Ali Ataie – The Arguments For Atheism Are Weak
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AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
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, quote, 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,
halakatani minna or halaktahu minthin.
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 shaitan,
they don't see
the test of Allah
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 mountainside.
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 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
in all
things, they don't know who the prophet really
is.
Exdigits 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're 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 Sayidna Hamza,
when they looked at their nephew, when they
looked at the prophet, sallallahu alaihi sallam,
they would see Sayidu Waledi Adam. They would
see the master of the children of Adam.
They would see Rasulullah, the master of the
children of Adam. They would see Rasulullah, the
first pillar or support of our religion.
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.