Part 2 __Q & a__ – vs Edward Tabash __ Does God Exist_ _ Part 2

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 Mohammed hijab, he will ask a question, you'll have one minute to formulate the question, Edward, 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.

Would you like a duet into the just one mic? Okay.

Oh, okay. All right.

Thank Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin from 1950.

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

All right. Well, I have a minute.

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 is not a valid form of argument.

Which is non duality 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?

can 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 discover 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.

The issue of

you know, mathematics, the mind and all those things are first person requires various sciences. The third one

And inquiries and 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 parts of history, for example, we believe in, you know, the slave trade, we 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, 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 430. For

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 co one morning Arabic means maintainers, and protectors. And this word Hi, my boo boo literally means to stand up. And that's why you'll 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, lender will 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's reboot email, don't hate the woman slaves of alemannic woman. 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 nuanced than you think.

Muhammad 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, than 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 imitability 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 these scopes are the scope the Arabic language of the people of the time and it was recognized by those linguists as 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.

Muhammad, 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 ex nihilo 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 cause be? 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 they're upset, other daily lessons allow them so it's an argument from ignorance. If we

don't know how something works, it doesn't mean it is false. However, having said that, there was 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 like 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 are causing something which brings rise to the phenomenon, whereas dependency is something which is relying on something else. So time will 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 upon each other. And if we compile all the things which rely upon each other together, you'd have no existence. So you have to have an independent so the contingency argument does not rely upon causality, which is why To be frank with you.

Okay.

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 ryzen 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. The Christian 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 methods. 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 on empirical, thank you.

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 all 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

promise 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 Muhammad 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 both. Second question, this is directed towards you, Edward, why are atheists focused on a God that would service 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 transcendent, 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 a 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 foreign says, When my memo 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're an atheist, or a Hindu, or a Christian, and

even though you're born with this fitrah 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 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 this digital futures, futures that are a hindrance or otherwise less than perfect and many organisms. If the universe runs without inconsistency, what would explain this digital futures 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 birthing process. Well, I think this is called 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 at 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 add because I've got a minute left. I think people have misunderstood

Under my argument from uniformity, I'll add it to the conclusion.

Like my good friend for us the hubby 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, it's either going to be heads or tails, tomorrow 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, there are all kinds 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 will be 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, then the fine tuning argument, which is why I presented it. So

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 is more likely on atheism. So given the claims of God's moral perfection, and omnipotence of defects in design are not defensible.

Thank you. Next question, this is to you at work. You said 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 I'm not in my office working, and then floated in the air. And, and 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 atheists 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

answer yes, we get two minutes with

the first point on not being religious. It depends on how you define religion. Because frankly, if you take a like a meal, Durkheim approach who's a sociologist, he defined religion in 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 axions 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 epistemic 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 provide us with autonomy? And does that negate the good and evil argument to give you what God provide us with autonomy, our free world? And does that negate the good and evil argument? Yes, so on Islamic traditionalism, God has endowed us with the idea of choice of freewill. And in fact, 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. 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 in Ohio, like in the 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 were wronged in the dunya, the worldly life, you'll be compensated 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 unlock his head off is the same, 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 kills 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, a 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 ended 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 as 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 gratuitous, 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 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 hadn'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.

You got to get to this, 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 people it's 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 you should just realize that meme,

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 in all those things, but on the harm principle, which is what john Stuart Mill proposed the power 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 a brother and a brother, so long as this contraception using there's no deformed babies, that should be allowed as well. And I haven't seen anyone doing incest, right activism in America for a very long time. And, frankly, on liberalism, that's what you should do. You know, just because they're a minority group of people that still in the closet in the closet, it doesn't mean now that they should be treated any less than 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 if it is the principle on social liberalism, then insist 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 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 his Pascal's 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, hey, mocha for Toby, 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 equivalent 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 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 of this just the beginning. 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

Okay, why not? Why not get my right to get 115 years? 15

years?

All right, please.

Come down 15 minutes left. And I'll 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 still 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 it 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 hard.

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 atheist

when he was commenting on the cosmological argument, because the logical argument has an 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 mother. Imagine a wall.

like Trump likes rules. Yeah.

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 whole. If you don't have perfect knowledge of the whole, you can't claim it to be a fallacy. So both the theists and the atheists are in a gridlock. Because the atheist to say, well, it can't be a small part of the debate. 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 causation. Let's pretend, you know there's no, let's pretend,

let's pretend

it's possible that it can exist. And it's possible that it can't offer the universe a 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, the 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.

Now 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 code. So he tried to crack the code by saying, well, the necessary existence should be should have the entailment of the dependent things. When 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 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 Muslim school, Allah,

that's it.

The multiverse

if there's a multiverse

have a multiple, an infinite amount of universes, or more even just universes, because why discriminate towards universes, creations is still something to depend upon those things. And we said, It can't be that because you can envisage taking a universe in and out. And so it's dependent upon the structure.

You see here.

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 going to say that's a dog of the gaps, arguments.

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 poster or a 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 once you get 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 whereby

even to the extent whereby

you're born with that feeling of believing in God, and then you have to socially construct according to Justin Barrett, and others, your atheism.

Just like you use other socially constructed ideas like second wave feminism, liberalism, I don't think people that wrote about liberalism, we're 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 woolovers room for additional art will mean bodyholiday him say on the bone 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 the Quran 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, or 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 a Christian, that would be a great argument. If you say to a Christian, how come Jesus was dead when we couldn't see it? Absolutely right about

what the process was, like, has certainly Nessie we have not sent you except for Mohammed, 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 it 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 Quran 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 its 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. And 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 we're happy to have 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. When to invite to our houses, we need to be kind to, we need to show courtesy to and we need to respect Hi, 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, but 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 thank 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.

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 to 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 Qurans 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 am

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 and 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? 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 conscious 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 in 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 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 C and the Quran was finished in 632 C. So the Quran did not predict anything in the future of 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 cut tub 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 will 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 is no prior knowledge of the supernatural. So if you use Bayesian confirmation, 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 and not supernatural, and that God does not exist. Thank you.

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

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

I would also like to give a big thank you to another key organizer. His name is Matt and 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 before everyone leaves something super important again, if anyone is able to we are really really asking for donations have helped lumber costs for this year. And it's our only advance so if anyone wants to there is a box for donations outside there's also the Venmo which is Davis MSA and we appreciate anything and everything Zach always for coming everyone and shall have a good night.