Reacting to Dawkins & Joe Rogan Interview

Assalamu alaikum Today we're going to be responding to Joe Rogan and Richard Dawkins talking about how Islam and religion is dying and atheism is taking over the world. Is there any evidence that that is reaching the Muslim world as well? And that people are? Well, as I was saying,

the the downloads of my books have been encouraging. We have this thing called CFR has a thing called the translation project. So in this clip, Dawkins says, religions dying as a general point, would you agree with that? Well, first of all, we'd have to be very clear about how we define religion. Okay, in terms of atheism, actually becoming more popular, or the kind of atheism which Richard Dawkins himself espouses, as I mentioned in my book, which is free to download. The book is called the scientific deception of the new atheists. It's a very subtle plugin. Yes, yes, you can put it you can see in the description box, but I've referenced in that book, it's very small, very,

very small booklet, really, that you can download free of charge.

All of the demographic data indicates that most people in the West according to Pew Research, 90% of people still believe in a higher power. According to Lynda Woodhead, only 5.5% of people believe in the strident atheism that Richard Dawkins believes in, which is actually quite interestingly, from a British perspective, the same number of people, amount of people that are Muslim in this country. So there's about the same amount of Muslims in this country as they are atheists. Atheists. Yeah, try them atheists have Richard Dawkins kind. So here, Dawkins, he's basically saying, Look, guys, I can tell you atheism is rising in the Muslim world. And Islam is dying, because people are downloading

my book. So really rigorous scientific argument, isn't it? Well, it's methodologically. flawed, but from a demographic and sociological perspective, not least because the religious switching cannot and has not been sociologically identified by downloads of the atheistic of atheists, say after 911 millions of people say they downloaded the Quran, because they like okay, what's this about? Yeah, does that mean they automatically became Muslim? Yeah, exactly. I mean, first of all, 13 million people might have downloaded the book, but it doesn't mean all of them. Number one, read it. And number two agreed with it. Or it could be actually it could be a vaccination, right? Because the

book has such weak arguments. like Michael ruse says, I'm embarrassed to be an atheist because of this book, right? This book makes me embarrassed. And, you know, he makes the conflation between between metaphysical naturalism and methodological naturalism. This fallacy is pointed out by Elliot soba by Massimo pigliucci. Yes, by Michael ruse by all these people, right? So it could be the Muslim picks up the book. And it's like, Okay, this is a atheism is about actually is quite poor. And then they're like, I never noticed atheism again. Maybe he's spreading Islamism in the Muslim world. Absolutely. Because a lot of the time when people want to increase their cultural capital by

learning about new ideas of the West, which is obviously the demographic heartland of the new atheist movement, it doesn't it that sometimes actually acts as a counter current. Now, people think of this, if this is what it's about, then we have nothing to do with it. Absolutely. But in terms of recent history, I mean, we should look at is the fact that in the 60s and 70s, in countries like the countries that he mentioned, Iran and Egypt, the countries that he mentioned, in countries like those, you'll find that there's been a movement from pan Arab Islam or nationalism, and secularism towards Yeah, towards Islam religiosity practicing observance of the religion. Yeah. And that's

visible. I mean, for anyone who just sees pictures. Okay, I'm not saying that's the only game in Afghanistan. Yeah, these areas, they were secular and communist in terms of even dress code. I mean, the dress code has shifted completely look at pictures of Egypt in the 1670s look at pictures of Iranian women were probably wearing miniskirts and these kind of things. Now, there's a big chunk of the population in Egypt where it's not compulsory, I mean, no one's gonna get attacked, if they do that, that observe the hijab, that Masjid mosques have increased.

I mean, even from a, from a from an internet data point perspective, we look at Google Trends, we look at the diet, or those individuals who call to Islam, and their sermons and their preaching has become extremely popular, especially in the after 2000. So all the data points that we can look at and tangibly see indicate there's been a trajectory move towards religiosity rather than the opposite. So he says he's very hopeful, right? He's very hopeful of atheism, basically taking over but I have this question. And I don't know if you've thought about this, but

atheists in general, they don't really have many kids. Muslims have a lot of kids. And Dawkins entire worldview is based on

