Young Academic Atheist Asks Muslim Questions

Dear friends,

we have Jacob, handsome man charismatic.

His defenses impregnable

Amara, we have a boy

jacket. So we have mommy job and Baba Jacob, Jacob, ah smoking some couple of weeks ago about contingency. And he just wants to ask me some questions. I'm gonna need to

make sure you get him as well.

I'll give it to him. I'll give it to him. I'll just keep it away.

So, I'll start with you. So can you introduce yourself? Tell me what, who you are, what you support what your background is, and why you wanted to talk to me? Sure. So.

All right, so Hello, my name is Jacob. I've been wanting to meet her job for some time. I'll confess a little bit of a fanboy and I disagree with pretty much everything he says. But in terms of a sort of intellectual debating type fella, he's he's a bit of a bit of a hero of mine, especially after I'm watching. To be honest, I don't think cosmic skeptic held his own in Oxford debate with it to be honest with

ya know, so I'm a sort of

general, non believer, libertarian nationalist type. And I'll just

champion Yeah, Tommy supporter as well, but um, but against against anyone who's who's in support of violence. But I think I find that I reconcile that with Tommy very easily. I don't think he's a violent person. I think he had, he made some mistakes in his past. I think he's a very good man. I think he's fighting for England for a lot of respects for him, as I do for a lot of Muslims. So I'm

someone who's described me as a hero, and Tommy Robinson as a hero in the same very possible in very different ways. Whoa, all right. So you said you read my book A while ago. So what what kind of stuff? We're talking about Kalam cosmological argument? Well, I'll make the kind of what's referred to as the argument of contingency. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is who kind of, he's a main proponent now.

Yeah. Well, Aristotle had his own version, right? The Greeks had their own version. Yes, the Arabs, and then the enlightenment. Alright, so what were your thoughts on the argument? Can you summarize what you understand from the argument first? Okay, so as I understand it, thank you. It sort of is basically Aquinas is that way, isn't it? He's, I think it's just the way he says he, he says, I think, yeah, and I sort of adapted it from him. And he says, There are contingent things or possible existences in this world. And obviously, everything needs to have some sort of cause otherwise, it wouldn't be contingent. And this must be basically a chain of causality terminating in a necessary

being. And we first did a little Muslim. Of course, that being God's correct me now if that's Yeah, so you're, you're right. some extent, the two ways, there's two ways of doing contingency, right.

One of them is through causality. And the other one is through explanation. That's traditionally So in other words, the contingency argument, or what I think, I think is a Kalam cosmological argument as well, that's my Yeah, I disagree with that. But yeah, there's a difference of opinion on that. Either way. It can either be done through causality, or it can be done through explanation, it doesn't need causation, right. But yet, you could go through that route and say, Okay, well, if you believe in cause and effect,

a priori, as well as cosmologically, like, in other words, things in the cosmological environment, which are affected by something, have a cause a phenomena which has something that brought rise to it, which is the textbook definition of a cause?

Has,

basically has a cause that phenomena has a cause? If you believe in that a priori, or if you believe in that, even from a cosmological perspective, you could argue that, well, then they have to have a first cause or whatever. Right. But that's not the only way of doing contingency. So you can do it through dependence as well. dependence. Yeah, yeah. So what do you think about the argument about a dependency one? Yeah. So yeah, so I separate that right away from the column, the column I hold to be the sort of traditional one that Craig popularized, the sort of whatever begins to exist has a cause the universe began to exist, therefore, life will grow up, basically. And then the

contingency, one, I think, I think it's stronger to be honest with you. I mean, the column really is on shaky ground on both its premises, but the contingency one is more is much more impressive, because at face value, it does seem as if, okay, you know, an infinite regression seems incompatible with everything that we understand about the world. And so it sort of seems very reasonable to say yes, this this must terminate somewhere in necessity.

I think it's a bit of a leap that they then call that God

So people like David Hume said, No, why can't it be? I think it was using the persona of Kranthi. He said like, Oh, no.

He said, he says, first to his debater, he says, first, first of all, you know, you're assuming that there is some some necessary being that, you know, he he doubts whether you can even use the term necessary without having any coherent meaning. And then he says, okay, suppose suppose that there is he says, why can't this just be the totality of the universe? And then so so for me, there's several issues with this one, if there is something necessary, okay. It could just be the totality of all that exists. I realize there's problems with that. And there's plenty of counter arguments you can make. One could simply be that there that there are just contingent things. Okay. And it doesn't

seem like sort of logical, you know, 100% that there must be something

necessary. say, Well, I'd say those are the two main The other problem is, from an objectivist point of view, right? We might say, you know, necessary could is anything that you you couldn't conceive.

