Nouman Ali Khan – 3. Why should I believe in God?

The I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that the mic system here is really shoddy. So the more you talk, the harder it becomes, for me to hear myself even so, by the show,

I asked that, in particular, usually I have very good attention span and I can talk over voices given that I have lots of children and lots of students. So I'm used to that. But this subject matter requires just an extra deal of concentration and organization of thought. So I'm requesting that you, thank you so much.

Okay, I can't stand it. Okay. All right. And handle electrabel alameen wa sallahu wa salam O Allah faded, and via saline water, only, he will suffer he is very, I'll try to keep my talk to about 25 minutes or so. So if it's getting to that time, just raise your hand. So I know that I got a job. Okay.

Basically, I was asked to talk a little bit about atheism and theism and you know, the proof of God's existence and why should I believe in God anyway, all of which are very legitimate questions and very deep questions. None of these questions can be addressed in a one liner. My wife has a one liner about it. I'll share that with you first. She says God exists, whether you like it or not. And if you don't believe it, well, fine. We'll get you anyway. So

that could have been my talk, but

and I'll start after my wife. I'll start with something that the ancient Bedouin Arabs used to say, like, sometimes there would be people from other civilizations like the Persians or the Romans that would do trade and before Islam, they would do trade sometimes or pass them Arabia. And they'd see these Arabs, they still even though they had shift, they still believed in a god. They still believe in one Supreme Being. So somebody asked is the Bedouin era? How do you know God exists?

How do you come to see how did faith come to you? And you know, these Arabs, they spend most of their time in the desert.

So he said something really interesting.

He pointed at his camels, camels, dropping his camels, you know, duty. He pointed out, he goes, you know, because of that, I know, my camel exists. That's all he said.

That's all he said. What did he mean by that? He meant there, you know, when I see that in the desert, when you see something and find it something else, when you see like a, you know, a path or footprints, you know, somebody walked by here, when you see a fire that's been put out, but there's burnt wood there and ashes there. You know, some people were here camping. And they left their traces here. He looks at all of creation as traces of God. Just like that. Small pieces in front of him is trace of his Campbell. That is Campbell's there. So they in his mind, there's no doubt. That's as straightforward as linear as his thinking is, it's as clear as data him. That's not even a

question. Now when it comes to actually the reasoning. But these are very simple way of looking at things. But I want to see if the crime deals with this subject. And you should know that explicitly. No, Koran does not ask the question, or answer the question, Does God Exist? That is not a question in the Quran? It does not that question doesn't exist. The Quran is Allah speaking himself?

is Allah speaking inside himself, and he's in conversation with his creations with you and me. He's in this direct conversation with us. The only questions he asks is, do you really believe it's me talking?

Do you really believe that if these are these words are my own, because you're not hearing a large voice, you're hearing the voice of homeless on the love audio system, and these words are being given to him? So that's the question of Ron asks, Is this God's Word or not? He asks another question related to God, are there other gods that you should be worshiping besides myself? He asks another question. He says, should you you think you're going to worship yourself and not me? You think you're gonna think someone else other than myself? These are the kinds of questions that were on. It never asked the question. Does God Exist or not?

But then, another question rising out of all of these questions, another question was born, how come the Quran never asks that question? How can you never do that deals with the question is God even exists or not? Why not? Why not deal with this question head on? This is one of the most fundamental problems of philosophy in human history across civilization. So why not? If this book is for guidance for all of humanity, why not deal with this problem head on? And we find the answer to that in the Quran? Also, why is it that that's not even a question? Why is it that that's not even a discussion as far as the Quran is concerned? And in order to understand that, we have to understand

something about ourselves. First, I'll tell you a Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he says, Man,

whoever knew himself really knew himself or herself. They truly know their master. If you really know who you are, then you know who you are.

Master is. Now that seems a little ambiguous at first. So we have to explore that statement through the Koran. So we understand what it is that the Prophet is telling us.

How do you get to know Allah? Who He gave us? You have to get to know who first?

Who do you have to get to know for you get to know a lot. You have to get to know yourself. If you truly know who you are yourself, then you'll get to know who am I? That's a very strange thing, because all of you would probably answer I already know myself. My name is so and so I have a weight problem. I have weak eyesight. I have this, you know, this old I flunked out of these many classes. I know a lot about myself, What do you mean, I don't know myself? Well, actually, there's a part of yourself that you know,

a part of yourself that you know, but there's another part of yourself that you may not really know that, well.

This is a part of you, that a lot created before you came on this earth.

