great prophet of God and a messenger, but only a human being.

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We don't think he's got the Christian that looks at me and said, well, how's that difference? Because, yeah, of course, he's not God. I'm like, Well,

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yeah, he's not God. But you're Catholic, right? And he was like, Yes. So if you believe that Jesus, like, you know, you believe that Jesus God is his Catholic doctrine to believe that He is God, and he's part of a trinity of persons in, in a united Godhead. And he said that no, no, no, the Trinity is just basically, you know, that the three things that we look, we, we revere, within the creed of Christianity, and Jesus is a human being he's not God, we don't believe that, you know, Son of God is just like a, it's a title. And I said, Look, I'm really glad that, you know, you believe that he's not God. And I don't want to change your mind about this. But it's not accurate to what, you

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know, Catholic doctrine actually teaches. I don't want to win this debate. With you, I actually want you to continue believing that he's not God and not adopting that idea. But we had a very solid, strong debate just on what the what God follows ism believes, because they weren't that conversant with, with their doctrines, mostly because Christians aren't taught this stuff. But anyway, that being that side, I didn't know that Islam had similar themes, to Judaism, and Christianity, of course, and since I wasn't so sure, I wasn't sure about whether whether Christianity was, was had some authenticity to it, or authority to it. And I wasn't sure about your days, either. Then, of

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course, I'd say well, I wouldn't I wasn't sure about Islam, and so and so. But then I was I've always believed in the concept of, of jahannam of hell or punishment. And it wasn't because it was obviously beaten into me as a young kid, so to speak. It was there was always something with a ring of truth, that there would always be some kind of accountability for the actions of human beings in this life. I mean, you see people, some people, very good people are suffering, and some very horrific people seem to be getting a lot of benefits and goods in this life. And it didn't seem, it didn't seem fair. It seemed rather arbitrary. Now I know what the ancients would say to this. But

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missing as that I was, I realized at some basic level, that there was something inside me that was observing the world, ie non material, something, maybe you call it a soul, but there was something inside that was observing the world that can't be explained by material things. That this and this observer,

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if it's not material, it's not part of this universe, then it's going to go then after the physical body dies, where is this this soul going to go? And if human experience of the world is

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We're all different. And people can do bad actions or good actions or actions that cause harm and suffering and actions that don't. The nasty, there always seem to be a kind of a ring of truth to the notion of an accountability for this observer, after this physical body dies. And that's why I thought it was just natural to believe in the possibility of a health. Of course, it scared me. And I, you know, I'd hoped that wasn't because I was, I was quite scared of the concept like anyone any kid would be. But it just seemed to be quite true. So myself anyway, I made a bit of a a bargain, a deal with God, because I always believed in God, even though I might not have always believed the

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universe was created, which I know it's a bit of a contradictory proposition. Because I was, I was in reading lots of science. And I was I bumped into materialists discussing science thinking, this is part of scientific discussion. And it wasn't it was just speculation, from their own their own assumption, the assumption of naturalism, or materialism, that there was this kind of a cyclical nature to the universe, you know, destruction, creation, destruction, creation, going back, infinite past. So I always thought that was a possibility. And maybe, I thought that was nice and neat, you know, you're like, you don't need anything else to explain it. But even though I actually at the

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same time believed there was a god. And, and I know, that's kind of it sounds weird, because then if there was a God, and there's a universe doesn't need to be created, why is there a God then or what need is there? For a god? Of course, Aristotle actually believed something like that, but believe that God provides a way first mover provides movement that the universe and God co eternal, that's a different discussion. Anyway, I won't get into that. Anyway. So going back to my point was that I made a deal with me, I said, I don't want to go if there's a hell I don't want to go to I'm very scared of how So please, don't be angry with me, if I'm following the wrong religion away ended up

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in the wrong religion. But if you do, if you do kind of help me, guide me, to to the truth, I promise that I will try to share that with as many with with as many people as possible, I will, I won't keep it to myself, basically, I tried to share that. So that was my, my deal with God and to, to allay my fears of going to hell, I didn't want to go to hell, following the wrong the wrong religion or force it. Now, again, I suppose a skeptical atheist watching this might say, well, you you had assumptions and you assume God exists, maybe that was going to that was going to presume, the inevitable destination of where you're going, that was going to bias your, your search. But the

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thing is, is that I tried to look at every possible philosophy and belief system from its own merits. In essence, I would see each of the story. And I would see this story by itself can explain all observable reality around me. So I take each one as a hypothesis. And I say how well does hypothesis match the observation of human existence animals, in no matter the universe, and so on, so forth. I was a bit of a science buff.

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Since I was I mean, I used to read National Geographic thanks to a very generous and kind subscription. And a friend of my mother's got her associates, she got a subscription for me, which I'm very grateful for. It gave me a very broad general knowledge from an age of seven. This is before Google and the internet. By the way, if yes, that time did exist, there was a time where you couldn't just Google, you couldn't just make yourself a shake, and Google your answers no fatawa, there was a time get to read books, in those old fangled places called libraries, which I also frequented and used. And I tried to absorb as much information out of pure curiosity, for the most

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part, to then build a bigger picture of the world as I possibly could and then test these hypotheses against against what I could observe in the universe in biology and physics, in natural history in human history. So there had to be some kind of explanation that would, would that would explain all these things, if such explanation existed. And of course, I started all this when I was I started this kind of determined project when I was 10 years old. So as a typical naive 10 years old, I thought that if the if the purpose of life, or the truth behind existence wasn't discovered, or wasn't known, then I would try to discover it, which was a very grandiose, naive thing by but what

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was the alternative?

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To accept that there is no possibility of understanding my purpose and I live at purposeless existence and, and I would if I could accept that if the hypothesis of naturalism or atheism seemed the most likely explanation, then I would, I would have accepted that. But to accept that I can, I will just not ask a question in the first place and just

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politically live ignorantly, when what I don't know could hurt me. When I don't know about life could hurt me when I, I don't want to waste my life, following something that doesn't, or not following what I'm meant to be following, or not looking for the truth when the truth would surely inform all my decisions would inform my my direction in life. So

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I then kind of went into investigation into every possible, you know, hypothesis that I could find and Islam was just one of the many hypotheses now I kind of modeled my kind of my dour masterclass course on on that investigation. Of course, not more than that on the reading I did as a 10 year old Of course, but on on all the many years since then,

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more years and I'd care to admit publicly.

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I based based my course on on the scope of discussion, all these possible hypotheses, including fictional ones. Well, arguably everything that's false is fictional. But those who which are admittedly fictional, like HP Lovecraft is his understanding of his his fictional understanding of the universe, was that possibility that there's actually evil Gods behind the universal evil god behind the universe?

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is, are we living in the matrix? Are we our brains in a vat? Is that a possibility? And what could we still know the truth if that was the situation? And so the course that kind of is was was structured, from getting to a point of, of total skepticism. Where How do I even know what I'm experiencing is real to Islam being the only possible explanation for for existence. So I'm going to just kind of go through.

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Again, this is Judas as a type of a shot of my opening presentation at the Oxford debater, a commentary on it and discussion on it.

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There's not enough time for me to discuss why Islam It was first, the best hypothesis and then I eventually came to you on Sunday, it was the only possible hypothesis, the only possible explanation for the universe. But I'll get to maybe just understanding how do we know at least there is a creator? And how do we know that the creator create everything and even cares about us? Who even knows about us, which is deism? How do we know these these things? So I used for arguments in the debate. And they are again, deceptively simple. But they're based on a tried and tested over 20 years of me refining the best way of, of kind of phrasing,

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phrasing these arguments. Now, one of the many problems that people encounter when they do apologetics is one they think that they have to when I say apologetics, I mean defense of Islam or their religion is they assume that

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to make an effective argument for God's existence, you have to know more than science. And they also think that you have to study logic and advanced propositional logic and all the formulations of cosmological arguments cosmological, from the Greek cosmos, meaning obviously, everything that exists and ology which means an account of, and to accounting for everything that exists. So they think you have to study these these, you know, very formulaic and logical arguments, and you don't, you could explain the essence of God to a child, and that God has a will and not God create everything to a job with very basic rationality. What made it more complex is the need for arguments

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is that you'd have skeptics would come along, and they would try to use or attempt to introduce ambiguities to confound what is essentially a very basic argument. So in essence, you could tell a child that everything that exists was there before you were born. So Well, obviously, the child will say, Well, of course, it must have been because I didn't, I didn't make it. So I'm not the Creator. So and if you're the creator of everything that exists, then there is there must be something else be beyond what you can experience, which is the creator of everything that exists and again, the child would say yes, of course. And then then you could simply argue to the to the child that

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you know if this has been going on forever, right? You know, would there ever be

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would we ever whatever if there was a history that went on for eternity, and that was infinite in the past, you know, would we ever get here? You know, like if I said that this lecture will end, after an infinite amount of time or before it began, if the sheriff said that this lecture will begin, and I've done is just taking time to fix this camera, but it will begin after an infinite amount of time, then we start the lecture well with the lecture ever begin? No, it wouldn't. And so then a child would understand that, yeah, there was a start point to everything. And the child would at least understand that if the child can, the first child's first experience of existence is their

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own intelligence, then surely there is something greater than themselves, which an intelligence that caused this start point to occur? Because if it was something else, and that didn't have intelligence, then what is making that begin the universe is a mechanical clock that's making that creates the universe, then surely, this mechanical clock, what wound it up, began its process. And if you say there's an infinite and infinite process in the past, we get right back to Infinite property, you know, infinity in the past problems, which obviously brings us right back to that contradiction. So the only thing that's, the kid knows that a kid can initiate things by their

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choice. And so everything that was that they can observe was initiated by a higher choice of a higher intelligence, quote, unquote.

