Does God Exist

Assalamu aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.

Before I start, I want to praise Allah subhanho wa Taala the Most Merciful the most trust or praise His glory and gratitude belong to him for everything that we do.

Salaam stands for sharing and affection, love and mercy. And that's what we're here to do, inshallah specific specific at the time of age that we live, where Haiti has been hate, it's being spread by the label given freedom of speech. And this sometimes comes at the cost of innocent people dying. And we saw that Christchurch, we saw that in London, where we're from innocent people getting killed Muslim or non Muslim, and we want to put an end to this. And one of our objectives is to deconstruct false narratives and reconstruct pure minds. And that's our main objective. And I just want to thank every single one of you guys for coming, you can check our website solando home.uk. inshallah, we're

planning on setting up a team in California. This is a beautiful country, we absolutely loved it, the food is it the macros was the flavor, absolutely amazing. And I want to find it primarily in the team. Every time I create it, they get it for me, so we show them a successful debate inshallah. And we want to thank

you young Mashallah.

Yes,

I want to thank him I want to thank our teachers who have supported us supported us along the way in China, accessible debate, and all praises belonged to Allah subhanho wa Taala. salaam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.

Thank you very much for that as a Hello. Hi. So first, we'll be introducing Brother

Mohammed who job is a debater and public speaker who engages in discussions and polemics on a wide variety of topics including religion, politics, and society. He completed a politics degree and a master's in the history in history from Queen Mary University. He has taught and instructed courses on humanities and languages in many contexts. He has come he has numerous jobs as in some Islamic sciences, and is studied in numerous Islamic seminaries, including the Champlain Institute, which employs a traditional migration style of teaching of the sacred sciences. Edward Edie tabash, is a constitutional lawyer in the Los Angeles area. He graduated from UCLA in 1973 Magnum Laude with a

bachelor's bachelor's degree in political science, he graduated from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles in 1973. He is the son of an orthodox Rabbi from Lithuania and an Auschwitz surviving mother from Hungary. After decades of spiritual reflection and seeking he has determined that the universe is natural, with no supernatural being or beings, no god or gods involved in the creation or perpetuation of our existence. He chairs the board of directors of the center of inquiry transnational, a worldwide organization of secular humanists and scientific skeptics. He's also known for his legal work in separation of church and state cases in which we seek to preserve the

equality before the law of both believers and non believers. He promotes a secular society based in science, reason and inquiry, maintaining strong conviction in this he's an integral leader to several associations, which exists to separate church and state, a part of his work in separation of church and state has specifically been in opposing Trump's Muslim ban.

And Mashallah, they're both extremely qualified and we're very, very excited to have them both in this debate. And for this reason, we would like to also request a certain level of boundaries and guidelines for the event inshallah to make sure that it goes as smoothly as possible for both of our speakers. And that we ask that everyone be as as respectful as possible to both of our speakers by doing a number of few things. So we would like everyone to please if possible, please do not shout, Heckle boo, scream cause any form of ruckus against either speakers in order to respect their time, their knowledge, and everything that they're doing for us today. If people are causing issues,

unfortunately, we will have to have security escort you out in respect for both of our speakers. Also, another request that we have is that if you would like to clap please feel free to but only after the speaker is completed with their what they're saying simply because there is a time frame that each of them has to be able to get their points across. And we do not want to disadvantage either speaker by limiting the other speakers amount of time through copying and waiting for people to stop talking. And with that said, Please do not fall asleep. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, everyone. We really appreciate it. And then I will be passing off our microphone to our

moderator, which is Adnan for was

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. As I mentioned, I will be moderating moderating the debate.

We will start off with opening statements. Each speaker will have 20 minutes to give theirs and we will begin with Brother Mohammed hijab.

Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah cancel.

First of all, I want to thank every single one of you for coming down here, I want to thank the university. And of course, I want to thank editor bash, who's a really prolific, you know, formidable opponent, and a very experienced atheist opponent for many years. And so I'm very happy that all of you are here today, to proceed.

There's no doubt that there is existence.

There is no doubt that there is existence.

existence is divided into two things, possible existence, and unnecessary existence. Possible existence is existence that otherwise doesn't need to exist.

And its existence that could be arranged in any other way.

its existence which is dependent

on wearing a blue blazer, this is a possible existence doesn't have to exist.

It could be arranged in another way.

And

it's dependent upon materials that were created, used to create it.

Necessary existence, on the other hand, is existence which is couldn't be any other way. existence, which could not be any other way is independent, self sufficient and could not be out of existence.

Now, the main argument today is this, there cannot be a world with only possible existences. That is the main argument.

There cannot be a world with only possible existences. Why? Because it was only

going to be using the board a little bit. It is only possible existences, you'd have dependent things depending upon other dependent things. Now this can be reasoned, metaphysically, ontologically, and cosmological. For example, we

said series Yes.

Dependent one dependent two dependent three.

This series existed in its by itself, it would require something outside of it

an independent thing in order for that series to exist. Now what if we say,

let's say if it was an infinite series, we'll get to that in workflows.

Now.

Let's use a cosmological example.

We have a tree that's very beautiful trees here, by the way, in California,

are beautiful. That tree requires the sun to photosynthesize in order to exist, I think it's fair to say it's a tree that didn't exist, of the Sun didn't exist, the tree with no exists, start to say this, yes, so long as the sun is required, or so long as the tree exists, the sun will exist, even if that was for an infinite amount of time.

Now the sun itself is part of its own order.

And

it's far less own sense. Now, it requires other things in order to exist. And the end of this what is required, once again, is an independent thing, that this independent thing

can only be one, wait a minute. Why is that? Because if there was more than one necessary existence, it wouldn't be a necessary existence, because it could be conceived that it can be arranged in another way.

And you can't have two things which are independent, because which one is dependent on which

therefore,

whether you conceptualize is ontologically cosmologically, or materialism dualism, idealism, you must concludes, that what is required in order for any existence to exist, is an independent thing.

That is one

that is always in existence. Why? Because if it wasn't in existence, if it could be conceived that this thing is not an existence, it wouldn't be necessary.

So it has to be its own.

And it cannot be made up of parts. Why? Because anything which is a compound is generally

Anything that's made up of parts is dependent on those parts. that's point number one. And point number two, if it was a possible existence, if it's made up of parts, you can imagine those parts being arranged in a different way. Therefore, it falls into the category of possible existence. To summarize, you require an independent thing, outside of this series of dependent things, in order for any existence to exist, this thing must be one, it cannot have parts, it must be immaterial in corporate.

What else must be be?

It must be eternal. Now, this is what the Quran says in its basic definition of God. Allah, Allah, say, is God's one and only Allah is

the one who's independent, self sufficient. Everything depends upon him, and he depends upon nothing. Let me ask you that he begets not, nor is he forgotten.

He is the eternal, one, three, eternal, eternal. Well, I would love to have one I had, and there is nothing like him. He's immaterial. He's not composed of parts, he's uncooperative.

So you see, this is the argument. If this argument is cracked, I have lost the debate. This is my main argument. Everything goes back to this argument, which goes back to the basic definition of God. What must be presented is a formulation, whether it's a cosmological one, or an ontological one, which shows us how it's possible that only possible existences can exist without the independent. If that's done, I'm ready to be an atheist today.

Now, the Quran says in chapter 53, verse 30 5am, wholly human, why a

Bella yukino, where they created from nothing, where they themselves, the creators of themselves, that they create the heavens and the earth, suddenly they have no certainty. saying that the atheistic position is one of mere speculation, you can never achieve certainty with atheism. Why? Because in this logical disjunction, you have four options. Either the universe came from nothing, which is impossible,

ontological, mathematic, mathematically and cosmologically. It's not possible. No one has argued is really

it's a weak argument. I don't think my interlocutor with his experience will go there.

He's very prominent and very experienced, you won't go there.

And or is it a channel? Can it be it'll?

Well, let's say it is, wait a minute, what did you say? Did you consider that? Yes, no problem. Even if it was a turn off, for the sake of argument is dependent or independent.

You still have the problem.

But

my interlocutor is a naturalist. So he believes in the beginning of the universe. So that's not a problem for us.

What other options do we have? Is it self created? Like my friend Hamza also says, Is it possible for something to exist and not exist? At the same time he gives the example of a mother giving birth to herself? Is that possible? No, it's not possible. It's not possible. So the other thing is, it was put into existence by something which had the ability to do so.

Now, the question is, what are the attributes of that thing, which had the ability to put the universe into existence?

How do we reason this by inference? We say, Well, if it has the ability to put the universe into existence, it must have power.

Because that is required for that kind of thing. It must have creative capacity, it must have

knowledge,

must have knowledge.

So you see, we start to have a formulation.

A question now we have to ask

is, why is the universe one way? And not another way? It's conceivable, for example, you see you have celestial spheres in the universe. They're rotating in one direction, we can conceive and imagine, have the possibility of all of the celestial spheres in the universe going the other way. For example, we can imagine that.

So why is the universe one way rather than another way?

I will tell you that the only rational explanation for that is that there is an external particularize of the universe. Say that one more time, that there must be an external particular riser of the universe to choose between different options, possible options, because then you have no explanation for why the universe is one way rather than another way. You have to have an external source.

agents, you have to have external while sorting agents that besides x rather than y, otherwise, the question will be

to the atheist. How can you prove on naturalism? or How can you explain on naturalism that the universe is one way rather than another way? It's a very straightforward question.

Now, here's the thing.

If we know that there is an external sorting agent, this implies we'll have this agent.

And if there was more than one will, there will be a chaotic universe as the process by the

local anime

festival.

If there was more than one of them, the universe would have been corrupted the heavens in the earth would have been corrupted chapter 21 verse 22. How because if there's more than one will ultimately which one is steering the ship, there would be chaotic order.

The Quran also says Lala bah

bah, in chapter 23, verse 91. If there was one more than one Almighty, they would have outstripped one another, attempted to outstrip one another's power. So in other words, you can't have more than one of those things for those reasons as well.

And this brings me to my third point, which is

the argument of the physical coherence of the universe, which is a Quranic argument, because today I'm just going to be sticking with

the process.

A lady mala masala

move

on honey by a lady, Boss, boss, he Oh has he in

that chapter 67 verse three, look at the universe. look up in the sky.

Look at the sky.

Look at the coherence of the universe. Do you see any in consistencies?

Look again?

Look again, let me look, let me see.

