Ali Ataie – Ramadan Reflection Moral Inconsistency of Disbelief
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the concept of the "assurance of the God-verified." The concept is to see only one God and acknowledge only one aspect of things, the material and the spirit. The speaker uses the example of the church's teaching of the holy spirit and the holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy.
AI: Summary ©
In our last session,
we said that the higher meaning of the
shahada
is to experience
and understand that there is only one God
to see Allah,
as it were,
in all things.
The atheist
or the material reductionist
only sees the horizontal aspect of things, never
the vertical.
This is called explanatory
monism.
For example,
when they see a flood, all they see
is water. They don't acknowledge the vertical aspect.
They only see the
asbaab,
right, the material means.
Imam al Ghazali, he said,
that's like seeing the pen writing, but not
acknowledging the hand moving the pen.
According to Rumi,
they don't see that the objects of their
love, their wealth, their families, etcetera, they don't
see that these things are
gold plated
by Allah's attributes.
They notice the gold but not the attributes.
When Iblis
looked at Adam alaihis salam, all he saw
was clay.
Right? And so he concluded,
I am better than him.
Right? Isn't it obvious? I mean, look, look
at me. I'm created from fire. This is
created from clay.
He's just looking at the material.
The followers of shaytan,
they don't see
the test of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in
this world. They don't see the mercy of
Allah
in this world.
These stories of the past that are meant
to be
admonitions and warnings.
They don't see the meanings in these things.
All they see is randomly colliding atoms
and fizzing stardust.
And there is no moral component to their
worldview.
On atheism,
the act of a man murdering another man
has as much to do with morality
than a stone rolling down a mountain side.
It's just atoms striking atoms.
Atoms and stardust
do not have conscience.
They have nothing to do with morality.
You cannot be objectively
immoral on atheism.
Morality for atheists is simply a convention.
There cannot be any moral absolutes for them
because there is no absolute
for them.
You see, the principles of the disbelievers
are not grounded in reason and revelation,
but rather in their own Hawa,
in their own caprice and desires.
They will insist, for instance,
that an amoeba,
right, a single cell organism found on the
planet Mars
constitutes
life.
That's life,
right? And that should be celebrated
or that people who eat chicken eggs are
committing some sort of
murder.
Yet
many of these people fully support the act
of an unborn human child
being ripped limb from limb,
from his mother's womb
because moral inconsistency
does not faze them.
They are guided by their feelings,
by their hawa,
right? For them, there is no higher authority
than the self, the nafs.
If the self is gratified by murder, then
murder becomes
justified
morally.
For atheists and moral and, for atheists and
material reductionists,
the mind is simply reducible to the physical
brain.
Right?
Therefore, they'll argue
if a person suffers,
some sort of
physical trauma to the brain, like a concussion,
then that person's memory or mind
is affected.
Now that's true, but to say that the
mind can be simply reduced,
to some physical process,
to firing neurons is ridiculous.
How do you go from a 10 pound
lump of matter in your head
to thought and memory and consciousness,
as Oxford professor John Lennox said, and I'm
paraphrasing,
that is like saying that the meanings of
the that is like saying that the meanings
of the words in a book are the
same as the ink and paper
upon which they are written.
See the physical thing carries the meanings, but
the meanings are not the same thing as
the physical thing.
In the Quran Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says
to the prophet
It's an amazing statement
that when you call them to guidance,
they don't hear you.
You see them looking at you, but they
didn't see.
They're looking at you, but they didn't see.
So in the language of scripture,
in the language of the Quran, you even
find this in the the Tanakh, the Hebrew
Bible. You find it in the New Testament.
To hear something means to obey,
and to see means to understand the reality
of something.
And we use that even today. Like we
say, oh, I see.
To see with your mind's eye.
Right?
We mushrikeen,
those who do not see Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala in all things.
They don't know who the prophet
really is.
Exigits point to,
point out that this verse
should be read in conjunction with the preceding
ayah,
They have hearts with which they don't perceive.
They have eyes by which they don't see.
They have ears with which they don't hear.
They are like cattle
or even worse than cattle.
They are the heedless.
You see when Abu Lahab, the uncle of
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, when he looked
at the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
he said this is my orphaned nephew.
That's all he is. He's just judging the
superficial.
That's it. But when Al Abbas
or Sayid Nhamza,
when they looked at their nephew, when they
looked at the prophet
they would see Sayidu Waladi Adam. They would
see the master of the children of Adam.
They would see Rasulullah,
the Messenger of Allah.
They recognized his essence. They recognized his reality.
So that's the first pillar or support
of our religion.
It is to witness
that there's no God but Allah
and that the prophet
is the messenger of God.
We will continue with our reflections
in the next session.
Until then, Assalamu alaykum.