Upon Darwinism, and the ultimate rationale, according to him in The Selfish Gene is the preservation of our genes reproduction and survival. So could it be that natural selection Darwinism actually causes Islamism? Because Muslims actually have the most amount of children, as you know. And Islam is growing faster than actual the world population is the fastest growing demographic. So is it possible that that's why Islam is growing. And that's why his hope that atheism is gonna actually prevail is going to fail because of the theory that he purports to believe. And I'll leave that to you, because I think you're that you're the expert on issues to do with Darwinism, but what I think

is that Richard Dawkins has delusions of grandeur. Yeah. In his one of his interviews with son, he was asked, Do you think you're winning or something of that fact? And he said, Yes, we're winning nothing of the information that we have from Pew Research on apostasy, which, by the way, is methodologically flawed, because they, they, they interview like 30%, or

Iranians, who don't speak English as a first language and don't represent the bulk of Muslims in America. But even if we look at that, and we look at other data points, like the the European study on dow, and so on, we'll find that really Darwinian arguments, which is really the thrust of his of his book, right? as being Darwinian, the Darwinian mechanism replaces the gods thesis, which is what he's trying to argue, is not one of the reasons why

people are leaving religion, if it is a reason, if there is a reason, I think in your research you were trying to, in your book, you're basically talking about moral issues. Yes. Yeah. That being the cause, not not not anything. Exactly. In terms of if there's an intellectual reason, which is not always the case. We were leaving Islam, for example, or even Christianity. In the case of Islam, it's usually morality. Yeah. Which is not the exclusive property of the new atheist argument. Well, actually, they don't have a justification for morality. And Firstly, exactly right. And that's, that's something else, that they make these arguments against religion, but so do other people, many

different people who are not new atheists, Christians can make arguments against Islamic morality. liberal secularists can make arguments and so they wouldn't be able to pinpoint whether their arguments for Islam using morality is the exact or the reason for the switching, if you see what I mean. Yeah, there is that. And you can also sort of argue that, you know, he's talking about atheism taking off in the Muslim world, but hasn't even really taken off in the Western world. Because the Soviet Union, you know, they had this massive atheism project for decades. And when it collapsed, people went back to religion. We're finding new age paganism. We're finding the spiritual movements

are rising all across Europe, rising all across North America. So it's not even working here. Why would it be working in the Muslim world? Well, looking at new atheists, in new atheism, in particular, people like Richard Dawkins, people like Sam Harris. And when we look at the the interaction, or the engagement or the numbers, because Joe Rogan use that term, then the metrics, the actual internet metrics, with, for example, 10 years ago, 15 years ago to now, you realize that actually, people are losing interest in their arguments. It's like, old arguments that have been regurgitated, returned to Jordan Peterson and yeah, meaning of life and nihilism. And these people

are irrelevant. No, I mean, Richard Dawkins, is a 78 year old man, who now has produced a book called out, is this your new target? No, No, No, he's not. He's not. He's not a target. Because really, and truly, he's an irrelevant person. I mean, we have to be honest, 78 years old, has just produced a book, I'm not gonna even named a title. And if you compare that the hits that he has on that book, and we've used Google Trends to do so, before and after, compared to The God Delusion, you realize that it's not even one fifth the amount of interest that he got before. Yeah. So people are not interested anymore. They've heard what he has to say. Some people were convinced who

probably were agnostic in the first place.

But most people are not. And his broken record arguments are just becoming a thing of the past. They're gonna go to the dustbin of history, really. So what about this Joe guy? I mean, he's just nodding along, like, you know, one of those puppets and you know, he's also been trying to promote atheism a lot. I mean, do you do you see him as an atheist evangelist as well? I don't know if he's an evangelist. I actually mentioned Joe Rogan in my book as a point of comparison to show the irrelevance of people like Richard Dawkins. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I mentioned him in some of the the the

internet data that I picked up because he's he's a cultural figure now. And I think he is an influencer. And I think he is extremely relevant. like comparing Joe Rogan with Richard Dawkins is like comparing Michael Jackson with I don't know one of these people who have started a YouTube channel smashed agenda or something. Yeah, something example. Yeah.

But the point I'm making is that Joe Rogan, though he's an atheist, and for the most part, he's just brought atheists into his podcast. He's spoken to Sam Harris books and Richard Dawkins. He

He's engaged with Ben Shapiro,

you know, softly on Judaism, he's not really had someone who represents the religion and Abrahamic religion, talk to talk to them through their rationale, which is why we say it's very important that you know, that he calls someone you know, to to his podcast who is a Muslim, and we're always here our services always. Absolutely. So as you heard from hijab for us as a hobby, we really asked you to make sure you turn up again on the Joe Rogan show. Yes, and do a good job of representing Islam he did Lhasa, Mashallah.