Shadee Elmasry – Reason & Revelation – NBF 386
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
In
this
lecture, I would like to give you a
brief introduction to the concept of quantum mechanics.
Welcome, everybody, to the Safina Society's Nothing But
Facts livestream on a gorgeous Tuesday in the
great state of New Jersey.
We are filming from the studios of the
La Cocina Soup Kitchen, third floor, about a
mile off from the famous and well-known
Bob Wood Medical Center, and today, let's go
straight to the slides.
We are covering reason and revelation, journey of
the mind to the existence of the creator.
Yeah, there you go, perfect.
Today, what we're looking at is some of
the rational basis for why people believe in
a creator, and there's strengths and weaknesses to
this.
The first thing is that you, in a
sense, have to, can do this to avoid
a circular argument, right?
So, when you're asked why you believe in
something, you can't say, I believe in God
because God's book says so.
That's what we call a circular argument, right?
So we're on slide number three here.
That's a circular argument, so you need to
avoid that.
Now, let me tell you this, can you,
is it possible to prove the truthfulness of
Islam and of the prophet and of the
Quran through the Quran?
Yes, and that wouldn't be a circular argument
if it's a different type of proof, not
just simply a transmission.
You're not simply saying, quoting the Quran to
prove the Quran.
But we're not going to get into that
today.
But I am telling you, it is possible,
and not only is it possible, it's far
stronger, is when you do that, you prove
the whole religion.
What we're about to do today is not
indicate, are not indicators of the religion.
They don't point to Islam, it only points
to certain attributes of the creator.
And Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, in the
Quran, refers to himself as al-zahir wal
batin.
He is manifest and hidden.
To the intellect, he's manifest in certain ways.
And we're going to mainly talk about 13
attributes that are manifest to the intellect.
And that number is just a judgment of
scholars.
It's not like it's religion or it's Sharia
to say that number, but it's what the
scholars have usually written in their books.
And the rest are baltan, they're hidden from
the intellect.
So the intellect can discern, okay, there's a
creator, for sure there's a creator, but what
does he want from us?
We don't know.
You need transmission for that.
You need transmission for that.
So the first thing that the strength of
the rational proof for the existence of the
creator, it's almost like Allah's basically giving you
these attributes of his without transmission.
You don't need transmission.
Without prophethood, you should be able to still
attain to this.
Of course, without prophethood, you wouldn't know that
you'd be punished for disbelief.
And you wouldn't even know that it's necessary
to disbelieve, but your mind would still reach
this conclusion anyway.
And anyone who doesn't, such as pagans and
idolaters, they're really breaking their intellect.
So a person needs to know, let's go
down two slides down now to the tree,
skip this one, go to the tree there.
A person does need to know why is
it that they believe in Allah and his
messenger.
I went to a group of adults and
I said to them, who here can put
pen to paper right now and write down
a coherent and rational statement for why it
is that you believe in Allah and his
messenger and don't appeal to emotions.
Emotions are for you.
Emotions is your thing.
Oh, I feel it on the inside.
That's not an answer.
Maybe if it is, it's for you only,
and it's a very weak one.
What if you feel differently someday?
You don't control your feelings, right?
So when we look at anything, whether it's
a medical physician, scroll up just a little
bit to make the picture even.
All right.
When you choose anything, when you choose a
religion, when you choose a scholar to follow,
when you choose a medical doctor, when you
choose an agent, a real estate agent, whatever
you choose, when you entrust your life to
somebody else or some aspect of your life
to somebody else, how do you go about
doing that?
You go about doing that by assessing the
person and their value and whether or not
they're good at what they do and what
people have said about them, and you assess
their trustworthiness and their competence, right?
Once you assess them and you agree upon
them, same thing for choosing an imam in
the madhhabs of fiqh or a school to
go to, whatever.
Once you assess them, then you just do
what they say after that.
Now the question just becomes, did they say
what I think they said?
And did they say what you said that
they're saying?
And did they mean, what did they mean
by what they said?
Those questions you can ask.