Is there any inconsistency? Now I thought about this verse. And this verse is telling us that there is a uniformity of nature, a consistency and they have nature, a coherence of nature.

The fact that the universe is uniform and coherent, it is not known by science is presupposed by science. Wait a minute, what did you say? Let me say one more time. If you look, for example, at any introductory guide to the scientific method, like you got, he wrote The Illustrated Guide to the scientific method. He said that the fact that you have rushed analyzable actors that can see the universe and see its consistency

means that there's a presupposition of science and what is that presupposition that science is uniform, that the universe is uniform, is rationalized double. Our eyes 70s led us to solve him. He said the most

incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

So I'm not making a fine tuning argument today, because we've heard enough of that every atheist and every atheist has heard this fine tuning argument was the fine tuning arguments. The argument is look at the constants of nature. Yes, you have these constants, which are in a Goldilocks zone

of life permitting range. If there were any way this way or that way they would not. The universe would not just analyze will not be in a possible universe like lottery numbers. And he says n which is capital L a number talking about, you know, the natural forces he says a billion billion billion billion and had any zeros been taken away? Yes, then that would have been the universe would have been completely different. He is another letter that he talks about the conversion of hydrogen into helium. He says that this conversion is 0.007 hadn't been 0.006 or 0.008. We would not exist. This is exactly what he writes. It's not what I'm writing. I'm not a cosmologists. Right. It's what he

writes. That's an argument from probability. That's an interesting argument. I think the interesting thing is that many people see us a non theists, atheists. Accept the fine tuning of the universe. Stephen Hawkins accepted it. Richard Dawkins accepted it. So it's not really an area of controversy.

My argument is about the uniformity of nature, the coherence of nature, which is presupposed by the Universe by the by some scientific method. The question is, therefore, on naturalism

on naturalism, how can you account for the coherence of the universe? You can't say, well, the universe just is like Bertrand Russell said, because that is a circular argument, frankly. So cop out. I'm asking for an external explanation. We're rational people, we should be able to explain. If, if naturalism has the ability to, to give us these answers, then surely we should be entitled to such answers.

Now, I've got five minutes left.

And I've made my arguments. To reiterate. My main argument today is the argument from contingency. And it's not one that live in it's formulated, it's a different kind of argument from contingency that many Western people are not familiar with, is from our tradition.

And frankly,

the main question is this. The question is, how can you explain the worlds either ontologically or cosmologically? Naturally, that only has possible existences.

That's the question. If you can prove it, you've cracked the argument. Now I know, I've been watching his videos. He's an incredible speaker. And because he's a lawyer, he's got that charisma, that if when he starts speaking about how to run away, actually, incredible speaking, but I know I have a feeling of what he's going to talk about. And I think it's going to be the problem of evil. Right. Now, Epicurus,

an old Hellenistic philosophy, he had the logical form of the problem of evil

and the logical form and as follows that if God is omnipotent, and all good, then if he's omnipotent, why does he not stop the evil? If he's all good, then Hong Kong evil exists?

The answer that question is as follows. I'm going to give it to you right now. God is not just those two things. He's also also always

so in order for the problem of evil, from an Islamic traditions perspective, to be unlocked. Or to make sense, from a logical perspective, you have to show logically or naturalistically or cosmologically or mathematically or inductively, objectively any way possible, how?

How evil, the existence of evil contradicts the Divine Wisdom.

That's how it goes, if we don't believe in a God with three attributes goodness, or two attributes in and omnipotence only, that's not the God we believe in. So you have to show otherwise, it's an emotional argument.

Now, the other thing he talks about is the divine headedness. Why is God hidden from us? Now, we believe in the fitrah as Muslims, the immediate knowledge of God, the intuitive knowledge of God. And by the way, this is a Muslim specific belief. We believe that we are born believing in God, we have the immediate knowledge of God.

And that society strays us away from that knowledge of God. So the Quran, for instance, or the prophets come to reinforce what we already knew, prior moodily, if you like, primarily from a psycho spiritual perspective. So God is not hiding. In fact, he's reminding us and for us is Omar Khan, Mo, Divina, Hatton. avasarala, if an atheist dies is an atheist, and according to us, he dies an atheist is not the message of Islam. He does not go to hell straight away. We can't say this. It's not our belief. So God is not hiding according to us. So these are the two things I'm anticipating he's gonna be raising up some pre empting it. And finally what I want to say.

And we'll talk about this by the way that fits on the immediate knowledge of God because there is empirical evidence of that, by the way, Justin Barrett made an interesting has many interesting books on this. He says that there is a there is a divine receptivity to God. And he done

you know, studies with children cross culturally and found that children naturally believe in God. So atheism on this idea is a social construct. atheism was a cultural construct.

So finally, I want to say that the Quran promises us in chapter number 41, that Allah will show us all the way. In other words, his science, he says, but he said no, he.

He

said only

he

had a

hard time

That we will certainly show them our science in the horizons and in themselves, until it's made patently clear that this is the truth. I hope today we can be as sincere as possible and be open to this. And I hope now that we go back to that question of how there can be only possible existences, I leave it to Edward for the response. Thank you very much.

Is there some other mic I'm supposed to be? Okay.

Good evening, everybody. I want to thank the Muslim Student Association for putting on this debate. And I want to thank Mohammed for debating me. I will respond to his arguments in my rebuttal. But I will now present my positive arguments for why it is more likely than not, that the evidence in our physical universe clearly makes it so that a supernatural conscious personal being, that is an all good all knowing and all powerful deity. The standard issue god of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam does not exist. argument one. The argument that from the way our world operates, it is much more likely that there is nothing beyond the physical. The evidence shows that it is much more likely

that the universe is not impacted by any invisible realms, or by intentional actions by immaterial beings. The history of scientific discovery has shown that whenever we attributed phenomenon to paranormal creatures or gods further examination showed such beings did not cause what was happening. We learned that lightning is not caused by an angry god or gods diseases are not caused by evil spirits and by germs, and demonic possession has nothing to do with mental illness. as humanity has gone forward. Natural explanations have always evicted, previously believed supernatural ones, it has never been the other way around. There is no verifiable evidence of

anything supernatural, which there should be if the supernatural existed. Since we have no background information of supernatural beings or events, there is a very low prior probability of them. This means that for instance, if we were to use Bayes probability theory, we would be predicting only natural explanations for phenomena that we have never seen a Quark, we know that the category of subatomic particles particles do exist. evidence for the existence of quarks has been steadily increasing one indication of the soundness of the Quark model is its success in predicting the outcome of high energy collisions of an electron and positron, there are no such equivalent

empirically verifiable indications of God's existence. So we cannot infer the supernatural from a mere observation of the natural number to the argument from the non occurrence of miracles. claims of miracles have the initial problem of bearing witness against themselves, since by their very content they are violations of the laws of nature that are not supposed to be violated. All the supposedly miracles that are claimed to verify God's intervention and human affairs allegedly took place in a pre scientific era. Why don't we moderns have the same opportunity to observe these miracles today? No verifiable events in today's world correspond to the types of miracles that

monotheistic religions claim happened in ancient times, thus, the probability that a miracle happened regardless of which religion makes the claim will always be lower than the probability that a miracle has not occurred. Number three, the argument from the dependence of conscious minds on a physical body and brain, there is overwhelming evidence that conscious thought and awareness cannot occur without a functioning physical brain, with operative cortical neurons and synapses. Believing in a disembodied super intelligence and in life after death creates a serious dilemma, if even Alzheimer's disease can destroy conscious awareness. How can that very same conscious awareness

survive the destruction of the entire body and brain at death? This would entail believing that

certain portions of our physical brains are damaged, we lose the awareness contained in those portions. But if you destroy the entire brain by death, your a well wareness will somehow reappear fully intact in some immaterial form, highly unlikely. If consciousness could survive independently of the brain, diseases, brain injuries and anesthetics would not Eclipse consciousness like they do.

Since the evidence shows, there is no conscious self awareness or thought. Without a functional brain with operative cortical neurons and synapses. We cannot be expected to believe in any god that is supposed to have a disembodied thinking mind. Number four the argument from evolution. Though many theists believe in evolution, because of its sloppiness, and trial and error features, evolution by natural selection is more likely if there is no God.

More than 99% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. This is wasteful, we have useless components in our bodies that indeed do more harm than good, like the appendix, known to most of us only when it's about to burst. evolution by natural selection is established by the weight of the evidence. For instance, there is a 100% match of DNA sequences in the pseudo gene region of beta globin. That is proof that humans and gorillas had a common ancestor. Number five, as Mohammed predicted in his prophetic wisdom, the argument from evil, the evidential argument from evil, God can make whatever he wants happen, and prevent anything he doesn't want from occurring. So

why are their Holocaust, extremely dangerous and violent people, horrible diseases, extreme poverty and destructive natural disasters? If we humans need discipline, we could benefit from a military style training camp, not a concentration camp, there was no benefit from my mother's having been in Auschwitz. Another example, Malaria is a terrible disease. There's a gene though that provides an effective defense against malaria. It works by destroying any red corpuscles that have been occupied by any of the types of parasitic protozoans that caused malaria. But if one has inherited this gene from both parents, it also causes sickle cell anemia. Why did God have to set it up this way or

allow it to work this way? to attempt to justify or explain the horrendous evil and suffering in the world, the theist must be able to show that God even with unlimited power, could not have prevented an even greater evil, but for the horrible evil and suffering he actually created or allowed, or with unlimited power, God could not have brought about a very great good, but for the horrible evil and suffering God actually created or allowed. Here, the theist must also be able to show that the very great good that could not but for this horrible evil and suffering take place was indeed such a great good as to morally justify subjecting the victims to the agonizing pain they have to endure.