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And I can understand that makes perfect sense to a kid, I think many of you, growing up as Muslims, probably never experienced any crisis of faith due to the contradictions in Islamic theology. Because there isn't any contradictions in terms of theology, you don't have a trinity to contend with. God has three persons, but he's one God, but each person has his own will. But it's all the same God and each person, each of these persons, the trinity of Father, Son, Holy Spirit has infinite power, its own will, but they're all part of the same God.

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How would that be different from three Gods because in three Gods you have each God having their own will, infinite power. And how's that different from the idea of the Trinity works exactly the same. So how's that one God, that doesn't make sense, the idea of, of original sin, that every every child is born with the sin of Adam alayhis salaam, and therefore the every child deserves to be punished in hell, just because they bear sin, because all sin must be punished by death, according to Christian doctrine. These produce endless hsupa heart and the need for compartmentalization in the minds of young Christians. Of course, what usually happens is that young Christians aren't taught

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this idea. So they just think Jesus is not God, he's just a man. And, you know, like myself, right. And therefore, that's the only way not to experience these,

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these contradictions, but you were handled are blessed with not living, not growing up with, you know, trying to reconcile these these kind of problems. But that being said, the downside to that is that many Muslims don't question their beliefs and why they believe what they believe. And

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instead, they, why they will view they will believe in Islam, but they won't question a very simple thing, which is, well, in your life, you know, your parents will teach you that you have certain rites of passage, certain cultural values, you have to uphold these cultural values that come from society, they don't come from God, but you have to follow these cultural values, or you have to wave the right flag, the right colors, that represents the right area of land that you live in, and that you have to uphold the family honor, and you have to uphold the honor of your locale, then your locale gets other locales, and then your country and other countries and your ethnicity and

00:34:05--> 00:34:46

ethnicity and so on. So often, a lot of the Muslims will just think this is normal, and you should have a family and get, you know, be as rich as you can, and so on so forth. And then have kids and then then you know, once your kids are have raised to maintain the family reputation, then you can die and that's fine. And that's your that's your life. That's all you're meant to be doing. Oh but by the way, while you're doing all this, just make sure you check all the tick boxes of this thing called Islam. On this side, just check all the tick boxes, make sure you do your namaz your, your Salah, your insulin and fast on that month, and you're meant to do that one hedge and so on and so

00:34:46--> 00:34:59

forth. Just make sure you do that, along with this other way of life you're living and you should be good, right? That's all you have to do so well as opposed to the more rational kind of approach which is what wait

00:35:00--> 00:35:34

If we have a purpose of life, and that purpose of life is ordained by the Creator, who made everything in this universe, then surely my entire life would revolve around that there'd be nothing other than what the Creator has told us to live by, because nothing else has any meaning. Nothing else has any value, I shouldn't be looking at what's good for my country, because what I call my country is not eternal, doesn't exist, hasn't doesn't actually physically exist is it represents more is closer to a religion than it is to,

00:35:35--> 00:36:18

you know, a actual real existence, it's just a part of the changing Earth's crust. So it's the area on Earth's crust that you've designated at that moment in time, because it wasn't, it wasn't always there. And it was changing from different continents sliding on each onto each other, and so on, so forth. And at that little brief speck of dust in his universe, and a speck of dust on a speck of dust. That is something that you want, you should live and fight and die for, doesn't seem to make any sense. Surely that, you know, if God intended the nation to be eternal, then he wouldn't make the you know, the earth change, he wouldn't make nations change and politics change, and so on and

00:36:18--> 00:36:21

so forth. That wouldn't make any sense. So

00:36:23--> 00:37:08

although Muslims are born into Islam today, it doesn't necessarily mean that they that they have, they are devoid of assumptions that have been inculcated into them at a young age. And I also can make another caveat, which is I think that any Muslim who's come to the realization that Islam is a is the truth, it's a way of life and it's the only measuring stick for good and bad and is the only lens by which they should look at the world is I would consider them to be a revert, whether they came from a non Muslim background, or from a Muslim background, the thinking process, the thinking process is exactly the same, right to get to that conclusion is exactly the same, right? They

00:37:08--> 00:37:19

question the challenge, they look into things and they will reach the the whereas normal semester break free of ways of life which are overtly non Islamic and overtly

00:37:21--> 00:37:57

false belief systems, maybe Creed's which are different at the Muslim has to break through a way of life which are, which is currently called culture, they have to break through through this set of assumptions to come to Islam. So I don't view that I don't view it as any different and Muslims come to that realization from a non Muslim background or from me, from a Muslim background. They're both exactly the same and thinking process. So anyway, let's get on to a suppose just to discuss the four arguments I used for kind of the proof of God as it were.

00:37:59--> 00:38:22

Now, as I said, you don't sometimes people listen to me discussing this. And the thing I've done is not using too much jargon. Too much philosophical jargon. He's not constructing arguments using a logical form. A logic is a set of specific, you know, propositions syllogisms, propositions structured propositions, which are really just assertions like

00:38:25--> 00:38:59

all men, all men are mortal. proposition one surprising to Socrates is a man therefore, conclusion. Socrates is mortal. So you think, well, that makes sense. Why can't you use logic right logic is surely have a problem with that structuring that Aristotle came up with in his book called Analytica, which means to complete or to solve. We didn't even call it logic. logic is just a word in Greek for many things, but but like, knowledge, language, words, and so on and so forth anyway?

00:39:01--> 00:39:45

Well, the thing is this. Imagine you were debating a hyper skeptic class or somebody who just wants not to admit that that Socrates is mortal. It's just saying, right? It's someone who's anti Socrates Being Mortal. And you bring that simple logic and they'll say, Okay, well, you know, all men are mortal. It's our way. How do you know all men are mortal? by men? I mean, human beings there, right? So in case, Trudeau comes in and says, Would you mean only men? So, how do you know? Sure all humans are mortal? Have you spoken to every human being interested encountered every human being Have you? Maybe there's like a human being that hasn't died yet and will never die of that. How do you know

00:39:45--> 00:39:59

that all human beings are mortal? And I say, Okay, well, all right, fine. Look, committees agree that Socrates is a man. No, he can't. They'd say, Socrates could have been an alien. It could have been a jinn could have

00:40:00--> 00:40:45

Or some spirits of some kind? How do you know that a Socrates is human, let alone How do you even know Socrates even existed? Did you meet him personally? And that was the Socrates that everyone was referring to, but you didn't. So we don't know if Socrates is a man. So we can't or human, we can't say for certain. So the conclusion that Socrates is mortal, because I reject that you have not proved it to me. You haven't proved it to absolute certainty. Now, here's the thing, right? This, this, the simple logic is taken as the basic as a basic illustration of a deductive argument in logic, or something that would be certain you think it would be certain. So what logicians tend to

00:40:45--> 00:41:32

do is they say, if one of the premises, if all the premises were true, then the conclusion follows. That's what they say. So if all the premises are true, then the conclusion follows. logic is just about preventing contradictory, self contradictory arguments, it was never about demonstrating the truth with absolute certainty of the arguments, which is why I don't use I don't use logic, I use rationality. And rationality is different. Because logic starts out with assertions, rationality starts out with observation. And then you try to build a possible explanation for what you observe. That's basic rationale. That's what detectives do. It's what doctors do when they try and diagnose

00:41:32--> 00:41:36

your illness, most of the time, it can only give probabilistic

00:41:37--> 00:42:25

you know, conclusions, like uncertain conclusions. But you know, grades have of relative certainty or at least probability. But there is one thing, one thing, apart from like two plus two equals four, there's one thing I would say, is the only thing we can know for certain, and that is that God exists. And you don't know if you're in the matrix or not. But you know, but I can prove for certain that God exists. So and I did it based on these four arguments. So the arguments in the debate, which I presented was the argument for for change, or from change the argument from the origin of finitude or finite things, the argument from the origin of specificity, and the argument from

00:42:26--> 00:42:31

divisibility, or substance, let's just say, and these correlate to,

00:42:32--> 00:43:13

well, it wasn't intentional, but suppose Aristotle's four causes were, you know, he'd say, there's a, an efficient cause or something that began something into existence called an efficient cause, a material cause is what something is made out of. So, the material cause, then you have, of course, what he called an illogical cause, which is basically what that what somebody is moving towards, but in this case, I did, I argued, what what something the initial movement or change behind behind all things. And the, the other type of cause, which is the cause of the,

00:43:14--> 00:43:42

the form, right cause from the sponsor, what gives the form what determine the form of thing. Now to kind of say, if I can use an analogy, so the efficient cause, let's say, behind a cake is the cook like the cook is making the cake is the officiant or she is the efficient cause. The material cause behind the cake is the ingredients used to make the cake, the ontological causes what the cake was meant for, to be eaten, for example, to be at a birthday party or something like this. And

00:43:44--> 00:44:26

the size particularly, and the the cause that determine its form is the recipe, right, so the, what the term is formed was the recipe that the cake was going to be made into. So in a way this, this parallels, Aristotle's kind of discussion of four causes is just the four possible causes you can see for anything you observe. So let's start with change. Very basic, whether what you're observing is in the matrix or not, or whether you're, you're actually you're observing the real world or, you know, reality, right? There is something that's that they all these observations can agree on, which is your observations or experiences are changing, changes happening, you call it Time, time is just

00:44:26--> 00:44:36

change. That's all it is. And so the question is that things are changing. And so you have sequential events, you're in a current now, and there's a past in the future,

00:44:37--> 00:44:46

regardless of how you understand this, but there is change, there was something that's that was one way and then now another way, so there is some change. So the question is,

00:44:48--> 00:44:59

how far does this go back? How far does change go back into the past? Right? Now if you say, as a skeptic would argue that maybe change went is a term

00:45:00--> 00:45:07

It has an eternal past as an eternal past, infinite past of of changes. Well, as I pointed out in my

00:45:09--> 00:45:55

earlier on in this discussion, that if there wasn't a total positive change, we would never get here. Because you'd have to exhaust so complete an infinite number of, of moments or changes to reach this point. But the definition of infinity is it's basically unfishable inexhaustible. So it produces a contradiction, which is you're saying you're exhausting the inexhaustible, to get to this point. This means there was a start point, there has to be a stop point. And, you know, sometimes the atheist or the skeptic would say, ah, are you saying that, you know, you know, you know, the universe, you know, this universe started the Big Bang, you ever saw what happened? The Big Bang? I

00:45:55--> 00:46:01

said, Look, I didn't bring science into this. Well, scientific speculation. I didn't bring that into this.