It was a part of you that created before you were you came out of your mother, it was already in existence. And this part of you that

you're not going to translate it as your spirit or your soul or anything else or your personality, I won't give it any of these modern terms, we'll just call it what again, rule. And the reason you don't know a lot about it is because this is this rule itself, most of what it is, is a mystery to us. This is something Allah Himself tells us, he says yes.

They asked you about who every one of us has inside us. And Omar says they asked you about our booth they have inside of them.

Tell them that this is from a special command of my master. And you have very little you haven't been given knowledge except very, very little. You have been given knowledge, not much knowledge, except very, very little of what this actually is, what its function is what its benefits are. So Allah has told us a few things. And I want to bring your attention to those few things. The purpose of me bringing attention to those things is that you and I get to know who is, first of all, who we ourselves are. And once we get to know who we are, by means of that we will get to know

allies who will like so the argument begins with this, if you want to talk about the theistic argument, or the argument about the belief in God, it begins from this point. Now the thing about this rule that we learned in the Koran is that it was in a less company, that it got to meet a lot. It spoke with a lot. It had a conversation with a lot. And in this conversation, it spoke analysts spoke and both sides have been recorded in the Quran. Allah says to all of the rules, there was a huge gathering of all the all the rules all together, and will not ask them a simple question. Now at this point, the rule doesn't have a question, do you exist or not? It doesn't have a question for

God, whether he exists or not. Well, why does it have that question?

How do you talk to somebody? How are you really here?

Do you exist? I'm not sure if you're there or not, you know, that would be insanity. That will be a kind of insanity that you're talking to someone and you don't believe they're there. Right? So now, it's in conversation with a lighter, less of a direct question. I'll let him ask the question.

Do I exist? He didn't ask that question. Because that's not a relevant question. He said, Am I your master or not?

Am I not your master? Do I not own you? Are you not my property? He asked that question. And all of the root, the root of the believer, the root of the disbeliever, the root of the Christian, the root of the Jews, the capital of the Hindu, the atheist, the address, the pantheist. All of them together,

all of them together had one answer. And the answer was,

of course, we bear with this, we testify. Now, we didn't just testify that He exists, because that's what he was asked to testify to. He asked us to testify to something else. And what is that something else?

What was the question? Who remembers? Call it out?

This is, this whole has a lot of echoes. You got to scream at the top of your lungs when you answer. What's the question here?

Am I your master or not? In other words, it's not just when atheists talk about God, they talk about some entity that exists that has no relationship with you, but someone who owns you has a direct relationship with you.

So he talked about a relationship, do you not have a relationship? And what is that relationship that I am the master and you are the slave? That is the question he that's the question that he asked us, and we all gave that answer. So now we know that he is master and we are sleep. This roof was inside of our bodies. Even when we were inside the body of our mothers. We were inside our mothers and Islam teaches us the Prophet teaches us that the angel plugs he takes any

delivered inside the belly of your mother, while you are still inside the fetus, there's just a fetus, and it was 120 days into your mother's pregnancy with you.

And so now even before you're born, you believe that you are asleep of

your roof does your mind your brain hasn't developed yet. When a child is born, their their vision is blurry. You know, they don't have muscular motion control. They don't know what their eyes and hands are doing. Babies, yes, sometimes you have to put mittens on them because they claw their own face, they don't know, they don't have control over those things. This part of their intellect is developing, it's going to develop over time, eventually, they'll have enough control in their lives, and enough balance that they can walk and slowly they'll start making words. And slowly there starts using the diaper. Right, they'll develop and eventually they'll evolve. But this room, this room, it

was always there. It was always there. And you will have to grow to a certain level. Before you can understand that there's this other thing inside you called the roof. Let me let me throw this you know, it's gonna sound a little philosophical. But let me throw this at you another way. Okay, if I asked you and I've done this experiment with school kids, I don't know how well this works with you guys. But let's try. If I asked you, where are you? Which seems like a silly question. I say Where are you? You point to yourself, you say, here I am. I'm right here. And I say no, you're pointing at your chest. Where are you?

And then you say, me right here. Oh, this is your body? Where are you? Where's you?

This, this physical being of yours is going to get old and it's going to die. But you will still live?

These this this physical body will rock. But there's you with something else? What is that you that is your root? That is the that is the actual who you are? That is what Allah put inside you. And that part of you knows a lot already. It knows a lot already. Now. What did we say is the relationship between us and the master? I already gave it away master and what what are we slaves. And in that relationship who's got the authority?

The master does know.

I think many of you have employers, you have bosses, many of you have teachers that have authority over you. You have teachers that have authority over you, your parents have authority over you in some respect, but none of them are masters.