If we take the concept of God's omnipotence Seriously, this is a very high burden for a supposedly omnipotent being to meet

the argument number six from divine hiddenness, a God that wants us to know that this God exists and wants a relationship with us would not withhold evidence of the Divine existence, and would understand just what evidence many of us would need in order to be able to believe if God exists and created me, God knows my mind and knows that right now, I couldn't believe in God, regardless how much I wanted to, just like I couldn't believe in space alien visitations to Earth, because of the absence of any evidence showing these things to be true. God's not being forthcoming with the evidence that would enable me to believe that God exists, while knowing that I can't believe in the

absence of such evidence is more consistent with God's non existence, than with the existence of a God that wants me to know him or her or it. If your mother told you that your father whom you've never met or spoken to loves you very much, and wants a father child relationship with you, but just has been too busy to ever come to see you ever since you were born, let's say around your 18th birthday, you would probably conclude that your dad really doesn't want a relationship with you, we can actually see the reality of human fathers on a daily basis. So even if the dad in the above scenario is always absent, we can believe he exists. We don't have the same evidence that a god

exists. So if we are told there was a God who loves us and wants relationship with us, but that God never provides us with direct evidence that it exists. When such an all powerful God could easily

provide that direct evidence, we are justified in doubting the existence of that God and doubting the desire of any such God to want the relationship with us. Divine hiddenness also furthers the argument from evil. If God exists such a being would know that unanswered questions about why there is so much evil and suffering prevent many of us from believing in such a God, we have a right to expect that a perfectly good God would not allow such horrendous evil and suffering without morally sufficient reasons. If we are not told what those morally sufficient reasons are, then it is more probable that a perfectly good god that wants to be believed in in worship does not exist.

6.1 the argument from religious confusion, a subset of divine hiddenness there is so much agreement disagreement over which religion is true, and even if over which branch of a given religion is true. If God exists, and wants us to know its will and follow divine decrees, we are justified in expecting that this deity would not allow so much confusion over who that God is what that God wants us to believe in, and what that God wants us to do. The presence of such rampant confusion is more likely if a God that wants us to know its will does not exist. So Catholics believe that when the pope speaks ex cathedra he's infallible. Protestants reject the concept of a pope. If only one of

these is true, God should make clear to Christians, which one it is.

Sunni and Shiite Muslims began to disagree over whether Mohammed successor should be chosen by qualifications alone, or need to have a direct bloodline to Mohammed. Shiites believe that the 12th Imam in the 10th century was taken into hiding by God in a process called occultation and will return at the end of time, in a full messianic capacity to facilitate the final and full understanding of the Quran and the prophets message. Sunni's do not accept this. Now, even though the Sunnis and Shiites share the Quran, they have different versions of the Hadith, which are very important to Islamic interpretation of the deeds and traditions of the Prophet. So if one of these

is true, and the other is false, God should make clear to Muslims which one it is. Now the other, also derived from divine hiddenness argument from unreliable revelations and translations from defects and errors in the Bible, and the Quran.

If God exists, we are justified in expecting to this God will provide us with a reliable revelation. If there are problems with the revelation, then it's more consistent with a God that is not perfect. Both the Bible and Quran, talk clearly about male dominion over women. Genesis 316 says, and I desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over the Surah 434 pitfall says men are in charge of women because Allah have made the one of them Excel the other? Well, we modern humans have learned that there is no reason for men to be in charge of women, because women are the intellectual and moral equals of men. So this itself, this itself shows that both the Bible and the Quran are

incorrect. Insofar as they vest a man with more power over the woman than the woman is vested over the man. Also, both the Bible and the Quran. Talk about

hell eternally. For those who don't believe in the religion each revelation is promoting, well, they can't both be true. It can't be true that you'll go to hell forever. If you are not a Christian, and you will go to hell forever if you're not a Muslim. So if in fact, there is a God, that basis, our eternity on whether we choose Christianity or Islam, then that God should tell us which one and not let us make the honest and sincere mistake of picking the wrong one, and falling through the trap door into eternal horror. So the very fact that God doesn't make this clear to us and give us a clear choice is more consistent with or not being a God that wants us to find the truth. Now also,

if Islam is true, those of us who do not speak Arabic, and those of us who can't read the Quran, in its original should be given a clear and ambiguous translation, which is the functional equals

into Arabic or God should have revealed the Quran. In every major language. Mohammed pitfall was one of the most prominent translators of the Quran into English in the

20th century. And in his translators forward, it's a direct quote, The Quran cannot be translated. Every effort has been made to choose the fitting language, but the result is not the Glorious Quran. It can never take the place of the Quran in Arabic. But then, if God wants me to be a Muslim, God should provide me with the proper translation, so I don't make any errors. Now another argument from divine hiddenness. A subset is the argument for moral confusion. So many people acting in good faith. Even members of the same religion disagree about what is right and what is wrong in a bewildering variety of situations. Both the Bible and the Quran

condemn gay sex. But most of us know gay couples. And our reason and experience tell us

that same sex relationships are no worse than heterosexual relationships. Just like a reason and experience tell us there is no reason for men to be in charge of women or rule over women, as opposed to women being in charge of men and ruling over men. So if either or both the Quran and the Bible were infallibly True, and in errant, they wouldn't say these things.

Arguments seven argument from scale or the argument from human insignificant 68% of the universe is dark energy 27% as dark matter, so a scan 5% of the universe is even conceptually accessible by us of that 5% virtually all of it is comprised of empty space, which is instantly lethal to human beings. So 99 point 35 nine, so the universe is basically off limits to humans, our galaxy contains around 300 billion stars. Our galaxy is one of 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. And we have no access to any of this. Mathematically, we are just one part in 100, followed by 39 zeros of the universe. There are 20 septillion planets in the universe, that's 20, followed by 24 zeros.

Why would God need such a literally astronomical number of excess planets, but we are the core of God's creation and concern. The universe is 13 point 7 billion years old, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. We humans have been around for maybe 200,000 years. If we are at the center of creation, and of God's concern, why did God wait 13 point 7 billion years for us to appear, and all powerful engineer would not have needed

to suffer this kind of inefficiency. Remember, we are speaking of a god, that's supposed to be all powerful. argument number eight, the argument against the existence of a transcendent person, a person is by very definition of being who thinks and performs actions, and that in turn requires being in time. So how could God have deliberately created anything if there wasn't an environment of time and space in which to operate sequentially? So a could cause be if the theist says that God exists in and functions in some unknowable metaphysical time, for which of course there's no proof than the theist is conceding that God is not completely transcendent, since God operates in some

nebulous context, which corresponds to time of being out, that is outside space and time is not working within a framework in which anything can be caused by anything else. So we can see that the overwhelming weight of the evidence in our physical universe makes the predictive power of atheism much stronger than that of theism. We see, for instance, that the universe is not perfect, most of it is lethal. We also see that within 5 billion years, the sun will burn out, which means the earth will seek to exist, I don't see much perfection in that. So probabilistically taking the totality of the evidence, it's far more likely than not that we live in a natural, not a supernatural universe,

and that an all powerful, all good all knowing self conscious God does not exist. Thank you.

Thank you so much for both of our speakers in the next section will be the rebuttal section. Each speaker will have

10 minutes to counter the other speakers argument that was presented during the open state opening statement. We will begin with Muhammad hijab and then Edwards about so Amina job

are we going when everyone's quiet?

Alright, so I will make a points a arguments I'm going to respond to each and every single one of them. The first one the verifiable evidence of something which is supernatural, which leads to the second point, which is the non evidence of miracles. I'm going to prove today that Edward believes in miracles What did you say? Let me say it again. Edward believes in miracles. What is a miracle, according to Edward, according to David Hume is a violation of the laws of nature is a violation of the laws of nature. What is a miracle something which goes outside the five senses which can't be really detected by science, because naturalism, according to the Oxford concise companion, is a

philosophy is something which can only be seen by science response, it says,

You

he says, they said to us, they say, he strict structured example and they say, who's going to raise the debt? When it becomes dust? The one who gave him life the first time now let's think of this.

Have we ever seen the transition from chemistry to biology? No. This is referred to as angiogenesis. Yes, when chemistry becomes biology, every study of biology presupposes this. Because if there's no such thing, as a movement, from chemistry to biology, they cannot be biology. Therefore, the dead became the living. Have you seen that? No. Have you sensed that? No. Is it scientific? No. Do you believe in it? Yes. It's a miracle. Just like Jesus raising the dead. It's a miracle. Just like the death resurrection, it's a miracle. So just as all of those things will happen, the Quran says you can believe in all of that is premised on the movement from a nonliving chemistry to a biology you

believe in it. We all believe in miracles, if that is how it's defined. And that's how he defined it. Number three,

the dependence of conscious minds on the brain, which is a philosophical discussion, frankly, Raymond Tallis wrote a book called aping mankind. He's a neuroscientist. He asked the question, if consciousness is in the brain, where is it in the brain?

Was the natural explanation for where consciousness is in the brain?

Really, frankly, the idea that you can lose consciousness through anesthetic and then

being not in a state of consciousness is refuted by dreams, the existence of dreams.

You know, I close my eyes, you know? Why? See?

How can you explain dreams? This is the problem of hard consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness, you can't bypass the academics. This is something that philosophers have been talking about since time began.

Number four,

the argument for evolution. Evolution doesn't contradict theism. But which evolution are we talking about Darwinian evolution after the 1960s? One thing will refute

this, the problem of induction. Science has the problem of the relatedness of induction, interpretation, all of these things. You can't say that it's definitely and he didn't say that he was careful in his wording says most likely, but that could be reformulated. If new data was found, it could be reinterpreted, it has to be interpreted. In fact, there's more likelihood that our evolutionary conceptions will change. So you can't really use this as an argument.

The argument from evil, what is evil? Here's the thing, ladies and gentlemen, on naturalism evil does not exist. It's a

it's a social construct. Look at the works of Bertrand Russell of nature. Post modernists, even Richard Dawkins in the blind watchmaker, he says, There's no such thing as good. There's no such thing as evil. It's all fitness indifference. That's what he says. Why, because on naturalism, you cannot put morality under a microscope.

There's no way of ascertaining that there is any morals. On naturalism. There is no objective morality. Why even when you're talking about but for the sake of arguing

See, okay, evil just

always said it's not incompatible with wisdom of God. The Quran says again.

Oh lady Holla Holla well hyah Talia

he's the one who has created life and death to see which one of you is best. If there was no evil there would be no just, if there would be no evil there'll be no freewill. What's the point of life? And what is the purpose of this?

Shut up, you will fire

Elaine.

Everyone's gonna die.

Everyone's gonna die. I'm gonna die and he's gonna die. You're gonna die.

And we will test you with good and evil as a as a test. And then you come back to us. It's a test without evil, the remote.

Next, divine hiddenness. We've already covered this, the fifth law. We're all born with a predisposition of God. There is evidence for this. Paul bloom, Justin Barrett, many people have already said we have seen we have analyzed the critical evidence of children, how they, what is their natural instinct.

They it's mentioned

just embarrasses. They have a natural receptivity.