00:46:03--> 00:46:16

You brought it, I'm just talking rationally that there's an infinite, there can't be infinite past. Whether there were six big bangs and big, big crunches or 10, or 100, big bangs and big crunches, you know, explosions? And then

00:46:17--> 00:46:52

the universe kind of collapsing on itself. That's what what's gonna happen? I didn't. I didn't I didn't speculate any of them. I didn't speculate any of this. I didn't speculate how big the universe is. I didn't speculate how old it is. Or, and by universe, I mean, everything that exists because if this universe came from a big bang, that came from a prior set of conditions in a bigger or smaller universe, this would also be part of the universe. Right? So I didn't make any speculation. You make the speculation. I only said that. There can't be infinite past. So then the question is, if there's a start point,

00:46:54--> 00:47:00

well, what's what's causing this start point? Where Where's it coming from? So they would argue,

00:47:01--> 00:47:12

they would argue every other possibility they could, which is naturalistic or materialistic, and say, maybe it came from absolute nothing, which obviously, is completely absurd, because absolute nothing

00:47:13--> 00:47:40

won't generate anything kind of in itself. So that okay, maybe not that maybe it was created by something else, that's also material, well, we're right back to an infinite regress, then going back into the past have an infinite chain of things causing each other, we really establish that there has to be a start point or something that's not part of this chain. Right as it is not. It has not been caused, or what have you. It is given it is making the cause.

00:47:41--> 00:48:05

They said, Well, maybe it caught you know, the universe calls itself a retro causality. And they will try to bring some quantum mechanics speculations. But again, that's ridiculous. And it falls foul of Why call the one the Why call what is called the bootstrap paradox, which I think is it's from the idea of, if you were to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you couldn't lift yourself off the ground, right?

00:48:06--> 00:48:46

You by pulling your boots, you you just lift your leg closer to your torso, but you wouldn't be able to lift yourself off the ground. So the boot bootstrap paradox circular, and it doesn't answer anything, right. So relative to the ground, you're not moving, just by pulling the bootstraps off. So it's circular. And in essence, a circular kind of circular causality is another infinite regress, right? It's just an infinite regress, where the thing that came before this is that is the beginning of the end of the previous iteration of this universe. In a circular cycle, going back into the past, it's just not an infinite regress. And again, you have to wait for an infinite amount of

00:48:46--> 00:49:04

rotations, or call or retro causalities. To get to this point in time, you'll never reach this point in change, or time. So ultimately, then the thing It can't be retro causality, so or self causing. So in essence, the only possibility that's left is that you have something that isn't caused

00:49:05--> 00:49:55

that caused the universe to exist. They say, Okay, well, even if they say even if we accept that, how do you know it's God? How do you jump straight to saying it's God then say, Well, what can we know about this thing? that initiates change? Okay? So, if this thing has gets from a point of absolute, let's say, you know, so there's a universe within this or there's no University, this is existing, right? And no change occurring. So in a way, it's like that 00 movement, zero change, and then it can increase from zero change to, to some change to something from a point of complete rest are nothing or stop or rest or no change basically, is what I'm referring to, and then initiate

00:49:55--> 00:49:59

change. This demonstrates to us two things, one

00:50:00--> 00:50:50

If he can initiate change from nothing, from no change, then it can in essence it is increasing from not I call it increase from nothing about it get there's nothing and then it can increase it can add something to nothing, which and if you can add something to nothing, then it in essence, it creates ex nihilo as they call it in Latin, from nothing It can create from nothing. And if somebody can create from nothing, then it is by definition, infinite, ie of inexhaustible power, the power of this thing can't be exhausted, if it can initiate from nothing, it can initiate something from, from nothing initiate change from a state of, of there being no change.

00:50:51--> 00:51:37

So, people call this infinite power if you want to if you want to use that term, but in essence, it's inexhaustible power which agrees with the Quran scription in that Allah spawn to Allah, you know, doesn't doesn't deplete himself will get tired by by creating or doing doing as he pleases. He doesn't lose anything. So we can so use of inexhaustible power, power just means do the physic physics, it's basically worked on over unit time, per unit time. But it basically means get the getting work done. So the the ability to get work done to do to do things, right, that's what power is, in essence to affect to affect things. So infinite power. But then Okay, well, infinite power,

00:51:37--> 00:52:01

but how do you know it's not? It's not mindless, right? This thing? When I say mindless, I don't mean has the human mind? Of course. What we mean is has has a will, right? If either in Arabic, and we'll choice intent. Well, the question is, what made this thing initiate change in the first place? Why did it initiate change in the first place?

00:52:02--> 00:52:08

What's making it? So if they would argue there's an internal mechanism inside it? Or it's being

00:52:09--> 00:52:22

pressured to buy an external thing to make universes? Such like they'd argue a type of multiverse might be the multiverse that makes universes mindlessly. But the question is, what is causing

00:52:23--> 00:52:55

this multiverse to make universes from nothing? Minus what is making it do? So why is it doing doing? So? If you're saying there's an external, something external? is pressuring it? To do it, prodding it to make then then this multiverse? Isn't the cause? Isn't the first cause it's this thing that's prodding it to do? And then you then what's causing that? What's going on? And then you go into infinite regress, of, of what's causing that? What's causing that? What's causing that to initiate change? So that can't be the case? Maybe it's an internal mechanisms. Maybe there's an internal mechanism

00:52:56--> 00:53:00

that makes the multiverse make universes, but then the question is,

00:53:01--> 00:53:32

where's this mechanism? What's making this mechanism make universes, it's like me getting a watch. And then and explaining to you that the watch is the hands on the watch move. Because there's a an infinite, an infinite chain of measure of internal mechanism, that's making the watch move its hands will say that's great. But if you're saying there's an internal and an infinite chain of an internal mechanism, that the hands on move by smaller hands, by smaller hands, by smaller hands, by small smaller springs and smaller springs and small springs,

00:53:33--> 00:54:04

if there's no start point to this initiative, initiating this mechanism, then the hands will move, you have to wait for an infinite amount of mechanisms to move before that the clock hands move on the clock. So you wouldn't get any movement, in essence, an infinite regress problem. So then what's left? Right? Well, what's left is that the only thing that's making this first move creator mover, the initiator of change,

00:54:06--> 00:54:10

initiate things from nothing is choice.

00:54:11--> 00:54:59

And, in fact, I dare say, free will and intent a will. They're not even we possess because us we have to are we are limited to short to two choices to ourselves. And even then we depend on on this creator to give us the to facilitate us to make a choice. But this creator has true free choice because unlike ask you, you know, let's say let's say for example, if you're a new Muslim, and meet as many as you come from a background like I did, where there's there's you know, pork eating is a big thing in Iberia and you know, obviously it's haram when you become Muslim Of course when you know it is what saddam it always held on but you you become aware of being held on when you become a

00:54:59--> 00:54:59

Muslim.

00:55:00--> 00:55:41

But if you're feeling hungry, and you're, you know, your family are presenting you with with pork products, and the alternative is just vegetables. And let's say you're not really big into vegetables as I was when I was younger, you would get that temptation, right. But you know that you should eat the vegetables and not eat the pork. But when you just become Muslim, obviously, you have this habit of you, your aversion to pork hasn't developed just yet. So it becomes tempting. Initially, when you're hungry. Now without that hunger, you wouldn't be tempted either way, your free will, depends on you having a motivational force, you didn't choose that, that allows you the

00:55:41--> 00:56:30

opportunity to steer your boat, so to speak, one direction or the other. But without that wind in your sails. Without that motivational force, you wouldn't make those choices because you wouldn't be pushed into either way left or right, right, so to speak. Whereas this creator, if it can initiate from nothing, purely based on its will, then its will is truly free as in it doesn't have instincts that it has to obey or satisfy it initiate purely out of choice out of intent. And if something has inexhaustible power, and has intent or choice, then this satisfies the minimum definition of what is conventionally called in English language God. Right? Although you can pick any language, any word

00:56:30--> 00:56:35

you want to have any language you'd like, your day off in Greek if you want, or

00:56:38--> 00:57:14

in Hindi, Bhagwan, possibly but but I wouldn't advise it, possibly due to connotations with some of some Hindu religious concepts. But if there if there is a word in Hindi, that just means God and is not associated with any of the pagan idols, well, then it should it shouldn't be any more problematic than Allah was for the pagan Arabs who really knew about the word Allah and knew that Allah was beyond their pagan idols, and so on and so forth. But my point is this is that whatever word you want to call this thing up to you, depending on your language, someone said coda, which is Persian, and although I believe, right,

00:57:16--> 00:57:22

that's not the issue isn't isn't these these these titles? Of course, if you're going to want to follow revelation, it's

00:57:24--> 00:58:08

wise to follow obviously, words suggested by revelation, but I'm saying until you get to that point, it doesn't matter what word you use. So throughout history, any human being and there's been many who believed in one God and a God that doesn't resemble finite things, because surely, if something is uncreated, then where does it fall? Well, where was it what its form come from? And how would it be a limited finite thing? When it's something that is not limited? It's infinite and power? How can you be limited? And how can you have a form as a human being or an animal? When was uncreated? But these things have a form because the form form comes from something that formed it, which leads to

00:58:08--> 00:58:26

my second argument, which is the argument for finite things or the argument for finitude, which is if everything you observe, even if you were in the matrix, right? And you saw anything, a program, okay?