But if you talk about a parent having control over a child, or a boss having control over a child, or an employee, or you know or a teacher or a student, you can compare that much that control to the control of a master over a slave. A master has absolute control over the slave, a master can say anything he wants and the slave has to do it. Like a boss can doesn't can't tell you anything he wants. He can you could sue him.

You know, he doesn't he can't tell you. And if your job is at five o'clock it ends, your boss can tell, you know, you have to stay up till midnight. So no, no, no, I'm from the union.

You know, talk to the local chapter, you know, you don't have to listen to them. After a certain point, but a master when do you have to listen to them all the time. Now, we understand that we have a master from the very beginning. And we've been disobeying that master from the very beginning.

He has absolute authority over us. And we've spent the bulk of our life disregarding his authority, disregarding completely his authority.

And then at the end of all that disregard he says, Listen,

all you need to do is be grateful to me, be grateful to me, and asked me to forgive you for all this disregard. I'll let it all go. The Quran begins Partha begins with what phrase? After this, we'll begin with Alhamdulillah.

Now you tell me when we think about come to the law, we think of the things Allah has given us, right? Allah has given us many things, and we thank him for it. But from the point of view of our rules, the first and foremost things we're thinking a lot for is that Allah is our master, which he tells us in fact, if it reminds us again, I'm very lucky. Why Rob masters again. He's our master were the slaves. We've been disobeying him, but he didn't annihilate us. A farmer owns a cow. And he notes the cow and it stops milking. He says this cow is no good for me. I'm gonna slaughter it and get rid of it. You do worse with your phone, when it stops working.

You do things to your laptop out of anger when it crashes or gives you the blue screen of multiple modes. Right? So you have weird things you own don't do what you want them to do. You have you have your way wisdom, but Allah has not done his way with you. He lets you eat, he lets you sleep. He gives you more. He keeps letting you go. And so for that reason we see under the law and so am I ask the question, you're gonna thank someone else. After everything I've given you, and I keep giving you you're gonna think someone else shouldn't even be a question whether I exist or not. That's not even a question in the Quran. You understand? Why is that part of a sense?

That part of us exists inside of ourselves. Now the philosophical argument comes from the atheist or the agnostic. The argument comes, well, how do you prove a soul exists, we tried to do radioactive scanners on the sci fi channel, when a person is about to die, to see if there would be any seismic activity you seen those sci fi shows, they try to see if the soul is leaving the body. And then the thing goes,

his ghost is leaving, or it's back again, or whatever, right? It's just the microwaves on but that's that's the soul to them, right?

So, you know, they're trying to find some empirical proof of the existence of God. Also the most common form of atheism, though it has tons of different forms. The most common form of atheism, you've probably come across, or you've heard about from your friends and peers is the atheism that basically says modern science. Modern science has reached a point of maturity and knowledge. And we've explored the universe far and wide. There's no God, it's all science. It's all fine. It's all scientifically, plausible, provable, you don't need God to show the existence of the universe, we can all show it through laws and principles of science. There's only one fundamental problem with

that argument. science does not explain why it only explains what

it does not explain why it only explains what it's the study of what happens when I let this bottle go. It's a study of what happened. It's a study of phenomena that already exists. And it's a study of the seen world. It's a study of the seen world. So it's the study of the droppings. It's a study of the remains on the campfire, and it cannot go and it cannot find the camp that already LED.

This creation of a law isn't the seen world, you can study it and study it and study it. But if you if you lost your sense of gratitude that was inside you Alhamdulillah crime began, if you lost that inside you, you could study science till your death day, and you will not find God. And interestingly enough, people who keep their roof alive, people who keep their decency alive, even among non Muslims, you might be surprised to find this out. And I'm hoping to convince a friend of mine who's in North Carolina salon chef to come over here is one of the last things I'll share with you. He's got a couple of master's degrees one in the philosophy of science, one in he did a thesis

on Newton from Duke,

on Newton. And that was the question was whether Newton believed in God or not whether he was, moreover, did he believe in so either not? Did you know that Newton, father of modern physics, right, he wrote papers on the existence of God, and He will papers against the Trinity. And he wrote papers about why it doesn't make any sense that God will have a son.

He wrote papers, like, literally, it's almost like he wrote it to see themselves in the class. That's what it feels like when you're reading. And these are the pioneers of modern science. And they're not, they're not, there's not one or two, there's multiples of them. That actually saw science as a means of confirming God's existence, not denying it. And these are the pioneers of modern science from the Western world. I'm not talking about Muslim scientists. I'm not talking about Muslim scientists. But somehow there's this delusion, there's this gap being made, as though when you study more science are supposed to now believe in science instead of believing in God, it's

like there's one or the other. The bronze argument is exactly the exact opposite that was making reference to the Quran challenges us to study science.