They have a natural receptivity to divine to the divine and non anthropomorphic God, not Jesus, not Buddha, they have a net we have natural inclination to God. And then that's reinforced by the prophets. That's the Islamic narrative. The Prophet came to remind us of what we already knew. It says the Quran is a reminder.

Just like if you were separated from your parents, or your mother, and then you're reunited with Jesus by natural instincts, and the same thing with God.

So it talks about divine truth, confusion are unreliable revelations. I agree with this point. There are unreliable revelations. But I would want to see how that is the case with the Quran.

There was no argument then.

Chapter Four, verse 34, is a bad translation man in charge of woman, there's only one translation, I think it's men are maintainers and protectors of women. And frankly, if you didn't believe this, you wouldn't draft men to the army in America. Men protect women, and they have done so. It's not saying that they're better than them. The Quran in the Prophet said in them and they said,

Men are equal to women.

So I mean, the Quran says

in

the Quran,

that God does not lead to waste any action of a man or woman both of you. But anyways, go back to the idea of natural selection on natural selection. The patriarchy on feminism is justified. Because if men can dominate women, that's a natural thing. What's the problem on naturalism? How can you justify feminism, secondary feminism, on naturalism? That's an impossibility. You can't do it.

While a third wave feminism, why not the words of Judith Butler? Why not twist theory? Why not LGBT? Why has to be second wave equal? The Eurocentric understanding of equality? How is that natural? naturalistic? I want to see how he mechanistically shows us that hell eternity what both of us can be Muslims and Christians can be both right the right about that. But that doesn't solve any issue doesn't create any problem, the translation problem, only one way to understand the language.

This translation problem with mathematics is mathematics false therefore. So language. If that translatable thing it becomes false because of its content, and has to be translated in mathematics is false.

more confusion? I mean, yes, there's more confusion. But just because there's controversy of something. It doesn't make it false. That's a fallacy.

argument from scale, says 99% 99.9% of the universe is not as critical to human life. He's made the fine tuning argument for me. We're in a 0.01. So what is the possibility of that for real? I agree with you.

A transcendent person.

A transcendent person. He defines person in a certain way says God controls time and space. Simple as that. I mean, it's not really an argument. And I think

I've got a minute left. I've got a minute left.

Well,

well, well, well,

you know,

here's the thing guys. Don't be swayed by the red herring. The red herring is a moral red herring. The Quran says this about men.

Here's the thing on naturalism. No one is born equal.

Yes, why? Because actually liberalism is an outgrowth of something which is called the state of nature. It's a fictitious mythological construct, which john Locke and Thomas Hobbes wrote in their books. It's not scientific, we came out of the state of nature. And we became, we became connected socially contractually into the state, this so the whole of liberalism and human rights by extension is a myth. It's a liberal myth.

Show me on naturalism, how liberalism is true, how we're all born equal. In fact, I'm told, you know, your average height, we're all different, or naturalism, we're all different.

Mohammed initially said that, his main point tonight was the argument from contingency. The problem is to say that there must be a necessary being, for everything that is contingent requires that the necessary contingent situation plays out in an environment with cause and effect. And yet Mohammed has always said that the universe had a beginning. And there was nothing before and that God created the universe out of nothing, here is the problem, you cannot analogize from cause and effect, and necessary and contingent beings, from within time and space, as opposed to the very coming into being of time and space in the first place. If in fact, the Big Bang, as is most likely, nothing

preceded it, there was no time and space, you can have no cause and effect, and we can't even speak of cause and effect, because there was no environment for a to cause B. Now, with respect to the notion of a necessary and contingent being, there is a problem with the concept of unnecessary being. The problem is that unnecessary fact cannot explain a contingent fact, without introducing a new contingent fact in need of explanation. Now, let's see why this is so if unnecessary fact cannot explain a contingent fact, except by entailing it, because any fact entailed by necessary fact must itself be necessary. However, the necessary fact does not entail the contingent fact than the

explanatory connection, it has to the contingent fact must be a contingent one, which introduces a new contingent fact in need of explanation. And if the offender of the argument replies that this new contingent fact can also explain by by the necessary fact, then the same reasoning will apply introducing yet another new contingent fact in need of explanation, and so ad infinitum. But the whole reason for introducing necessary fact, in the first place was to avoid an infinite regress of explanations. Now, Mohammed said that we cannot even call something evil unless we have a moral Foundation, implying that objective moral values can only exist with a supernatural being, but he

doesn't explain what the connection is. For instance, I've shown you in the Bible and the Quran, where though Mohammed resist it, men are supposed to be in charge of women. I've showed you in both the Bible and the Quran, where people are sent to hell forever, for not just choosing the right respective religion, to say that we are in no position to judge whether God's doing that is right or wrong, totally eclipses human reason. And there's another problem with that, to say objective moral values depend on God, you have to ask is something good? Just because God says it is, then it's arbitrary? And even sending sincere people to hell forever, for not believing in the right religion?

would be okay, just because God said it, or don't always tell us to do what is good, but the standard of the good is independent of God. Then it means that objective moral values exist without being created by God, by God recognizes them, and you can't get out of it by saying, Well, no, the good comes from God's perfect nature because we don't see that perfect nature. Now, as far as the dependence of consciousness on the physical brain is concerned, nothing mental happens without anything physical happening. There is no thought or awareness that comes into

The human brain without a physical event in the brain, this is very, very important. Again, if consciousness could exist apart from the brain, then diseases and anesthetics wouldn't Eclipse consciousness. Now he talks about the coherence of the universe. And he thinks the argument from scale is not a problem. But it certainly is. If, as a somebody who believes in the Quran, because he quotes the Quran a lot, he believes in a god for whom humans is central in concern, then why all these excess reptilians have planets also, if in fact, the universe is so perfectly put together? Why will the star upon which we depend the sun burned out in a very short span of time, and then

after that, we will die because the earth will no longer have the sun. And there can't be life on earth without the sun. Also, with respect to the whole concept of naturalism, Muhammad can't just like I saw in one of his tapes, he tried to say that we can infer the existence of God from the functioning of the universe, just like we can infer the existence of gravity from the way gravity operates. But you see, definitionally gravity as I dropped something, it hits the floor or hits the table. But that doesn't show that there is a supernatural source behind it. In terms of the laws of nature, the constants and the fine tuning. As far as that's concerned, well, the laws of physics as

they appear cannot be violated. But if they are, and if you change one constant, and the other studies have shown you can still have life, for instance, there was a study that showed that you could eliminate the weak nuclear force, one of the four forces and stars could still form if could form and explode, becoming supernova than planets could still come about. We've also seen that there is a argument from cosmic inflation, which has been demonstrated the cosmic microwave background. And the way inflation works with quantum mechanics that there could be a multiverse numbers and numbers of individual universes, each with their own pockets of different physical laws. This hasn't

been established by proof. But yet, it is a better argument than theism because it has a basics in physics, and it has natural laws that are explainable. The other thing that Mohammed has not yet addressed, is he would have to admit that in 99%, of all instances, in human technological process, when science has looked for an answer, it has found a natural answer. So what would be those instances that differentiate the need for a natural answer to a supernatural one? In other words, if we look at a cell, or a bacteria, the way it behaves, natural explanation, but we look at something else? And our answer is only God did it. There's a world of difference between looking at the fact

that planets revolve around the sun. And that stars don't fall out of the sky, except when they explode a supernova. And going outside right now and seeing the constellations saying, Eddie and Mohammed, you're both wrong, you better become Mormons. There's a world of difference between those two, that would be a supernatural event. Also, Mohammed has never been able to, and I don't blame him because no one can, can show how if in fact, consciousness depends on a physical brain, how the greatest intelligence in the universe can exist and think and function without a physical brain. How can there be a God that doesn't have cortical neurons and synapses? How does God think when all the

evidence shows that the occurrence of thought requires cortical neurons and synapses, and also if God is outside of space and time, God cannot be a personal being because by very definition of personal being is defined as something within space and time that has limits. So again, naturalism prevails over supernaturalism by the weight of the evidence, and we can see that there has never been any

Any verified supernatural occurrences. And we have seen no evidence of any mental process that can exist in a disembodied state. So the evidence to date makes it more likely than not. The universe is natural, non supernatural, and there is no God. Thank you.

Thank you very much to both of the debaters both brother Muhammad hijab and Henrik tabash. So the next session would be the question and answer between them both. However, just because of the timing, and because now that it has come in, Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us back again. This next section will be the cross questioning section. The way this will work is both speakers will be at the podium, we will begin with Muhammad hijab, he will ask a question, you'll have one minute to formulate the question at work. You'll have two minutes to answer. This will continue until Mohamed has been able to ask three questions, then we will alternate. That means Edward will

ask three questions. Again, each question will be one minute each. And each answer this time by Mohammed will be two minutes each. So if I can ask both Edward and Mohammed to join me at the podium or go to the podium. Thank you

get into the just one mic. Okay.

Okay, all right.

Frank, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin from 1950.

I'm dealing with old enough to know that joke. Okay.

All right. Well, I have a minute. So let me give myself a chance. Yeah.

Okay.

I was gonna say that you touched upon morality, and I think is an important thing to talk about. Because I have heard lots of

debates before, and I'm intrigued to hear answers to that, particularly this particular question on naturalism?

What scientific explanation Can you provide for the existence? Or the objectivity of morality?

The answer is that I can give a better explanation for morality on atheism than on theism, even if it's not a perfect answer. Because on theism, someone looks into a book, and without any proof that God really said it saying, Well, God said it. Therefore, it must be true, regardless of what we think about it, just because God said it, which eclipses human reason, on atheism, what we do is we wrestle it out with our reasoning. And there are a whole avenue of areas by which we can assess morality. And even if they're not perfect, they're more reliable than believing in a deity. For instance, there's consequentialism, the consequences of actions being good or bad, there is the

notion that our moral values stem from our biological nature. See, the problem with saying that morality comes from God is circular. Because what you're doing is you are positing a god so you can have objective moral values that you can then use to try to show that that God exists. And that's is not a valid form of argument.

Thank you.

I've got a follow up question, which is not in that morality thing on something else on naturalism on atheism, naturalism? What scientific experiment? Would you conduct, for example, or could you refer us that tells us about

the existence of mathematics? How can you prove mathematics through science?