00:58:28--> 00:59:08

You would see something that has boundaries that shape, certain limited attributes and characteristics. I sometimes like to I always forget to do anything lectures by I should keep a rock on hand, I sometimes in my lectures, I've got to at university and bring Little Rock. And I would say, not for throwing that people, of course, who asked me tricky questions. But to demonstrate, I said, Where do you know, how do you know that there's this rock was created? How do you know that? It is not your time? Where did you have, you know, as an eternal rock, might say, I've seen rocks being formed on geological documentaries, or in you know, diagrams, or geologists explain it like

00:59:08--> 00:59:19

this. So well, that's great. But you never saw where this particular rock came from. So how do you know, this rock? This hyper to rock and holding, as I have known that it was created.

00:59:20--> 00:59:59

Now, the intuitively, the summit in the in the human mind in the fitrah, that's rational. And they would say, Well, why does the rock have a certain shape? And a certain size and a certain weight? Right? I mean, if this rock could be anything you wanted, why is it then its original form wouldn't be a rock then surely in the rock, this rock is thing shape that you're seeing? That that's seems to be part of this rock is, is a certain limit, right? It was, it was at some point determined to be at the limits that it has the shape that it has. So the question is, well, either the rock made itself or the rock

01:00:00--> 01:00:33

didn't make it didn't make itself. So let's go with the first possibility the rock made itself if the rock made itself, what this means the rock could determine. So firstly, the rock would have to exist to make itself, which is absurd. So then people say maybe the rock didn't make itself, it was always existing, then the question would be if it's always existing, then once you have the sun shape form that it has. So the argument is, well, it has the shape and shape and form that it has, because the rock decided that it would have that particular shape and form, then in essence, the rock isn't,

01:00:35--> 01:01:21

isn't actually finite, because it has, it can decide any, any, anything, any effect it causes. And then of course, the rock wouldn't actually be eternal anyway, because that that appearance of form was created by whatever, whatever created that rock. So in essence, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be the rocket self. That was that was even the creator of itself, because the form would still be would have to have been formed by by something and it can't be the form in itself. To better explain it would be if the rock was to decide its limits, it would be unlimited. And therefore, if it's unlimited, then it wouldn't have limits. And it wouldn't it totally have limits, the only

01:01:21--> 01:02:06

possibility that's left is that the rock didn't create itself. And its limits were defined by an external process, or staying external to it that define its limitations. And that can be done anything finite? So ultimately, then the question is, well, whether whether it's finite thing come from it came from something else that was finite, okay, what then determine that, it's going to choose something else, something else something else. And eventually, you have to get to a point where you find something that didn't originate it's, it's, its limits, or attributes didn't come from outside itself, but it actually it defines its own effects, it defines its own power, and

01:02:06--> 01:02:33

therefore is not limited, not finite, you can see it and itself can create, or or decide any power any effective wants to do which, which in essence would be for example, creating, and upon which all things would depend on, because it will be defining or things that need to be defined and kind of find themselves. So that's the argument from kind of finitude, which I suppose

01:02:34--> 01:03:10

made it a bit more simpler before, but it's, it's some people can call it the argument from contingency, but that's just another term for it. But that's fine. And then the other point, the other argument is what people might say, maybe look, these things that you observe, they're made of components, right? They're not like fundamental. They're made of atoms, or molecules and atoms, and then subatomic particles, going all the way down to quarks, and maybe something even more fundamental, like, fluctuations in quantum vacuum or super strings, which are all super strings obviously speculated to exist, not proven, of course.

01:03:11--> 01:03:16

That's fine. I'm not arguing, you know, what's the smallest thing but my point is,

01:03:18--> 01:03:24

take the smallest thing that they suppose exists. Why does it have its attributes? Where does it come from?

01:03:25--> 01:04:09

So we know that the rock would have attributes because it comes from the material it's made out of the material costs. Okay, that's fine. So what's that mean? ethical? Can we get down to molecules get down to atoms, you get down to subatomic particles, that quarks and maybe possibly super strings or what have you, fine. But what is giving these super strings for the sake of argument is all this really small? particle? Maybe there's like 1010 smaller parts 10 more levels of, of smaller particles underneath that? What's giving the smallest particle, the smallest building block its attributes? Right? If you say, Well, something else that's that it's made out of its components,

01:04:09--> 01:04:47

give it an attribute, well, then you can ask the question, well, what's making what's what is that made out of? So listen, what's it all made out of? You have to reach a point where you reach a fundamental level, where you can't go beyond any further because it causes otherwise be infinite regress. You can't say that matter can be divided up infinitely. Because if that was the case, then matter wouldn't exist because infinite amount of divisions mean that there is nothing substantial at all, there is no such there is no fundamental building blocks in the universe, which means that nothing would exist. So there must be this fundamental building block, okay. What is giving this

01:04:47--> 01:04:59

fundamental building block it's characteristics that it can be used as a component to be to be attached to other things and built up into bigger structures. Well, either it comes from itself or it comes from

01:05:00--> 01:05:00

Something else

01:05:03--> 01:05:21

that's very strange. So either comes from self sales. So if the smallest smallest building block possible, if it attributes comes from itself, meaning it projects its own effects, its its energy has IT projects its own power.

01:05:22--> 01:05:30

It's not and it's not made up of anything inside, there's no finite reservoir of energy in it, it just it just it projects power.

01:05:32--> 01:05:59

As as the beginning point of power, it can it can just project it, then it's inexhaustible. It would be infinite, in essence, right? And, and then the question is, why is it only projecting power only to that limited? level the size of a building block, right? If you take a Lego, why is it the smallest possible Lego? That size would you say was that size, because whatever is making it that size was was was, you know, that made it that size, you know, fun to be that size, by fine.

01:06:01--> 01:06:38

If you take the smallest building block, and you say that it has infinite power, then it wouldn't be a small or a building block. So ultimately, then its power must come from something else. Outside itself, all the building blocks, the smallest building blocks in this universe must have its its power supplied to it with its attributes given to it by something else. And the fact that the universe doesn't seem to be in chaos, and confliction means that this the power source that is sustaining all these building blocks is one which

01:06:39--> 01:07:07

coheres with a versatile Quran that says, If there had been more than one, creator, one God, then you would have seen kind of the universe to paraphrase in chaos, as each creator changes the laws of universe, according to its own independent and separate will. The fact that you have regularities in the universe shows that everything is being sustained by one, one sustainer.

01:07:08--> 01:07:47

Right. And there's, there's no other explanation, unless you're saying that every other building, every building block, the fundamental building block is infinitely concrete, its own power inexhaustibly, and then you'd have a universal in of a universe of gods, but then how would they How come they all limit, they're all limited, and follow regularities and laws, is only because its fundamental building blocks are limited, but they need then a source for their power, a source for their attributes, and this actually has to come outside themselves, to sustain it. That's why in this agrees with this summit, consider Allah Subhan, Allah is the Sustainer isn't just create the

01:07:47--> 01:08:30

universe, and then the universe doesn't need him anymore. But he's actively is continuing to sustain its existence. And that can be deduced, you know, rationally Otherwise, the only way to avoid an infinite regress of of substances have smaller and smaller building blocks, that goes into nothing, and then nothing would exist. So there has to be a fundamental layer of reality, which is not which can be broken down further. And then its attributes must come from whatever is sustaining these these giving these things, its add these attributes, because these things don't give themselves their attributes, otherwise, they would be infinite of power. And lastly, the other fourth argument,

01:08:30--> 01:09:16

the argument from specificity, which is not just a mouthful, but also an argument, which is really the argument for Where did the choice of things come from. So it's similar to the argument that everything is finite, and finite things need to be created, their limitations need to be drawn to a circle, if you draw a circle, you've made a circle by defining its limits, right? That's what's so finite things need to be limited, limited, or defined into existence. So but that's I've really argued that in the second argument, but this the argument for specificity, specificity is where did the choice for the things to be the way they are come from, so how comes this universe doesn't have

01:09:16--> 01:09:58

one more quirk than it does? Or one less quirk than it does? How comes you have the universe with this very specific laws, and attributes, and amount of energy, and the rate of expansion and all this in a very specific way. Now, of course, an atheist or materialist would argue, well, these these things are caused by we would argue these things were determined by the prior set of conditions to this universe. So whatever was before this universe, whatever the conditions were, that led to this universe, they determined what the universe would be. I said, Well, that's great. That's fine. I can accept that. Well, that will still be part of the universe because the universe

01:09:58--> 01:09:59

everything that exists

01:10:00--> 01:10:41

But where did these these prior conditions who what determined the the conditions of the prior conditions this universe, let's say, I'm not applying a prior prior condition, okay, then what determines these conditions to be the way they are, okay, that's an even more prior condition and so on and so on and so forth, it leads to another infinite regress that goes back into the past. which ultimately means we will never get to this point, we will never get to this point of determination of, of our reality being determined the way it is. The only way to avoid determinism a chain of causality

01:10:42--> 01:10:51

is to argue that at some point, not only was the universe obviously created, but that a choice was made to determine it in a particular manner.