It wants us to study science. Because the more we study science, the more we appreciate creation. And the more you appreciate creation, if there's any good left hand side, you you will be grateful. Who will you be grateful to not the creation, but its creator, but its creator, you know, the physician will be the most grateful to a lot because he's seen a heart beating when he does surgery. And he's seen this design, this incredible machine, he seen it at work up close in person. And he says mind still beating inside mine and humbling that he's seen those things. You've seen them up close and personal. I know I'm I'm way beyond my time. But I'll make one quick reference. And I'll

close my talk. A lot of young people here. So I'll make reference to the show. Probably some of you have seen it. I've seen one or two episodes, because I was curious. Somebody told me about it, the TV show house

houses, you can raise your hand, it's okay. I'll accept your stuff. I'll make it off for you. Right. The basically the idea of the show is that you have this super intelligent physician who crazy cases come to him, nobody can figure out what's wrong with the patient. And he's this super crazy genius doctor who solves this case, by the end of the episode. That's usually how the episodes work, right? But at the same time, this genius doctor happens to be what if anybody knows about the show, as far as far as his beliefs are concerned? What is he happened to be? happens to be an atheist? So the idea is, well, he's so intelligent. And if believing in God was an intelligent idea, well, the first

kind of person that would have believed is a person like him, though this is not a philosophy class. I think.

So I want you to walk away with two terms, deductive reasoning, and abductive reasoning, deductive reasoning and abductive reasoning. You know, when when a patient comes to him, he throws a bunch of diseases on the board, this could be wrong with him, this could be wrong with him, this could be wrong, this could be wrong, this could be wrong. And he's just making guesses at this point. And as soon as he throws those possibility, possibilities on the board, he gives each one of them a shot as well as the truth. He gives it a try. He gives it a try. And then the patient gets worse. And he goes, Okay, clearly, it's not the first one, we got to move to the second one, then they try the

second one that's not working, they're cross that out, they move to the third one, you see this process, they look at the possibility, they test that possibility, they experience that possibility. And at the end, when it doesn't work, they move on. But they try it first.

He never does that, but believing in God.

That process that works for him when he deals with his patients. He doesn't use that process when it comes to faith. He doesn't say, Okay, let me throw off the possibility that there is a God that there is a revelation, let me exhaust my research into this revelation into this guy. Well, let's see if I can actually clearly come to prove that he doesn't exist. And by the way, another interesting thing about his philosophy is that he will not rule out a disease until it is absolutely clear that that's not the problem. Nobody believes that that's the disease. He's the only one who is blind says I know that the disease is God. He has blind faith in a disease he can prove.

He's got a gut feeling.

He's got a gut feeling. His route is telling him it's the disease.

Right? But he doesn't do that he does. So that's abductive reasoning. You know, when you explore a possibility, and you give it a chance, and you really exhaust your energies into into exploring it, that's abductive reasoning. But when he says no, logically speaking, how can there be a God, if God existed, then this would have happened, then that would have happened, and you remain in the world of if and then you remain in the world of hypothesis, and you never physically experienced anything, or try anything. That is deductive reasoning. The Quran is entirely abductive reasoning, our experience in the world how we lead to success. We don't speak in hypothesis alone. Anybody that

wants to be successful, uses abductive reasoning. They follow something, they try it, they fail, they try something else. They keep moving. This is the journey of Ibrahim alayhis salam that he was trying to teach his followers. The sun actually doesn't work out the moon. Actually, no, that keeps changing faces.

You know what, that's a journey. It's a journey that's taking place. But the bottom line The reason I mentioned all of these things to you, though, I have a lot of other things to talk about when it comes to this discussion. Do not think just because people that are atheist or agnostic or whatever, are presenting to you certain philosophical arguments that you don't have a counter argument, oh, that says, you know, they've got this mystery solved. And these billions upon billions of people that have believed in Allah and have naturally believed in Allah societies all over the world, all over the world who should a Muslim doesn't matter. Some concept of God has always been there. And

atheism is not the beginning. It's not the beginning state of a society. Some people pull out of atheism, theism into atheism, and usually it's because of some personal reason, which inshallah hopefully will come up in the QA session. I will spend more time on this discussion inshallah, with Allah here. Hopefully at another occasion, we can take each of these things and go into more detail about a commodity. Welcome.