It's very easy. we prove mathematics empirically. For instance, to have one object and to have another object equals four. But what's important about that is that is so axiomatic that it couldn't be altered. For instance, Scott couldn't appear right now and say, by divine Fiat, there are three debaters standing at the podium, not two. And so mathematics and logic, are actually arguments against the supernatural, because they show laws of logic and laws of mathematics that cannot be altered. You see, conceptually, it doesn't even work to say, God could make two and two equals five. And so on naturalism, we discovered the laws of nature, we don't invent them, and they're not

prescribed by anybody. So for instance, we discovered the laws of geometry

Nobody invented them, we discovered the workings of calculus, we discovered the laws of engineering. Nobody invented it, that if we put up a building, this way, it'll collapse. If we put up a building the other way, it will collapse, we discovered it just like we discover what medicines work. So, therefore, on naturalism, we would expect that these laws could not be altered by anyone, a god or any other type of being.

You know, mathematics, the mind and all those things are first person requires various sciences, a third person inquiry, so it would be very difficult to bridge the gap. But on this point of once again, on naturalism, I have another question because you made mention of some historical events. Now, obviously, we both believe in positive history, for example, we believe in, you know, the slave trade, you believe in the Holocaust, we believe in, you know, things that have happened even all the way back to the prehistoric age.

If witness testimony, which is what is required for history to take place, for example, your mother's history of what happened to her, or whatever it may be. How can you? How can you legitimize witness testimony on naturalism? And if it's not legitimized? Does that mean that we can deny things like slavery, the Holocaust and so on? Well, do you see the answer to that is, by empirical evidence, we know that certain things can happen. If I said that I flew here on an airplane today, nobody would question it. If I said, I just flap my arms and flew here bodily, you would question it. If I told you that somebody crossed a river. To get to the other side, you would accept it. If I

told you that somebody was levitated from one side of the river to the other? You wouldn't. This shows that we have an inbuilt already recognition through logic and reason and experience of understanding eyewitness events that are within the realm of what we know to be probable, and those which are not. If I said that somebody drove me here tonight for the debate in a car, you would believe me? If I said space aliens picked me up in an interstellar spacecraft and brought me here, you wouldn't believe me. So we shouldn't shy away from the common sense experience that already helps us distinguish the natural from the supernatural.

Okay, Mohammed, I'm handing you have five different translations of Surah 434.

Each one talks about men being in charge of women. And there's nothing corresponding about women being in charge of men, and each of the seven translations from different, respected translators of the Quran, speak about husbands having the right to under circumstances of defiance and arrogance. beat their wives. Do you agree or disagree with both men ruling over women in the syrup and the permission to beat them as set forth in the surah? I certainly disagree with the translation because the word called White Moon in Arabic means maintainers and protects us and this word, Hi, my blue moon literally means to stand up. And that's why you will find that the majority of translators

translate like that. As for the verse that talks about Dada, which is the Arabic word almost there is a consensus among the scholars of Islam, that this is not to be in vengeful or attacking or harmful or hurtful action. This is talking about something which is symbolic and the evidence of that is that the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Sallam he said, let me let you know that you cannot harm or reciprocate harm. So I think there is a problem here with the understanding of the verse and also the Prophet said,

let us reboot email, don't hate the woman slaves of Allah, men and women. And he said, the worst of you are those who hate the woman. And that's why I think if you look at the totality of evidence, then there is a bit more nuance than you think.

Okay.

Mohammed, you quoted the Quran a lot tonight. Let me ask you. Why is the Quran a more credible final revelation of God, having been dictated to the Prophet by the angel Gabriel, then the Book of Mormon as the final revelation of God having been dictated in the 19th century in upstate New York, by the angel Moroni to the Prophet Joseph Smith. The reason why is because the Quran has certain parameters, and certain challenges that the Book of Mormon doesn't have, for example, as the inevitability challenge as the preservation challenge. The Quran is the only preserved book as predictions that predict the

Future that couldn't have been another time on probability we find it very difficult. I explained that in the conclusion. I'll give you one I'll give you more expansion of what I'm saying. The Quran has a language that completely de scopes are the scope the Arabic language of the people of the time and it was recognized by those linguists or something which was extraordinary. The Quran has a structural feature that even orientalist scholars like Raymond Ferran have looked at and said that this is something which cannot be possible, considering the circumstantial revelation of the Quran. So there's many reasons. And I think the main point is the Quran gives us a falsification challenge.

And since you're a fan of science, the fact that it gives us a falsification challenge makes it in many ways, quite scientific.

Mohammed, you have many times embrace what we would call the Kalam cosmological argument, the first cause argument, if in fact, time and space began with a big bang, and if something cannot come from nothing, but God created a lot created the world x Nilo out of nothing. How did an immaterial being with no physical attributes, no physical brain or body create everything around us? in a context where there was no time and space for a to Cosby, how did he do it? How did what was the mechanism by which this immaterial being without time and space created time and space and matter? Well as there are obviously other daily lessons. So it's an argument from ignorance, if we don't know how

something works, it doesn't mean that it's false. However, having said that, there is no agreement among Muslims that the universe was created as an island. So there were some people like myself and others who didn't believe this, but other people are even telling me I believe that God perpetually created different things pre eternally. So once again, there is a scope of interpretation in the Islamic texts. Either way, the point is, causation doesn't even factor in here, because cause causes something which brings rise to phenomenon, whereas dependency is something which is relying on something else. So time or no time, whether you believe in a theory of time, or the B theory of

time, you still have to reckon you have to deal with the fact that you have things which rely on each other. And if we compile all the things,

you'd have no existence. So you have to have an independent so the contingency argument does not rely upon causality, which is why

Thank you so much. That concludes the cross Rapid Fire question portion of the debate. The last portion of the debate will be the audience q&a. I'll quickly give an overview of how this is supposed to work. I have three questions here from Mohammed, three questions here for Edward, one for both of you. I will ask the question, whoever it is directed towards will have two minutes to respond. And then two minutes will be given to the other person to also respond presenting their own perspective. So with that, I will begin with the first question.

Okay, before I do that, I have a request if people can actually not use the Wi Fi, I think we have too many people and it's crashing the live stream.

So if you guys have data frozen is great.

Right, okay.

All right. So we'll begin with the first question is directed towards Mohammed?

Why would God not show himself when he knows the controversy that goes through everyone's mind? Well, it's a good question. Thank you very much for the question has an empiricist presupposition, which is that, in fact, knowledge should be known through the five senses? Well, as we've discovered today, that's not actually the case. So, things like the logic or the the logic through which science is done is actually based on metaphysical logical principles, time is not seen, mathematics is not based on science, there are lots of things which are felt, which are which are found out without the empirical method. So the this empirical naturalistic presupposition is rejected. And if

we look at the development of philosophy in the 20th century, we'll find that even people like AJ, who wrote a book on positivism, he admits to some of these things, and he capitulated intellectually to these points. So frankly, what I'll say to you is that it the the answer, the question is flawed is based on a empiricist presupposition, which would mean by extension that science itself couldn't exist because it's based on presuppositions which are unscientific otherwise.

The issue is, there are things like logic and mathematics, where the very working out of the theorem show you the truthfulness or falsity. However, the question of whether God exists or not is a factual question and thus makes it subject to an empirical investigation. Whether there is such an option

Powerful being in the universe is a factual question akin to whether space aliens have visited us whether in fact, we do live after death or not. When it comes to questions of fact, the empirical method does apply. But there's another problem here, in that both the Bible and the Quran unmistakably

promised eternal punishment for non belief. As a matter of fundamental fairness, we can say that it is unfair of God, to punish us for not believing in him if he withholds evidence that would enable us to believe in him. And that's the argument from divine hiddenness. So the laws of logic and mathematics don't have causative properties. So you can't say the number seven as an abstraction causes something to happen. But you can say, and they do say, as Mohammed does, God does cause things to happen. And if an agent has caused it have powers, and can make or break something that's subject to empirical investigation.

Thank you.

Second question, this is directed towards you, Edward, why are atheists focused on a God that would serve us any god would not function to offer us what we want? So the question is, basically, if, if a god exists, why are Why are atheists so focused on the fact that a god like that would serve us because God Himself is transcended, and he would not necessarily function to offer us what we want? Okay, the question, though, has a problem. And that's that, if you accept an abstract deity that has not claimed to have been revealed to humanity, then it's understandable that God would not tailor the evidence to meet our needs. But if a God has supposedly given us a number of revelations, Bible,

Koran, Book of Mormon, whatever else, then we have a right to use our reason to expect that such a god is intending to reveal itself to us. And the failure of that God to fill in the gaps of the revelation, or the failure of that God to provide us with a reliable revelation makes non belief reasonable. If non belief is reasonable, it's in culpable and we are not blameworthy for non belief because we weren't given sufficient evidence. If we are not blameworthy for non belief, then it's unfair to punish us for not believing what we didn't have sufficient evidence to believe. And if we are punished for not believing what we didn't have sufficient evidence to believe, then that calls

God's moral perfection into question, because we are being punished unjustly.

Yes.

No. Okay.

I agree with him, actually. And this is a point of agreement, actually, between me and Edward, I think the reason why he's using this argument is potentially because he had conversations with Christians before where the theology is a little bit different. But the premise is true, and what the saying is absolutely correct. In fact, if God doesn't reveal Himself to you, and then punishes you, as a result, this is unjust. And that's why the Quran says, When my demo has been hacked, and avasarala, Chapter 17, verse 15, that we were not going to punish them until we sent to the messenger. So scholars of Islam said, even if you die an atheist, or a Hindu, or a Christian, and

even though you're born with this federa with this predisposition, which wasn't tackled, hopefully, we'll talk about it, this predisposition to believe in God which we have evidence for now, even though all of that is in place, God will still not punish those individuals until they're given sufficient exposure. And that is exactly correct. I think you're right.

Thank you. The next question is directed towards Mohammed. So it's basically the case of bad design. In science, there is a concept of vestigial features, features that are a hindrance or otherwise less than perfect in many organisms. If the universe runs without inconsistency, what would explain this usual features, and the particular example is that was given is the woman's pelvis, which is far too small and creates a very difficult and painful burning process? Well, I think this is the argument of ignorance, just because you don't know the function of something. It doesn't mean this function of this. So for example, we don't know what the appendix does. It doesn't mean it has no

function. It just means we haven't discovered that yet. We don't know why two electrons can be in one place at the same time on quantum mechanics. It doesn't mean that's a false notion, even though it goes against the rules of logic and it goes against some of the things conventions that we believe in. So just because you don't know something, it doesn't make it false.