01:10:53--> 01:11:38

Right, does that make sense, a choice was made to determine that it would be this quantity, this quality, this size, this rate, at this moment, or this settlement like it had to be at this moment, rather than just At this rate, at this level of cosmic laws and rules to certain proportions and magnitude that they are, they are the way they are, which the point of scientists measure these things to find out what these measurements are. But where was this measurement came from? It has to come from from something that chose or proportioned, the universe to be the way it was, or whatever it was the universe, meaning is everything that exists. So maybe this universe didn't begin with the

01:11:38--> 01:11:54

Big Bang, but existed six Big Bangs before that, let's just say for the sake of argument, fine, fine. But that initial, there must have been an initial determination of what the size and proportion of things would be, that would stop this chain reaction going if there is a chain of determinism.

01:11:56--> 01:12:00

determinism has to start somewhere and basically that by a determiner.

01:12:01--> 01:12:28

And of course, we know that our last one to Allah is the one who measured out and determined or things he measured out and proportioned, the creation, he didn't just create it, of course, but he measured out and pushed it to a certain level. So with these four arguments, which are each based on the four possible causes, you could ever look into anything you observe, Aristotle's four causes,

01:12:29--> 01:12:48

that all these four attributes or aspects of reality prove there has to be a first cause. And guess what, I didn't point to anything specific. I didn't point to the sun, the moon, to to, you know, the nation of Canada or the the seas of the ocean, I didn't say that what you're seeing

01:12:49--> 01:13:22

is true. And you're not in the matrix. You notice. I didn't say that, right? I simply said that, whatever you're observing, you're observing these in your, whatever you're experiencing, whether it's a program, or whether it's brand and VAT, and you're receiving electrical signals, even if it was electrical signals, these electrical signals must have had a start point somewhere in the past that chain of causality that goes that starts somewhere in the past, and hence, I argued on them. I put on Twitter, quite

01:13:23--> 01:13:40

provocatively, maybe, to some skeptics, I said, we might not know for certain that what we are observing is an accurate depiction of reality, that as it as is, but we know that God is certain and in fact, God is the only thing we can notice that

01:13:41--> 01:13:48

the Creator is actually the only thing we can know for certain everything else. We we are unable to know

01:13:49--> 01:14:33

or to come to a precise model of how it works. And you might argue, I've done it. But you know, why would how Why would God create us with an inability to know reality? Right now, interestingly, the crime does say that Allah, Allah made the universe will help. Right? In truth. We're not in this kind of gnostic, or a spiritualist world, according to some spiritualist or Gnostics that believe the world is just an illusion, all right around you. But the universe may be Huk with truth, right with reality, but you know, from from waqia, from getting you know, reality, but regardless of that verse, the crime, we haven't got to the crime just yet.

01:14:35--> 01:14:59

Everything has a reality to it. Even if you were in the matrix. That program that you're observing in this hypothetical scenario, comes from some hard drive somewhere comes from a solid state, you know, memory drive or something comes from programs generated by something when you're seeing a computer game and you're seeing the graphics card.

01:15:00--> 01:15:37

design, you know sprites on the screen from you based on the program that has a reality that there is something happening there it comes from something, it comes from reality, right. And you could argue that, because we can't see the quantum world directly with our eyes, that what you're observing, you know, isn't everything of reality. So whether you're in the matrix, or whether you're in, in, in the life that we are observing, and so on, we can all agree that you can't observe or you will not observing all of reality, but you are always observing some aspect of reality.

01:15:38--> 01:16:13

Right? as to whether your mental models of reality, you know, are consistent with what's actually happening outside of your mind, that's a different discussion. But everything has a reality to it, actually, everything even even your if you're having a fever, and you're seeing illusions, right? Those illusions didn't pop out of nowhere. They come from misfiring synapses in your mind, in your brain. From memories and, and observation of the world that all kind of being jammed together, but they come is coming, your illusion is coming from somewhere.

01:16:15--> 01:17:02

Everything you observe has a reality to it. And it's part of reality, in some way, shape, or form. Anyway. So we got to the point about about that there is an infinite infinite thing or thing that has infinite power, which has a will, how do you know he cares about us? How do you know this, this Creator of the Universe cares about us? Well, but people say we're such a small, tiny speck, this creator wouldn't care about us. It's so small and tiny, and so on. So wait, wait, wait a second. Have you just assumed that this creator that can create from nothing inexhaustibly with intent, so with a purpose behind why it's a choice, a choice, intent, knowing and sustaining everything that

01:17:02--> 01:17:10

exists, that this creator has a finite attention span? You know, can't do too many things at once, because it's going to be confusing, like a human being.

01:17:12--> 01:17:42

Right, the deist has anthropomorphized God, into being of limited attention span. polytheists have done it too. They say, Oh, you know, God's too distant from me to hear my prayers, or answer my prayers. So I'm going to pray to an intercessor like a secretary, one of God's secretaries, or preachers intercessor who intercede with God because I'm too lonely for God to you know, hear me, right? It's not my word. You know, it's like, oh, you know, God

01:17:43--> 01:17:44

has an infinite

01:17:45--> 01:18:10

infinite capacity to know and to intend things, right. Well, God does have an infinite capacity to intend and know things. And one could argue that he says, if he is sustaining the various subatomic particles in your body right now, out of choice, then how would you not know that you exist? and not know that you exist to an intimate level better than yourself even?

01:18:12--> 01:18:41

Right. So the D is assumption is really anthropomorphizing God and biofortification I say that the problem with with deists, polytheists, and even atheists when they try to argue that maybe the universe universe is eternal and not, and that doesn't mean that God is what they've done is they've given attributes of infinitude infinity to finite things, they've mixed infinity and finite stuff together.

01:18:42--> 01:18:46

And in the, in my presentation, I pointed out that Islam is unique,

01:18:47--> 01:19:01

unique, apart from some Unitarian conceptions of Christianity, of some aspects, some conceptions of Judaism, and, you know, the modern types of monotheism in the past, apart from these things,

01:19:02--> 01:19:20

the uniqueness against these other ideologies and ways of life is that we don't mix the finite and the infinite together. Right, we keep them apart, right? And we call this total heat. Yeah, is that God is not, does not tire doesn't have a limited attention span.

01:19:21--> 01:19:52

Doesn't can't be fooled, or it doesn't have limited attributes or characteristics that we have in any way, shape, or form. So that's just an assumption or an image that we've projected onto God and assumption that we predict something. And then that causes these people to have doubts because there's contradiction and then they reject God and say, No, no, it's not good that you should reject it. It's your assumptions. You should have rejected your finite assumptions about God. So

01:19:53--> 01:20:00

deism can't be correct. The only thing that's remaining is that God intends us to exist and how

01:20:00--> 01:20:25

intention behind our existence. And now to kind of wrap it up. I will say that if everything that exists on this universe, first and foremost, you know, what can we deduce about this way? What can we say about these things? Well, the crisis only quite interesting. It says, you know, not equal is something that can't create, and someone that can create, that can correct that that cannot prove. Now,

01:20:27--> 01:21:02

the Quran is amazing, in many, many features and ways. But it's one of its amazing attributes is that it can have one verse that can have can be a reputation of something, but also reputation of somebody else. So that verse, it was a great reputation of people who worship stone statues and idols that can't do anything can't correct. So why are you? Why are you worshiping people would, you know, pray to Krishna and then celebrate Christian birthday? I'm like, what, why? I Why would you wish your person has a birthday? doesn't make any sense at all? Why don't worship that which creased all birthdays, you know.

01:21:04--> 01:21:13

So, you know, doesn't make any sense. But this person has another interesting this can be used, and to explain something else, which is,

01:21:14--> 01:21:19

if God didn't create the universe, and never created anything,

01:21:21--> 01:21:26

this would be in a way functionally no different in effect, to something that cannot create.

01:21:28--> 01:21:33

Right? Something that if God never chose to create anything at all,

01:21:34--> 01:22:32

ever, this would be, in effect, no different to something that that has an inability to create. So then, by creating, what does that, you know, what is that an evidence of it's an evidence of the creator's ability to create, to have inexhaustible power, which means that everything in existence is a demonstration of the power of this creator. First and foremost, you almost could say it was our purpose, it is our purpose, by intent, that we are a demonstration of the the power of the Creator, to create. And it's interesting that the Quran refers to everything that all of Allah's creation as the IRS of a law, right, and the evidences and signs of Alaska, Montana, you know, like, if you are,

01:22:33--> 01:23:22

you know, if you're, if you're seeing the sun come over the horizon, one of the signs of this is that the sun rising so to speak, is that the the kind of the sky will get lighter, before you see the sun coming over the horizon. So one of the signs that of this, of this sun coming or the ryzen. So one of the evidence is that the sun's existence even is the light, it starts to lighten the horizon as it as it rises. So, the Quran describing the whole universe as the signs of Alaska, Montana, of the evidence of him, but just as the manifestation of his power, and the fact that everything fundamentally is this in the entire universe, means that our purpose must also be that as

01:23:22--> 01:24:05

well, because we are part of this creation, that we are to be signs of others creation. But we are we are a different creation to rocks and planets and galaxies and so on, which are massive. And interestingly, the crime does say that the creation of the heavens and the earth are greater than the creation of mankind. But most men, most of mankind know not, that this universe is not meant for us wasn't meant to revolve around us. Everything in this universe has its purpose, focused on the Creator, not on us when people said, some atheists argue skeptics say, Well, if you know God made this universe for us, how come this is bigger than we could ever possibly observe? Potentially, or

01:24:05--> 01:24:26

explore? And I said, Well, wait a second, where did you get the assumption that is universal for you? Right? I mean, sure. In Allah has subject in the chronic says that he has subjected it to you. It's for your use, what you can use of it, but it's not for you. That's an assumption, as always,

01:24:28--> 01:24:35

and maybe To be fair, could be a tiny bit cheeky. I'll relate the story of electronic. When I was at university, there's a

01:24:37--> 01:25:00

bit of a bit of a funny, quirky character. And he said, Never assume, because it takes up the word assume he writes on the board. He takes the first three letters and he kind of draws a line after the first three letters and then it was a line after the letter you and it's it because it makes out of you and me. Alright, so men do not assume so perhaps, that was that's been embedded

01:25:00--> 01:25:13

And, and kind of imprinted on my my psyche and so now hopefully shall be imprinted upon yours. But if it helps you not to assume then then by all means, remember it. Anyhow. So

01:25:14--> 01:25:31

if everything is universal sign up is a sign of God. And we are different creation, to inanimate I mean animals have the ability they appear to, to be proactively trying to survive and reproduce, like plants. But animals are more pronounced more proactive than plants not static.