Like you couldn't conceive otherwise, like, we saw some people say, No, the planet Jupiter is actually necessary. And you might say, Oh, well, you can conceive of planet Jupiter not being there. But can you really, you can, is it possible to I'm not sure if you can conceive of a universe in which there are things that are not there, which leads me to believe maybe there are more than one unnecessary existences. So that's about three arguments in one hour.

So Alright, so the first thing you mentioned was that the first thing you mentioned was the the William Lane Craig.

He wrote a book in 79 called Kalam cosmological argument. My book is called Kalam cosmological arguments. So with that, the reason why I called it that is to show that this is not one argument. Right? Right. So the one

the one that William Lane Craig focuses on is that as alien was even as early in his most famous book as to African philosopher, which is the incoherence of the philosophers.

Even he, he postulates more than one argument, which is, so he makes an argument for movement, which is quite similar to you talking about Aquinas, yeah. And he says, Look, he says that, for example, this is one of his other because you talked about one of his arguments, he mentioned this in one of his books. He says everything that begins to exist has a cause the universe began to exist or the island, by the way, the universe is not a good translation of what he actually said. He says the world hasn't began to exist, not the universe, the universe is a new term, right? So it says Li alum, or the the world began to exist, therefore, the world hasn't caused, right.

So William Lane, Craig latched on to this, he makes all his money. If you see William Lane, Craig argued as he that's his argument. He made that argument and more than that argument. So for example, he said, Look, one of his arguments I made, which is also a cosmological argument, because a cosmological argument is an argument that makes reference to the cosmos, and literally, to the to the, to the world around us. He said, Look, he said that movement is really what is it? It's time and a movement at Thomas Paine. He says, Look, he says that, if you believe in movement, he made an argument for movement, the first mover argument, which is the same argument, as Aristotle, would

say, if you believe in time you believe in movement, so long as there is time there is movement. And if there is an IF and if there is movement, there must be a mover. That's another argument. Right? So the argument of Aristotle me the argument, has only made the argument

obvious and doesn't reject the argument. But he said, I said about that in his book, he said, Look, he said, just if he and this is a good point, he said, just because there's a first mover, it doesn't necessitate that first mover, is the cause of everything that exists. Yes. So you can believe in a deistic? first mover, yeah, you can believe in the Albert Einstein. Anyway, the first mover argument make it may give us evidence that there were there was in fact, a first mover or an eternal mover. However, it doesn't give us evidence that that move as intelligence without that mover is equivalent.

Absolutely, yeah. Not all of the argument. Look, I'll be frank with you. The maximum we can prove from a logical perspective is theistic. Brilliant? Yeah. If you put a look, if you if you define theism as as a personal God,

then you cut there's no real first principles you can use to establish that. Here's what we say we say as Muslims is that our fundamental foundational definition of God doesn't depend necessarily on a personal God. That's additional information that we put Christian concept as well. Yeah, that's additional information that we only come to know ipso facto through revelation. So the necessary causes this, everything in the world is dependent.

Whether like this book is dependent on the materials or whatever, and it goes back and you can't have that process.

back to something which is necessary. In other words, something which does not depend on anything else.

As simple as that. So you have to have an independent to have all other dependent things. If you want to simplify the argument to the lowest common multiple, you have to have an independent to have all other dependencies, what are the attributes of the independent, the independent must be eternal because it couldn't be conceived of any other way at any other time. So, it has to be like that forever, in the past, pre and post a terminal, it has to be necessary in the fact that it can't be conceived of any other way. And it has to be

free has to be the reason for everything else that exists the ultimate reason. So your objection that you mentioned about the universe and being the universe is not actually an objection? Because all you're doing is you're saying that I believe in it unnecessarily since can can be,

can exist, but that necessary existence could be the universe. So someone can say, Okay, well, so you agree with the premise of the argument, that you just agree with the nature of the necessary existence? So really, the postulation, which is what Bertrand Russell kind of alluded to himself, and others as well, that, you know, the universe is is a necessary existence? I think it comes from him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course, because he came before. But the point is that if you say that it's not a rejection of the argument, then

you see the point. So you accept the argument, but you just have a different name. You have a different understanding of what could be, right? Yes. So I wouldn't use the word God unnecessary. Yeah.

So at this point, that's not a rejection. It's not It's not an objection to the argument, or a rejection of the argument, but it's okay. It could be the universe No problem. For now, we won't rule the universe out. But for now, we'll explain why it won't be the universe in a second robot. But let's agree that first of all, you accept that there must be a necessary existence.