So that's the first point. As for the second point of bad design, I mean, who's the judge of bad design? I mean, at least with the fine tuning argument, you have some kind of probability mathematical probability that can be attached to this kind of equation. You're saying that the chances of there not being, you know, a universe or the universe having a non life permitting rate range is x, which is a mathematical kind of

rendering. So here, we have to be kind of honest here and say that this is an aesthetic value judgment, our best and aesthetic value judgments are not our opinions. Frankly, they're your opinion, if you see something that's bad design, that's your opinion, you might think is bad design. But there might be a reason. Now there's one more thing I want to ask because I've got a minute left. I think people have misunderstood my under my argument from uniformity, I'll add it to the conclusion.

Like my girlfriend's Robbie mentioned one time in a podcast I've done with him. For example, let's take a coin, flip a coin, it can either be heads or tails. Today, we can flip it is either going to be heads or tails. So moral is going to be either heads or tails. We don't expect the coin to be flipped and turned into a butterfly. Why? Because we accept that there's a kind of coherence that exists through a kind of constants that exist. So in order to do science, you need to know or you need to presuppose that this uniformity exists. Otherwise, your calculations today, were meaningless tomorrow. And that's why Albert Einstein said that a priori, we expect a chaotic universe, meaning

from the mind, you expect there not to be this kind of order. So this underpins or is even more undercutting, if you like, the fine tuning argument, which is why I presented it. So that's

the problem is that when you posit a God who is supposed to be all powerful and morally perfect, then defects in our design,

are not justified based on those attributes of God. For instance, I pointed out how the gene that can help fight malaria can also cause sickle cell anemia, we know that we humans have back problems because we stood up too soon. We know that there are defects in our bodies, we could be more resistant to cancer, we could be more resistant to viruses, we could have a better digestive system. So God cannot get off the hook here, because he is presented as an all powerful being who is morally perfect. And all powerful. Being who is morally perfect doesn't make these missteps in design. And we already know our vulnerability to disease. For instance, we already know that we just have a very

few decades to be in good condition. And then as we get older, we begin to decline. And so that's not something that we would expect from a morally perfect God. We wouldn't expect unnecessary pain if God wants us to take our hand off the fire so we don't get burned, we would expect pain. But if we're trapped in a burning forest, and we burn to death, painfully, pain has no value. And we wouldn't expect that unnecessary suffering with no purpose on theism. It's more likely on atheism. So given the claims of God's moral perfection, and omnipotence, a defects in design are not defensible.

Thank you. This is to you. And

you said that there is no evidence to prove the existence of God. What proof do you personally need to believe? And how would you recognize that? We say this is the difference between me and a religious person? I'm subject to evidence, religions don't change regardless of the evidence, but an empirically minded atheist like me would if right now Mohammed and I were levitated to the ceiling, if my father who was dead for 18 years, walked in this room right now in his inimitable Yiddish accent, and I recognized him asking me why not in my office working, and then floated in the air. And and said, both of you Mormonism is the true religion. If Mohammed and I right now, were

teleported to Mecca, and I saw the most amazing astronomical displays, telling me to become a Muslim right away, I would. Now you might say, well, this is the result of an advanced space alien. But being an evidentialist, I would believe it's a supernatural being until someone showed me that it was advanced space aliens. So the difference between atheists like me, and those who subscribe to religion is we are open to changing if we have direct evidence, whereas there are very few religious people who would say if this happened, I would not believe in God

Whereas a theist like me can clearly say, if the following things happen, I will believe in God. But we all know they won't happen. But if they did, I would, can I answer? Yes, we get two minutes with

the first point or not being religious, it depends. It depends on how you define religion. Because frankly, if you take a like a meal, Durkheim approaches a sociologist, he defined religion and more broad terms, and would be found in vernacular, vernacular alien dictionaries, for example, which has to be through God or whatever. Frankly, you could make the argument that atheists people are very religious, in so much as they have axioms. And they have leaps of faith which they believe in, for instance, if we take, for example, science, science, and especially something like quantum physics, you don't do the experiments yourself, you rely upon witness testimony, you don't go into laboratory

and repeat experiments X amount of times in order to believe it. So in order for you to have an understanding of science, you have to have a leap of faith in trusting those individuals who teach you about science, your teachers, your school books, and so on. I mean, you believe in equality. And once again, these are precepts which, frankly, are axiomatic meaning they don't have any evidence to substantiate them. Even john Locke, who is the founder of liberalism, he based it on God, by the way, and that's why you're independent, you know, the Declaration of Independence created beings as being referred to over and over again. So really, you don't have a right to cool to talk about

equality without having some kind of leap of faith, frankly, in those things. So atheists have faith all the time, they have faith in things they don't see. They have faith in things they don't interact with. And what I'm going to say is that this is where, as john gray said, some people can wrap a you know, discussion of ideology in sociological format, and make it seem as if it's a religious Well, in fact, it is actually, in terms of its conventions and epistemic way, the same as any kind of religious belief. As for levitating, and so on, well, you believe in levitating, but it just has to happen in the quantum physics realm where things do levitate and things do flow. Harry

Potter exists in the quantum physics world, but an atheist would never believe it, unless a scientist told them that's belief. That's faith.

Thank you. Next question to Mohammed.

What God does with autonomy? And does that negate the good and evil argument to give you what God provide us with autonomy, our freewill and does that negate the good and evil argument? Yes, so on Islamic traditionalism, God has endowed us with equal with the idea of choice and freewill and effect evil is a necessary part of that. Because if you don't have evil, you cannot make a decision, they'll just be good and good to decide from you can't decide from good and good has to be good and bad. And therefore you must be tested in a test makes no sense with the existence with the non existence of evil. A test makes no sense with the non existence of evil. So sometimes the bad thing

can be good for you. Well as a crochet process, you can hate something, but it's actually very good for you. And the thing is on theism on Islamic theism, we believe in another domain. It's a metaphysical domain, which is your PM, the day of judgment, whereby all of those things that we will wronged in the dunya, the worldly life, you'll be recompense for that. So we don't believe that when a child dies, that's just a random rearrangement of atoms, as would be the case, by the way on naturalism. So random rearrangement of atoms if I slap a snowman, and knock his head off is the same as if I cut a kid's head off, because it's just on naturalism. Frankly, it's just, you know, a

rearrangement of atoms. And in order for you to make any sense of that, you'd have to impose a subjective value judgment on it, which you'd have to have faith in order to have in the first place. So Frankly, I mean, what we believe is that the injustice is of this world. Hitler, for example, was a very unjust man killed 6 million individuals, he will be punished, hopefully perpetually, in a domain where in which the punishment is not limited. Justice cannot be done on naturalism. It can only be done on a kind of system and metaphysical system, which the undoes all of the wrongs that happened in this world.

We may not like the implications of a godless world. But that doesn't mean that a God will come into existence just to rescue us from those implications. We might not like the fact that we end a death. But that doesn't mean that God will come about just so that we don't end the death of that God doesn't otherwise exist. The concept of free will, is given more credit than it deserves. If you have two children, you don't let one of your children push the other off a cliff, just so it's not

to interfere in free will. And so the question of free will or even the benefits of it Do not justify the extreme pain and the extreme suffering that we undergo. So for instance, if we need to feel pain, we put our hand on a hot stove, that's understandable. But that pain does not serve a useful purpose, if we are being innocently burnt by evil people, and we have to suffer that agonizing death. So the fact that there is grab to artists unnecessary, unexplained horrendous suffering, goes way beyond necessary slight evils, and suffering, which would have a beneficial and corrective purpose. So we can't say that any amount of suffering or any amount of horrible

experience is justified because we need that in which to distinguish the good, even a small amount of evil, or a bearable amount of evil is enough to distinguish the good it is the presence of unexplained gratuitous, horrendous suffering that is incompatible with an all good and all powerful God.

Thank you. Last question directed towards Edward, summarize, essentially, Islam provides objective morality. Do you believe there is such a thing as objective morality? And if so, how would you explain why atheists 30 years ago would object to say homosexuality?

Well, I believe that there are objective moral values, and they're not prescribed by anybody, there is no law giver. Now, I was just asked 30 years ago how atheists would have responded to homosexuality. This actually proves my point 30 years ago, many atheists may not have recognized that recognize the importance of allowing such personal freedom. What that means is not that anybody who condemned persons who love those of the same gender were right or wrong, then it meant that we haven't yet discovered the truth that these are people that deserve equal rights. So for instance, in the 1950s, when I was growing up, people would be arrested for being gay, they would be put in

prison for being gay. The fact that we don't do that now. And it's been illegal to do so in any state since 2003 shows that the more we evolve, the more we discover these moral truths, not that somebody invents them and imposes us on them, that by our natural development, we discover these truths. For instance, it used to be that religious people would burn women accused of being witches. But we don't do that anymore. Because we discovered the moral truth, that it's wrong to do that to these women, irrespective of the Bible saying Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. So the more we get away from religious fundamentalist edicts, the more moral and tolerant we become, which shows

that morality cannot be dependent on religious fundamentalist or orthodox edicts, because it is our pulling away from them that makes us more moral, more compassionate and more tolerant.

Okay, but I don't know what religious edicts the American founding fathers had used in order to, for at least some period of time, allow slavery, racist slavery, what Stalin used in order to do what he did what Hitler used, frankly, to do what he did, this is not the work of religion. This is the work of people who use ideological justification in order to commit certain acts the same way as which some is conceivable to think that some religious people will use religious justification in order to commit certain acts. So I don't think there should be an epistemic referencing of one, one thing over another, I think we should just realize that

epistemology drives us to certain forces certain things, and you can't really say, well, religion is better than non religion, once again, that would depend on how you define religion in the first place. But having said all of that, I mean, we've talked a lot about gay rights today and all those things, but on the harm principle, which is what john Stuart Mill proposed as part of social, social liberalism, that you can do whatever you want, so long as you don't harm anyone else. Well, frankly, that would entail that

sex between a brother and sister or brother and a brother, so long as there's contraception using there's no deformed babies, that should be allowed as well and I haven't seen anyone doing anything.

Right activism in America for a very long time. And frankly, on liberalism, that's what you should do. You know, just because there are a minority group of people that are still in the closet in the closet, it doesn't mean now that they should be treated any less on liberalism. So I think we have to be, we have to be completely honest with ourselves in our social analysis. And if what we're doing is selecting certain social things which have become popular in the 21st century to make a case about God's existence, I think, really, we're being academically disingenuous. So I think at the end of the day, whatever principle you're going to have, you have to apply it across the board.