01:25:33--> 01:26:09

They have an A, they have a big experience the world like we have a bit experience the world, and all these things relate to the creator of the universe. The only thing that could ever potentially explain any of this is that God created consciousness, again, to bear witness to his power to correct everything that exists. And we have freewill because there's that must be connected in some way to bearing testimony to his existence. Now Islam comes along and explains that

01:26:10--> 01:26:55

humans are very complex, like we know, you think that we'd be left with no guidance, when we have the ability to have a to metacognitive metacognition, we have ability to think so we can derive concepts and elaborate ideas and and, and cultural structures and rituals and things, you think that we have the capacity for intellect, but then we wouldn't be guided to how to use the intellect, and that our guidance wouldn't be related to the creator of everything and on all things, and that we have free will. And you think the free will is just for no purpose at all. But rather, Islam explains that the purpose of free will is that was for us to bear witness to God's power, but with

01:26:55--> 01:26:58

free will to do it, voluntarily.

01:26:59--> 01:27:05

Right to do it by choice. And imagine also, just how amazing free will is.

01:27:06--> 01:27:21

Because you think if Allah, Allah can create everything, everything and he sustains everything, then it's not possible for him to create something that can reject His guidance or reject what he his will. Right? If his will controls everything.

01:27:23--> 01:27:25

It would be impossible you think,

01:27:26--> 01:28:08

you'd assume for him to create something that could ever define his will, right? Not possible. And yet, we all have given us free will. And that itself is a glorification, we call make glorification, we mean, an evidence of God's power to create something that could potentially and does often say, reject His will and do other things other than his will. But what is his will when he goes to watts, because you can say, the material universe follows just material laws? Well, because we have an intellect, we are given as long as as well as the material laws that we have to obey, like, obviously, you know, meat, eat, and so on and so forth. But we are given intellectually, but

01:28:08--> 01:28:50

intellectual based laws that we can come to understand and can allow us to have a choice whether we follow those laws, or not follow those rules, not follow those rules. And that would make sense that that actually would be what I expect. And of course, if we need guidance, which is intellectual, then it has to be transmitted to us by a message of some kind. Now, of course, if if all this knowledge was given to every human being innately, then you couldn't have freewill because then humans would be imprinted with a law system that they couldn't deny and they would have to follow. So there has to in order for freewill to function, we have to basically be given it in a in a in a

01:28:50--> 01:29:04

way that is practical, but also allows the possibility of rejection to facilitate the purpose of free will and so has to come by a transmitter of some kind, but if you would, if you were to quote unquote, see God, quote, unquote,

01:29:06--> 01:29:44

you wouldn't have free will, right? If something's a gun to your head, you're not going to have free will. It has to be given in the form of a type of, of plausible deniability for the insincere right. plausible deniability for the insincere and that can only come as it has to come by a messenger and I'd come by being that's made for that, let's say the angel or human, but how the to which one would be the best, most optimal messenger for this well, to mankind generally, it would be better if it came by a human being, because firstly, a human being.

01:29:45--> 01:30:00

You could you could try to emulate the human being who's manifesting and practicing this message at the same time, right? That's the most optimal way to learn how to follow something. A human being has to teach you and you

01:30:00--> 01:30:39

Have to emulate it like to emulate your parents. Right? If an angel did it, well, an angel is not human. So it would be kind of impractical to you view it as well. It's easy for you to do it as an angel. But I'm not an angel. I can't do this. But also, if you would see an actual angel with a being that's great and yourself calling to God, again, that will deny your free world because you do our fear that this greater race of beings could destroy you if you reject it, or what have you just thinking because the Quran parallels his argument that if if angels came to the creation and said no, then the judgment would have been immediate, because you would have would have been given that

01:30:39--> 01:30:54

you would have been given the most absolute proof, honestly absolute proof, you would have been given, like an evidence that even removes insincere deniability to you that God exists and then and then if you reject God, then

01:30:55--> 01:31:08

after you're not even having room to maneuver, not even having that insincere deniability, then your judgment is instance that you're instantly shown to be a rejecter of that truth, and instant rejected.

01:31:09--> 01:31:47

So that it makes sense, I can explain that for you if you want. I don't want to give too much away from the the course I want to keep it more basic, but the course will go into the each of these different points in more depth. But it will actually go into things like human history, it will go into the sciences, it will go into this much more depth each of these these points. But long story short, and I can only keep it short, because it's times ticking. But the only possibility left is that what Islam is saying is true and makes and is the only possibility that explains observable reality. It can only ever be as Islam explained it, as Islam demonstrated it, and the fact that

01:31:47--> 01:31:57

there was nothing like Islam, because like Christianity, we have, we don't have a preserved textual message from

01:31:58--> 01:32:40

from the founder of Christian, but he certainly isn't the founder of Christianity, St. Paul is St. Paul is but we don't have a guarantee that of the, the authenticity and there are contradictions in that text, Judaism, same problem. But also it's more parochial to the tribes of Israel, whereas we are expecting a message that has to be more universal to all mankind. But that doesn't necessarily negate the met the prophets that the Israelites have reported King monster. So any human being who comes to this rational deduction, would have to conclude there has to be a messenger somewhere, and then go looking for any evidence of this messenger or messengers to find this revelation from God.

01:32:40--> 01:33:24

And there's a sign that Simon and Farsi did when he was searching for the truth, he conclude there has to be a messenger somewhere, I'm going to try to find this messenger that is relating to us a clear message from God as accessible as much as possible. I'll kind of leave it there. But it was, initially this led me to concluding that Islam, no matter how deceptively simple it appears, is, is the only possible explanation fortnight was initially the best explanation for reality. And then as I started to do more and more research and gain more and more information, knowledge, and all different possibilities, and both philosophical and spec, pseudo scientific speculations, I conclude

01:33:24--> 01:34:08

that it was, it was the only possible explanation, not just is the best one of what we've got from all the available, or religions that we are known about known to us. But it's actually the only possible explanation that could ever that could explain reality. And if you were to change any core doctrine of Islam, just a little bit, it would cause a contradiction in its explanation of the universe, everything and within itself. Of course, someone could argue, well, how do you know there's not three salons or five salons with you? There's a religion that had five slots, but also free slots per day or, or 10 slots per day? Well, the amount of rituals and things obviously can,

01:34:09--> 01:34:26

you know, there's no, you can't rationally say that there can only be a certain number of rituals that people have to do. Of course, it would make sense that, then you wouldn't get a way of life that asked for so many rituals, you couldn't actually do all the things in life, which you are meant to do, like eat and survive, and so on. And so of course,

01:34:27--> 01:34:59

or being, for example, abstinent from marriage, which obviously some religious or there's different, you know, monks, both Christian and Buddhist and others have renounced, you know, let's say, sexual pleasures and things like that. They don't want to get married and so on, which wouldn't make sense because we have that as a capacity and a natural drive a natural is in a God intended drive, and all of us, so that wouldn't make sense. But you couldn't deduce that, you know, Friday has to be the day way there is a congregational prayer. Why?

01:35:00--> 01:35:06

On Saturday, well at one point, it was Saturday, all right. But that is not what is can be,

01:35:08--> 01:35:49

has to be fixed away it was What does have to be fixed away was our the very core doctrines, beliefs and just the general principles, and just how Islam interrelates in society organizes human nature, family, neighbor and neighborly obligations and ties, all these things that could have only ever been the way it does. Once you have studied human nature, you know that what we experience is this, this this, this this consistency we call it hikma, right, we say that this agrees with human fitness, this, this Islamic ordinance or Command agrees with a human fitted out and organizing society such that's how we kind of observe it. But if Islam commanded something that goes against

01:35:49--> 01:36:29

the fitter, then that would be evidence that Islam is not true. Because the creator of the filter is the has to be the one that is the the author of the revelation that we are receiving, has to be from the same author, the author of human nature, and the universe has to be the same offer as the author of Revelation and by you by comparing that you'll see that with Islam that it meets and fits. This is what the course is going to demonstrate in more greater detail. I can't do that in this very small, personal niche. So buckle our feet come for your patience and bear and listening to myself in this. It did have to go for a little bit more because I wanted to kind of show you I don't want to

01:36:29--> 01:36:53

make any assertions that just skipped over points in the thinking, I want to show you a clear line from complete skepticism to at least the concept that we need a messenger right and then but now we can do further research further investigation initial not my my del mask was called make our masterclass course with the crown Institute.

01:36:55--> 01:37:06

We'll be doing that further investigation in depth and painstaking, granular detail. So inshallah, you know, if you want to know more, please sign up to that course. So buckle up vehicle.

01:37:07--> 01:37:07

Thank you so much.