And it is the principle on social liberalism, that insists should be allowed in this country, and people should be able to do that.

Thank you. Final question. This is directed to both of you, Edward, because you'd began, I'll start with Mohammed,

please address the viability of Pascal's Wager?

Well, I mean, Pascal is kind of like, it's not really an argument to be honest with you, which is why then kind of make case Pascal is a famous mathematician, who talks about, you know, basically making a wager, you know, betting on the fact that God God exists, because the, because doing otherwise may mean that, you know, you'll, you'll, you'll die and go to hell, and so on. And so therefore, it makes sense. To do that, what we're saying, is that, fair enough, there is some truth in that. I mean, if you think about the Quran actually affirm some of that where it says, you know,

in Canada, Mina, Angela, en de la, he Zuma confirmed to me, what if it was from God? What if this was from God, and you are disbelieving in it? So it's a thought experiment, right? It's, it's more of a thought experiment, rather than an argument. So I think the maximum we can do with it is used as a thought experiment, make people think about death, you know, make people think about the fact that they're going to die, and what kind of ideology or what kind of belief system they want to have with them when they are in their graves, frankly, because atheism will not do anything as a matter of fact. Now, I'm not saying therefore God exists. Because that's not an argument, I've made that

clear. It's not an argument to say, well, the implications of atheism is that, you know, you're going to be in the sick bed, you're going to be maybe 75 years old, one and two people in United States of America are going to have cancer, just like in the UK could lead to cancer research. And what is better for you, I mean, as to be optimistic that there's going to be continuation of that life, or to know that actually, you're going to just become bones and dust, obviously, from implications perspective. theism, and especially theism with afterlife implications, has better invalid optimistic implications for you, your memories will be wiped away, your experiences will be

wiped away, and your bodies will be wiped away. That's a theist naturalism. But the implications of of theism is actually a continuation. This is just the beginning. And so this is not an argument, but it is an implication.

Well, there is a problem with Pascal's Wager. Now, Mohammed just admitted that the Quran does talk about punishment and hell for not believing in Islam, as the Bible talks about punishment and hell for not believing in Christianity. What Pascal's Wager did was it made the error of automatically assuming that if there is a God, this being will judge us by how we worship, this being rather than how good we are to each other. And so the wager actually is false, because it presupposes without proof, that God is such an evil being if there is a God that regardless of how good we are, unless we adopt the right religion, we will burn in hell forever. Now, I'm sure that Skoll, who was a

Christian, would not have accepted that someone is meeting the wager, if they were a Muslim. And I think that the defect is, whenever we say, without any evidence whatsoever, other than ancient hearsay in ancient books, which we know were written by fallible men, as women weren't even involved in the writing of these books, when we say we are certain that the ultimate force in the universe will punish you, unless you adopt my religion. That is nothing but primitive exclusivism.

I think we got one more.

Thank you both. That concludes our audience q&a. We will now proceed to the closing statements. Each person will have 15 minutes to give theirs and we will begin with a mental right to go get your notes okay.

No, I don't want to make that very mandatory

15 years or 15,

stop,

please come down 15 minutes left, and then finish.

I'll start when it's quiet.

Just to quickly, I'm sorry. Now, just to quickly kind of comment on the last thing that he talked about ancient hearsay and so on. Democracy is an ancient concept. liberalism is an ancient concept. It's still it is still adopted by, you know, mainstream society. That's the genetic fallacy, basically, to criticize something based on where it came from. Anyway, I found quite interesting in the last speech that

Edward has, he actually made an interesting capitulation, he admitted that 99% of things natural science can explain. That means 1% of things are supernatural. That means miracles are possible. So that is very happy. I'm happy to do that.

Secondly, now,

what he talked about, about cause and effect, now, the definition of a cause is something which brings rise to phenomenon.

I can cause a house to be, for example, I can build a house. Yes, I can build a house. But I can die and the house will continue to be yes. So I don't need to exist in order for the house to continue existing. dependence, on the other hand, is when you rely on something else. So he made the mistake of saying that contingency which is dependence relies upon cause and effect it doesn't, which is why I didn't really mention cause and effect to avoid this discussion altogether. Let us agree for the sake of arguments. Okay. Let's agree that there's no such thing as cause and effect. The contingency argument the way I framed it is still valid, because I didn't mention cause and effect at all. Let

me tell you why.

Interesting atheists,

when he was commenting on the cosmological argument, because the logical argument, because of his argument that William Lane Craig and those other guys are making popular now this country has Ellie's argument, everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore, the universe has a cause. Okay.

So Bertrand Russell said, but this is the problem of composition. Because you're saying that just because there are causes in the universe, it doesn't mean that that cause will be applied to the universe. So he says, For example, just because we have mothers as part of the human race, it doesn't mean that the human race itself has never imagined a wall

like Trump likes.

Just because this is Bertrand Russell is a very valid argument. He says, just because the wall is made up of small parts, it doesn't mean that the wall itself is small. He's right. Bertrand Russell was right. However, what if the wall is made up of red paths,

the wall itself can be read. So the fallacy of composition is a double edged sword, because in order for it to be a proper fallacy, it needs to have perfect knowledge of the hole. If you don't have perfect knowledge of the hole, you can't claim it to be a fallacy. So both the theists and the atheists are in a good luck, because the atheist to say, well, it can't be a small part of me. But the theist is saying, well, the red part can make red bricks can make a Red Bull. And both can be possible, but both both

can be argued against. You see, so this is why I use the contingency argument. Let me bring back the argument that I used causation for the sake of argument, no problem, you can have position. Let's pretend you know there's no let's pretend

let's pretend

it's possible that it can exist, then it's possible that it can't answer the universe on logical basis. However, contingency dependence, I made an ontological arguments, a mathematical arguments, you have a set of things within the set of all dependence.

Yes, now, you can't have

The existence of things, if everything is dependent on everything else. If existence depends upon dependent things existence would never exist. You have two options. Either there's an independent, outside,

or this thing itself is the independent. The series is the independent.

And what is it the independent, necessary independent? However, is it conceivable to think of this series? If we take out the two

as different? Yes. And we said a possible existence is something which can be rearranged.

This is a serious argument.

I'm not going to be William Lane Craig here today. I know you're used to this is the basis William Lane Craig, this is his argument. I know the weaknesses of the argument. I didn't use this argument. I want the most undercutting argument. No one can crack this argument. I've read from Plato to Leibnitz, all the way through to Russell. And believe me, this is the argument no one consults. This is the uncrackable coat. So he tried to crack the code by saying, well, the necessary existence

should be should have the entailment of the dependent things, what I'm saying the complete opposite. I'm saying that it's impossible for it to be made up of parts and still be the necessary existence, because a possible existence is an existence that is subject to change.

So to use this phraseology, if we look at the weight of the evidence, the totality of the evidence, were extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, we have an extraordinary evidence, we have an absolutely extraordinary evidence, which works in the mind mathematically, and works in physical reality cosmologically

and works on first principles, and we get the independent self sufficient one entity, which we as Muslims call Allah.

That's it.

There's a multiverse.

The multiverse

has a multiple, an infinite amount of universes, or not even just universes, because why discriminate towards universes, creations is still dependent upon those things. And we said, It can't be that because you can envisage a universe in and out. And so it's dependent upon the structure. So you say, hey,

it's important, to be honest with ourselves.

He's a lawyer.

A lot of lawyers are referred to as liars. But he's not one of them, is a good man.

And as a lawyer,

when he goes into the courtroom, he refers to witness testimony. He makes abductive arguments, like CSI, CSI, forensics, put the evidences together. It's not God of the gaps, just in the same way as if you put food for a dog, and then you go away, and the food is eaten, you're not gonna say that's a dog of the gaps argument.

It's just an abductive inference, which he does every time. And if it's not that,

if you don't do an abductive inference, then all of the cases he's represented have been miscarriages of justice, which I'm sure he wouldn't do.

And the point here is this.

The point is, when we put the totality of evidence, asking for more evidence, you know, it's like, when we've given you ontological, metaphysical, a priori, a post, all right, scientific, physical, mathematic, probabilistic evidences. It's like asking for a torch. When you're in the middle of daylight.

Give me a torch. But why do you need the torch, my friend, everything around you? You're locked into the arguments. Everywhere you go. There's arguments. There's evidence, there's science, even to the extent where by

even to the extent, whereby you're born with that feeling of believing in God, and then you have to socially constructed according to Justin Barrett, and others, your atheism,

just like you use other socially constructed ideas like secondary feminism, liberalism. I don't think people that wrote about liberalism were women, by the way, you're talking about what about these men? They're all men. liberalism is written by men, john Locke, john Stuart Mill. Rousseau wants us to

Thomas Hobbes, I don't I don't see any women's names there.

So frankly, let's not play these games. What I will say is this.

What I will say is as Muslims

we have

additional evidence. And this is the evidence from Revelation. The Quran says woolly bear to room for additional art, Roman bodyholiday him say

that the Romans had been defeated in low land nearby land. And after that defeat, they will become victorious.

It makes predictions which materialize and look at this just as one piece of evidence. And you can look at my videos for more, but there's just one thing when someone makes a succession of predictions of the future, what is the probability

that some of those predictions will be false? If you add all of those things, and you aggregate them in your total probability chart, and you ask the question, if someone makes all of these

if someone makes all of these predictions of the future, like, What does what's the probability that this could have been a guess? Well, there's a way of finding that out through mathematical probability theory, for example, where epistemic probability.

So frankly, we do have an argument. It's not. And by the way, there's something else here, very important. He made a good point. He made a very good point. He said that, why is it the case that miracles are confined or time bound? He's right.

For Christian, that would be a great argument. If you say to a Christian, how comes Jesus rested dead when we couldn't see it? Absolutely right about that.

Well, the process of selecting like a family Nessie, we have not seen you except for Muhammad, all of humankind. The reason why those prophetic miracles were localized, like Jesus, or Moses splitting the sea, or whatever it may be, is because they appealed or is meant to appeal to that time, and that people. As for the Quran, itself, it claims to be the miracle, it's an auditory miracle, so that you can analyze it in any time in any place. So it's not giving an unfair advantage to the primary audience, you can try and falsify the Quran. Now, it gives you a way to try and do so you can try and imitate the fun now challenges, it challenges you to do so. And you can try and look at

those things, which claim to be happening in the future and analyze whether they did in hindsight now, because we have seen whether that happened or not, for example, these are some examples. Now, in the last two or three minutes,

I want to say something important.