01:37:10--> 01:37:16

That was really awesome. Come to LA very involved. And you know, you're like, Oh, this is an introduction. I'm like, oh, man, this is like

01:37:18--> 01:37:35

more than an introduction for me. haven't done a lot. So that's really awesome. And I'm gonna share actually the information about your site on the chat in the late hours, and people can look at that with the law. And and I recommend that you sign up for this. But what I really think is an amazing,

01:37:36--> 01:38:27

if any, even if the arguments that you were making are so succinct and so precise. Word to involve, for the audience. The I think that thing that will stand out is that there is a process of reasoning that deduces for us, the or that not as deduces but validates, for us our core belief system. Right. And that, for us is a very important aspect. That our Eman our faith isn't just based on your tool to do so. So that's it. It's actually based on reasoning. The Quran uses this idea that appeals to reason at every turn. And every time there's an appeal to reason, and I'm really glad that you demonstrate it was how that what that looks like what that process looks like Alaska for that. We

01:38:27--> 01:38:39

actually do have quite a few questions, but we also have the mother Upsala right now. I'm using this this thing called slide Oh, here, you can be posting the QA

01:38:40--> 01:39:05

link, you can ask questions there. What I would suggest I think I don't want to break the floor of the lecture. Like generally you would say like, let's pause for a moment and come back in the messages. But we're doing things virtually and I would say that you know, people should like pray this a lot and then come back and rejoin if that's okay with everybody. inshallah, what I will do is I will leave this to you

01:39:06--> 01:39:17

while you can look through the questions and start to answer them one by one is that or is that a right? Yes, but with only the proviso that you please refer to me as brother I am

01:39:18--> 01:39:20

no shake at all close to a milkshake.

01:39:23--> 01:39:23

You just

01:39:25--> 01:39:59

say that because out of respect for how how accomplished Mashallah your presentation is and how you are Mashallah. So, I think it is a title will earn inshallah, but it whatever you prefer, even later that no problem at all. You can see my questions here, right. Yes. Okay. So what I'll do is I'll read the first question, and I'm going to then just quickly jump off pretty much of it, and I'll be back. I know, I think maybe if you go on the link that I had posted on the chat, right, you can actually scroll through them as well.

01:40:00--> 01:40:41

Yeah, I think you can, even if you can check them off, but hopefully by the time I'm back, you're done maybe the first few questions, and then we can kind of rapid fire through the rest, right? I mean, I mean, just so that maybe people who kind of take the time to attend, perhaps we should just have a 10 minute break. Oh, yeah. Okay. However long people would like, and good, because obviously, here it was very late nights past budget. Multiple time. Okay. And so on an issue time Even so, for me, it's fine. But if you want to give people maybe a 10 minute break, we can reconvene. Okay, I'll be I'll be here, wherever we can I cancel this question. All right, people is that okay? This like,

01:40:41--> 01:40:43

type? Yes. If you're okay with that in the chat, please.

01:40:46--> 01:41:32

mazari was Yes. All right. Awesome. Great. So we'll take a short break. And I'll put like a small like, note here, that we're taking a small break with the light Allah and, you know, refresh ourselves and then finish strong with the QA, thank you. So was actually excellent session, I really appreciate that does aka lokeren, we'll be back shortly, what I'll do is I'm going to pause the recording in the Muslim world, for reasons which I won't go to too much into. But basically, Islam, the big, the worst thing that ever happened to Muslim civilization was success, Muslims, and they became very successful, very rich, powerful and wealthy. You when you don't have to think much the

01:41:32--> 01:41:46

way you make next meal is coming from, then you don't have to think much. And what you'll see is, over many generations, that gradual dumbing down to for for want of a better way of putting it occurred, and

01:41:47--> 01:41:49

with the kind of

01:41:50--> 01:41:56

the, the Arabic language itself, you know, becoming kind of corrupted into more

01:41:58--> 01:42:28

amea versions, you know, kind of colloquial versions, people were reading Islamic texts and coming up with the wrong ideas, and the scholars started to kind of panic, panic. And for want of a better way of describing it, people were, it was decided that the best way forward is just Tell, tell the masses, some very simple doctrines that they can absorb and adopt, and, you know, kind of make this disconnect between them and them in the general masses,

01:42:29--> 01:42:39

more than had been before. So, you know, like, have a very simple Islam that would lead most the average Muslim just to kind of live their life and live a simple life

01:42:41--> 01:43:09

in an increasingly complex and more complicated for which they fought that, you know, that once they had reached this kind of peak of civilization, it became about conserving it as much as possible. And then we have it right where we have it now is very comfortable life. So let's just conserve it. And then as, as kind of living conditions tied to be affected by wars and changing economic scenarios. And the West, which had learned our science and technology,

01:43:10--> 01:43:51

discovered the new world and had access to vast quantities of resources. Then they they kind of soon outstrip the Muslim world. And but Muslims were still thinking they were the superior civilization, and they start to think that it became a kind of arrogance as opposed to the humidity of all we have to spread a message and we have a world project for Islam. And we're only as good as, as our as our intentions and our endeavors and our efforts. And our last $1 is not going to make life easy for us in the sense of, you know, we don't have to, we won't be able to won't be needing to use our intellect which you gave us to use. Right? We'll just, you know, things just to simply know, we'll

01:43:51--> 01:44:00

just approach it simply. So what you saw from many Westerners who went to the Muslim world, they tend to describe it in a in a very amazing terms. They say,

01:44:01--> 01:44:12

it's decadent, the Muslim world is decadent, right? They much like, you know, you say that people from Muslim countries go to America would say maybe the United States of America is,

01:44:13--> 01:44:23

is a kind of America, which has Canada and Mexico, and Central America and South America. So they've got insane, it's very decadent culture that they're following. Likewise,

01:44:24--> 01:44:56

you know, the West and the Westerners who were traveling to the Muslim world, we're looking at Muslims and seeing, you know, very decadent culture. And as industry and economics kind of started to suffer. Because Muslims were relying on trade routes, you know, taxing trade routes and making, you know, money off of a global economic system that they were right in the middle of and so they didn't, you know, they can live the easy life. And what happened is that when you're learning to circumvent that or go to the new world, and then the trade routes weren't as lucrative as they were before.

01:44:57--> 01:44:59

You know, the living conditions start to descend on

01:45:00--> 01:45:22

To decrease and what you see if you see this old paintings by you, mostly by Europeans, when they go to the, to the Muslim world is you see that these very richly dressed Muslims, right? Very nice when they dress Muslim, but they're in these kind of buildings, which look like they're sending into rubble around things like that, right? You know, you'd like, Well, wait a second, I know that that seems a bit weird what's going on there. And,

01:45:24--> 01:46:04

and that's, in essence, what was happening was that as Muslims started to lose, lose more, they just made do with what they had. Or they try to adapt by just accepting, less and less, because it was only it would go by, by increments, right, it was almost imperceptible. Anyway, that's what was really happening in an economic situation, but in the intellectual situation was a lot. Because Muslims had fought, you know, centuries fought that they were at the top of the world, the superior superior civilization, and that didn't require to do anything, because they were just blessed by God. And God would always give blessings to the Muslims. or giving them is no matter what, just

01:46:04--> 01:46:06

because they say they're Muslim, without having to do anything.

01:46:07--> 01:46:11

Or to to live by principles, you know, so then,

01:46:12--> 01:46:42

you know, Muslims would do would do things going against the Sharia, like, they would go on on raids of European slams, and cities, and obviously African and all around the world. Some of them would go on raids, and then just take prisoners and you know, put them into servitude. But the rules of jihad specify that it's only when you're you're basically fighting to kind of spread Islam by by conquering enemy military, which are acting as obstacles to the

01:46:44--> 01:47:00

regime. That's mercy being tyrannical. What have you, you find the military in Islam, it's the those who are fighting you, which you can, you know, you can choose to, you know, to take them as prisoners of war, and then make them work as the agenda of the third Geneva Convention allows, by the way,

01:47:01--> 01:47:23

but most of it like no, no, we're just gonna do raids because normal doesn't owe us this, they owe us in a week they are they are observing to us, which is not the Islamic thinking. Right. And it was arrogance, right, so there's arrogance, and then a gradual kind of stupid vacation that was happening. So the dwindling dwindling capable Islamic scholars are doing the number of cables and scholars

01:47:24--> 01:47:29

perhaps like the panic, this scenario happening, you know, the Arabic language becoming

01:47:30--> 01:48:09

kind of falling into into different dialects and not not being as robust as it once was in the mind of the Muslims. So they tried to basically just give simple codify doctrines and beliefs for Muslims simple ones. So that just just believe in this book, because if you start reading the text with your inferior knowledge of Arabic or your, your Amiga version of Arabic, you're kind of colloquial Arabic, you're going to get the wrong ideas, and we want to stop people having just coming up with random heretical ideas. So over time, this built up to this kind of dogmatic and by dogmatic I mean like a checklist version of Islam that you see taught to Muslims. And of course, then when

01:48:09--> 01:48:52

colonialism happened, which is the second calamity where the the you the kind of foreign colonialists shaved off the top layer of Islamic education stopped funding mother's have sought funding scholars of course, we are pleased to be of teaching and then started teaching Western education and Okay, the sciences mathematics was great. We were doing that before they did, they were they were teaching us but then teaching Western philosophy literature cultural history to the point then that all that remained was the you know, kind of low level Quran tutor who in essence just taught people rote learning of the Quran just to memorize and then just then it just became

01:48:52--> 01:49:19

memorize they just memorizing the form of it, not necessarily the meaning of it right. And you have some brilliant beautiful reciters of example from from Pakistan right but they don't know what they're reciting even though amazing reciters I was interesting because I you know, I know this numerous situations where you have an Arabic brothers speaking to a fox tiny brother and approximately brothers like crustaceans, beautiful Arab goes like saying, I wish I could recite the Quran like that. But

01:49:21--> 01:49:27

do you know what you're saying? No, I don't have some inkling of it but not not, you know, not the actual understanding of

01:49:28--> 01:50:00

an Arabic speaker would have in comparison. So long story short, the all this led to is that in Muslim world if you're if you're a static scholar, you're viewed now as backward because Western education system, you know, pushed out Islamic sciences from being taught and so you're viewed that if you if you're going to be if you're someone who's intellectual and clever and know stuff, you went for the western education system that was provided and of which everything now is a successor to and you become an

01:50:00--> 01:50:37

Counting engineer and so on and so forth. But if you fail all of that, don't worry. Because if you if you're if you're intellectually challenged, and you can't do these things, don't worry, you'll still have the opportunity just to study climate scientists and get some respect in society. And people look down upon Islamic scholars, the Muslim world, or on islands or more laws or movies or whatever they say, even in a derogatory tone, how they say those words. And that situation today. So in a nutshell, anyway, one could argue that had been hadn't come as predicted that would happen, right? through a kind of cyclical nature of civilizations, but it took 1000 years for Islam to for

01:50:37--> 01:50:40

this level of decadence, decadence, and, and

01:50:42--> 01:51:26

kind of stupid, stupid vacation occurring, leading to this. So it took a month before you have this descent, down whereas in the West, in the West Indies renascence in the 12th century, in the 13th centuries, only 100 years into its from its renascence so and look, it's already declining intellectually and sounds awful, right? So things are turning. And that's just the way of civilizations I suppose. But anyway, I hope that answers that, that our previous generation of grandfathers and so on so forth. I mean, like Marshall, I know some great characters amongst them. very principled people, amongst them. But most of them were taught and Islam. That was just a

01:51:26--> 01:52:17

checklist, which you do along with your life and not being the basis of your life. Yeah. And that's long story short, I think the reason for why we have that situation today. Yeah, that's a really fascinating answer is that costs are very, very expensive in its scope. And Michelle, I really appreciate that. One interesting thing also is that I think the just it becomes just Islam becomes just a checklist is boiled down to a checklist Okay, eat the halal meat you know, fast in Ramadan check, pray on this time check, put your hands here and so on check. And then the the Eman which is your the way you view the world just gets lost unfortunately. So that it alongside a calamity. But

01:52:17--> 01:52:20

to take you for context, I contextualize that for us.

01:52:21--> 01:52:58

Because I may or may be something that was just a small tiny point which was laid out. You'll notice this when it this discussion is on Muslims having doubts about Islam. And the the solution you always hear almost always is that they should have learned better about al Qaeda, they should have read these Akita books, and that would have helped them. But Muslim learning about, for example, that one of the articles of faith, they have to be all the branches. The furore is, let's say, belief in punishment, the grave isn't going to prevent them from having doubts about God's existence of the messenger, the format of the messenger ship of the Prophet Mohammed or something. And no

01:52:58--> 01:53:03

matter how much have you read, Talia? Or,

01:53:04--> 01:53:10

you know, or any kind of like a hanafy manual or shafee? manual? What does your fear that

01:53:11--> 01:53:23

if that's not going to stop you from having these doubts, unless you have a foundation for your belief based on as the con advisors obviously observing and coming to a conclusion about the world anyway, that was my

01:53:24--> 01:53:37

thoughts on medical ivig still struggling to understand how we can base these initial assertions on observation when someone can easily respond. What if we are living in a simulation?

01:53:40--> 01:54:21

Yeah, so I think I can't really answer that. I said that in my discussion. I didn't. I didn't refer to any particular objects. I mean, I use an example of a stone, let's say, but even if you were in a simulation, the simulation comes from somewhere. And you you're certainly living in a world of components, right? You're not living in a world where everything is the same thing. Or there's only one reality, some type of Wakata well, Georgia, Georgia, except by some people, because if that was the case, then where is the multiplicity of things coming from right? Even if you're in a program, there's multiple, the fact that there's a multiplicity, and each individual thing is finite,

01:54:21--> 01:55:00

regardless of whether it's a it's generated from a computer simulation, based on code, or it comes from a amalgamation of quantum particles, the effect is the same. So I said, I put the four fundamental aspects of reality, which is finitude, it being a specific size, what have you, and it'd be made of something and change. Those things are always going to be there no matter what you're observing. So if you don't need to know what that what you're observing is an accurate accurately represents the model of the universe that you imagine the model what is outside your mind, that's irrelevant. Those four things are always going to be universal aspects.

01:55:00--> 01:55:13

of creation, whatever your whatever it is you're observing in creation. And from those four aspects you can prove there's an ultimate creator, and sustainer and determiner, and specifier. Behind all things amazing.

01:55:14--> 01:55:26

If everything we observe is in our brain, in brackets not real, then how do we even trust its components attributes change specificity substance, such as I was able to pronounce that word. Okay.

01:55:28--> 01:55:36

Um, yeah, I think that is the same thing again. Which is same same answer you just answered. That was right.

01:55:38--> 01:55:58

Someone actually on Twitter, they made a better argument. They said, you're, you're, you're doing all this rationality based on your brain, how do you know that your brain is working accurately, and you're not producing, you know, incorrect results, and so on, so forth. Yeah. So that the My point is, is that you're your brain,

01:55:59--> 01:56:43

you only know your brain due to observation of, of like, other people's brains, or your MRI scan of your brain or what have you, right? You're you only know that you have a brain by by observation. But to get to that, you have to trust your senses. All right, to tell you that you have a brain, the brain can malfunction. So what comes first, before anything is experienced, there's something inside you that's experiencing the world, but that's the observer inside inside you. So the observer can make these conclusions? Definitely. But to believe that brain malfunction, you have to first believe in the brain. And that comes from trusting your senses. So that is a is a shorter way of answering

01:56:43--> 01:57:24

that there is a longer way, but I'll go through those permutations in the course, all the different permutations. But yes, you can even say, Oh, yeah, so can you even say that? Like, I'm not me, just thinking out loud here, as you answer that was that, like in Islam, one of the things that's required for a person to be what's called mukalla liable for their actions in the sight of God is that they have to have they have to be of sound mind. Right? So the assumption Islam is that you have a sound mind, and this process is then Kickstarter from there, but if a person is, you know, limited capacity, it like, you know, in terms of their brain capacity is limited, they're actually

01:57:24--> 01:57:52

not held liable by God for, you know, trying to fight for the responsibility of discovering the truth, what would you have to say to that, of course, I mean, you know, being qLf is, is always going to be a prerequisite. And if you if your brain is defective, then and your thinking process is defective, then you can, you can rest assured you can be more, rest assured that you won't be accountable for any way from what you do or say, anyhow, and that's out of your control. So it will be relevant.

01:57:53--> 01:57:59

But But what you can do is from what you can deduce, you must make this you must choose the best conclusions. What is the favorite?

01:58:01--> 01:58:44

There's a question here, I was just actually loading up the idea that the question is referring to it is that the wild mountains refused humans accepted the heavy duties. How does it How does it become my responsibility, as I was never asked, and this is for the benefit of the audience. This is referring to this, this first call on verse number three, number 33, verse 72, that in our Amanda Tallis sumati will deal with the birth of a Mila how shocking. I mean, how well harmala hell insane in the hook and ovolo, Mangia hula, we offered the trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refuse to bear it out because they were afraid of it. But man, Borat

01:58:45--> 01:58:54

he shortly proved and just an ignorant so the question I guess it's about this ayah if I'm not mistaken Is that Is that your understanding is also with Avila.

01:58:55--> 01:58:56

Yes, so

01:58:57--> 01:58:57

all of them.

01:58:59--> 01:59:51

Adams, Islam's progeny was kind of brought out, so to speak from him as we all brought out, and asked if we would consent as you say to, to accept this this. And we accepted willfully and one kind of wantonly. And the Quran describes it that we what kind of man isn't just to it has been it wasn't just to himself, because we put this test upon us, which many of us are going to fail. And we in it, we decided we wanted to have to have this test, because we wanted to get the possible benefits from this. So it was because we in essence, were greedy almost for this Amana for that the privileges that come with this and that we actually did, ourselves. Collectively speaking from from a

01:59:51--> 01:59:59

proportion of humanity we you know, we did ourselves a disservice an injustice to ourselves by jumping on something

02:00:00--> 02:00:36

Without understanding that, that perhaps not understanding but without recognizing the perhaps the full weight of what that might entail, we agreed for the for the trust to take those the privilege. But as all everything in Islam, with every with every privilege comes responsibility with every trust comes with responsibility and trust comes and privilege, they are all connected together so everything is balanced out. So it'd be no inanimate matter in the universe, which could make obviously that matter

02:00:37--> 02:01:03

conscious to ask him to ask itself to ask of it, you know, he said no doesn't want it, you know, then all it has to all you have to look forward to is just existing, and then it will maybe cease to exist. And that's it, but didn't have any, any further desires. Beyond that it doesn't, you know, said, but as we wanted, we wanted that extra, right beyond normal matter. And if that's the case, then we extra will be expected of us.

02:01:05--> 02:01:18

Like, it's like we wanted that consciousness, we enjoy the privileges of having a consciousness a will, a free will. And that comes with the responsibility of the manner of,

02:01:20--> 02:02:00

of bearing the responsibility of finding the truth and then worshiping the truth. Right. Is that Is that a fair summary? Yeah. And as it says, you know, the crown uses the term Fullam means injustice. And that's what we did. And you know, that we were also, you know, giant in how we reacted our ignorance. We didn't think through the consequences of this. And we were we actually did ourselves collectively speaking and injustice. I'm not, I don't want to belabor the point here, but it seems a questioner is referring to,

02:02:01--> 02:02:11

like, I didn't choose it like me as like me as Ireland. Right. So how can I have to do it? Right, what would you say to something like that? Well, I'd say