Putting this discussion to the side,

you know, Edward,

is one of our friends here in America.

And the reason why I'm putting this in the end, is because I've kind of finished everything, and I wanted to say this,

he works actively to promote the rights of Muslims in this country.

And it's people like Edwards, that allow for Muslims in this country and in the West, to be able to be guaranteed the same kind of freedoms, frankly, that other every other person should have. I believe that if you're going to believe in something, be consistent with it. And though maybe not in the field of atheism, and God's existence, he might not be fully consistent, but in his morality, he's a man of consistency. he opposes Trump's ban on Muslims. He's a friend of the Muslims. And what I want to end off by saying here is, this is the kind of person who were happy to have that as a friend of the Muslim community here in the USA.

After things like the Christchurch massacre, or other terrorist attacks happening on both sides,

bad things are happening, we need to be able to build bridges. I believe Edward is the man or the kind of person Edward is, is the kind of person we need to be friends with. We need to invite to our houses we need to be kind to we need to show courtesy to and we need to respect highly, despite religious or ideological disagreements, we will agree to disagree. But we will also agree to agree where our interests are mutual and where we can oppose a common threat to both of our existences.

Edward is consistent because he does not like arbitrariness, which is a, which is a theme in liberalism, where one community are not treated the same as another community, there's a law and you believe in liberalism, let that law be applied to everyone.

And he's done some great work.

He has done some great work opposing arbitrary kinds of judgments that have happened in different states.

And he was telling me about that and really and truly

We take our hats off to him and his and people like him.

Finally, I want to say, in my last half a minute left, that if I said anything to offend anyone here that I apologize that that was not my intention. And obviously, this is a subject which we really feel passionate about. And as a superior to me in knowledge and experience.

I want to say from the bottom of my heart, Edwards contribution to today's discussion, it's been edifying. It's been brilliant for me, and I'm sure it's been fantastic for you. You're welcome at any time, I'm sure I can say that on behalf of the university. And hopefully we can meet another day. Thank you very much.

Well, thank you, Mohammed, the issue that Mohammed raises, again, pinning his argument on the concept of unnecessary being remembered the problem with that is the problem is that unnecessary fact cannot explain a contingent fact without introducing a new contingent fact in need of explanation. And to see why notice that unnecessary fact cannot explain a contingent fact by entailing it, because then any fact entailed by unnecessary fact, must itself be necessary. And this sets up the regression,

all the way back into the past, which Mohammed is trying to avoid. Now, with respect to my comment that 99% of all scientific discoveries will show to be natural. That doesn't mean the 1% will be supernatural, it means the opposite it means the likelihood of anything being supernatural is very implausible. And the way I said it, was that unless something appears miraculous, like the stars rearranging themselves telling us what to do, it is a God of the gaps argument. As far as the Quran prediction is concerned, both the Quran and the Bible have failed to make the kinds of pure predictions which would show the supernatural now with respect to the Quran, it was finished in 632.

But it was not codified into a final written form until

2018 years later and 650 by the kalief Boothman And now, the only earliest version we have of a 90%, complete Quranic text is from the mid

eighth century, which could be almost 80 years after the Quran was initially

given to Mohammed. Now another problem is with respect to translations. Every time I point out something to Mohammed about the translations that I have before me even eight or nine of them his responses he disagrees with the translation. I don't necessarily disagree that Mohammed might understand the Quran in the original Arabic far better than all these translations. My argument is from divine hiddenness. If the Quran is God's ultimate revelation to humanity, it is inconsistent with that purpose for us who speak only English not to have a reliable translation of Mohammed was not able to demonstrate how an immaterial incorporeal being created time and space. See what

Mohammed was trying to do as a valiant attempt was to rescue was to rescue some vestige of the supernatural from a purely natural universe and ultimately, it was unsuccessful, he was not able to refute at all my argument from evolution. He did not refute my argument from evil. He was not able to explain how an all powerful God that can prevent a lot of evil still has to allow so much evil. He did not adequately refute my

argument from divine hiddenness because he was not able to give a reason why a God who wants us to know his will, would withhold the very evidence that we need to be able to believe in that God. I, as an atheist, gave you clear examples of the type of miraculous occurrences which would make me turn into a believer. In fact, if my dead father appeared right now transported Mohammed and me to Mecca, and told me and I knew it was my dad, that since dying, he realized that Islam was the perfect religion, I would convert right away, so I'm subject to an open to the evidence. The other thing that Mohammed did not refute was my claim that the Quran like the Bible, the Quran, like the

Bible, demands eternal punishment for choosing the wrong religion. I believe that we human beings have a right to use our reason and sense of justice, to say that it is wrong for any all powerful deity to condemn innocent people to eternal suffering, because of an honest mistake in choosing the wrong religion. And so I believe, to that extent, the Bible and the Quran are equally, equally false. However, I have to say, the Quran did improve on the Bible in one area. If you read Jeremiah 19 nine, you see that God threatens to make people eat their sons and daughters. In the Quran, there is no such vestige of cannibalism. So if God does exist, I thank him for in between the Bible in the

Quran taking human flesh off the menu.

The

Mohammed was unable to refute the argument against a transcendental person. Because if you are a person, you have to have some boundaries, some limit it to say that you are not in time and space and you are in time and space. What are we talking about? It's like some guy standing up waist deep in a hot tub. He's half in and half out, how can you be partially in time? How can God enter time, in order to enter time, you have to have a beginning in time, a timeless being cannot do anything, either can an immaterial being. Now I know that the concept that death is the end is very difficult for most people to tolerate. But on atheism, what's true is not what we would like to be true.

What's true is what cold hard reality shows is true. There is no example whatsoever of consciousness, self awareness, being able to exist without a fully functional physical brain, if it were so than Alzheimer's disease, would not be able to eclipse consciousness again, Alzheimer's disease eclipses your consciousness, but when you die, you're fully intact and an immaterial form. It can't happen that way. Also, the argument from evolution with the common ancestry that we have with apes, we didn't evolve from apes, but we spun off and had a common ancestor. If you look at the fossil record of the precursors to Homo sapiens, who we are now you see, we evolved from a more

primitive life form, both the Bible and the Quran, except the notion of Adam and Eve. You can't have an Adam and Eve if evolution is true, which it is, because there was no such thing as the first perfect human couple, we evolved like any other creature. So if there was no Adam and Eve, both the Bible and the Quran are wrong in saying that there was and of course, if there was no Adam and Eve, then Christianity is completely wrong in talking about the sin in the Garden of Eden. Now, another thing that Mohammed was unable to do, was to demonstrate and I've seen other Muslim apologists try to do this was to demonstrate that the language or the mode of Arabic itself, used in the Quran, had

to have a divine authorship. You can have advanced language or poetic or useful verse, or you can make innovations in language but that does not show that there was a supernatural origin also, he failed to show us what specific predictions in the Quran

Took were made. That turned out to be true on one of his YouTube videos, he talks about a Roman war, which the Quran

predicted the Romans would lose. Well, I looked it up that war ended in 628 ce II and the Quran was finished in 630. To see So, the Quran did not predict anything in the future.

The other aspect of all of this is the incompatible properties of the concept of God, the very concept of God, God cannot be both omnipotent and omniscient. If God is omnipotent, it means God can do anything, including change his mind, but if God is omniscient, he always knew what he was going to do in the very end, so he cannot change his mind. So therefore, the properties of omniscience and omnipotence, are incompatible with respect to the fine tuning argument, that sort of Mohammed flirted with and then moved away from, if we look at that, on theism, you would not need any kind of fine tuning, because God would be capable of making us live in any environment. So the whole notion

of fine tuning is nonsensical. But yet,

if you look at atheism, and there is no all powerful God who could make us live in any environment, then we wouldn't, then we would need fine tuning, because there is no supernatural being to sustain us any which way, which makes fine tuning curiously more likely on atheism. Now, I've heard Muslim apologists say that the Quran predicted that the universe is expanding, I looked at four different translations. And the only one that used the term expanding was Mustafa Khattab in 2016, to three other translations, including the classic pitfall, and Abdullah Yusuf Ali, all of them had the vastness of space already existing. So if the Quran did predict, that the universe is expanding,

which meant that the Quran had divine for knowledge before science that the Big Bang occurred, then only one out of four translations shouldn't be able to show that. So once again, on divine hiddenness if the Quran is what God wants me to believe, then the Quran should have been translated into English.

True, also on the argument from evil, and I've touched upon this is the distribution of pleasure and pain. On theism, we would expect that horrendous pain would only exist if there's a purpose that would aid our survival or our reproduction. So if I put my hand on the hot stove, it's hurt. So I take my hand away. But let's say again, I or some innocent animal are caught in a forest fire, and we're unable to pull away from the pain and we suffer a horrible death. Well, the pain of that burning to death did not contribute to my survival or reproduction. And so on atheism, it's understandable on theism. It's it's not understandable. I referred earlier to the Bayesian

probability analysis on Bayesian probability analysis, which is widely used, you have to have prior knowledge of something there's no prior knowledge of the supernatural. So if you use Basie and confirmation of predictive ability, you would not be able to predict the supernatural. If the supernatural existed, there would be evidence of it if consciousness could exist. Without a functional physical brain, there'd be evidence of it. If the Bible or the Quran predicted something which could only have been known by miraculous means when it was written, there would be evidence of it. If we humans were specially created, there wouldn't be overwhelming evidence that we evolved

from ape like creatures from a common ancestor with apes. So

with all of the evidence, a cumulative case shows the universe

is natural, not supernatural and that God does not exist. Thank you.

And with that, we conclude the debate, everyone for coming out. We really appreciate your time today.

And we can see you guys again in the future and May Allah give me Everyone give them another round of applause because

I would also like to give a big thank you to another key organizer, his name's Rob. And then he did a lot of this work and I want to give him a really big donations, a really big round of applause as well.

And it's all love it for everyone's needs something super important again, if anyone is able to we are really, really asking for donations have helped lumber costs for the shame, and it's our only events so if anyone wants to there is a box of donations outside there's also the Venmo which is David MSA and we appreciate anything and everything Zach always for coming everyone and shall have a good night.