We call that usool al fiqh.
But you don't go around questioning everything that
they tell you to do.
So you choose an oncologist, Allah protect us
all from getting cancer, but you choose an
oncologist and you choose wisely.
You choose very well.
You have a very good reason for making
this choice.
You ask around, you check their qualifications, how
many patients did they see like me, what
is the survival rate, whatever, right?
RateMyOncologist.com, does that website exist?
I'm sure some of my oncologist friends are
not going to like me talking like that.
Whatever, it is.
So once you make the decision now, and
I trust this guy a hundred percent.
If you don't trust him a hundred percent,
you don't go to him.
This is cancer here.
This is your life.
If I trust him a hundred percent, now
he tells me take these two pills, go
to this doctor, get this test, do this,
that, and the other.
Don't ask questions, just do it.
As long as you understood what he said
and confirmed what he actually said, that's it.
So that's the idea here as a Muslim,
is that we go to the root.
Am I accepting God and his prophet, yes
or no?
Today we're only going to even touch on
a small portion of that.
We're only just going to touch on what
the attributes of God that our mind ourselves
can deduce.
Allah's given us this world out here for
that reason, to use our mind and look
at things.
But as I said earlier, this is not
even the strongest proof.
The far stronger proof is any proof of
prophethood, of the Quran, of the messenger, because
that proves the whole thing.
This only gives you a couple attributes of
the creator.
But it's good enough to talk about in
a quick way to people.
Because when you talk about a transmitted proof,
the person in front of you may have
not even heard of the Quran.
What are you bringing me?
So it takes a lot more effort to
transmit those other proofs, the proofs of prophethood,
the proofs of the Quran, than simply proofs
of the creator through reason.
So let's now go to the next slide.
It says belief in Allah and his messenger
is supported by rational proofs and transmitted proofs.
Keep in mind we have these two things
in our religion, these two pillars, al-adillah
al-naqliyyah from the Quran and Hadith, wal
-adillah al-aqliyyah, that are solely rational proofs.
And our proofs for Allah God and his
prophet are both.
We use both.
Now when we talk about this, when we're
solely on the rational, next slide, when we're
solely on the rational, oh good, how'd you
do that, nice, good, when you're solely talking
about the rational, the attributes of the creator
deduced by the mind, that's what we call
God.
So God is far more limited than the
word Allah.
When I say the word Allah, I'm now
implying all the revealed knowledge about the creator,
his name, and all the transmitted attributes.
Today we're only going to talk about the
attributes of Allah that can be deduced with
the intellect.
So we're leaving out a lot of attributes.
The sources for those attributes are transmitted and
we believe in all of them, as long
as the transmission is sound.
There are far more than 99.
The 99 is a select number that the
prophet ﷺ told us to look for as
if we're looking for Laylatul Qadr.
Laylatul Qadr, you don't just say, I guess
it's the 27th, let me go the 27th
and stay home the rest of the nights,
and just sleep the rest of the nights,
no.
You try to do everything.
So if you look at the early books,
when they gathered the 99 names, they gathered
far more than 100.
For example, Innallaha jameelun yuhibbul jamal, al-jameel,
therefore, is one of the names of Allah.
The prophet said it, innallaha jameelun.
So al-jameel would be one of the
names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, or
a description at the very least, right?
So there are other ones, for example, you
don't find in the common list.
That one list that we all read, the
Egyptians have that famous recording, you know that
the whole, that widespread recording of the Egyptians
reciting the 99 names.
So that's only one listing of the divine
names.
There are many, many other listings.
Al-Hannan wal-Mannan is not in that
list, for example.
Al-Hayyi, there's a famous well-known hadith,
innallaha hayyiun kareem.
So al-Hayyi should be on the list
of possible names too.
So that's not on that list.
So that's that ijtihad of what are the
99 names, that if I find them out
and call upon them, I go to Jannah.
But there are other lists, other names too.
Anyway, that's another subject.
But when we talk about the word Allah,
the word Allah refers to the transmitted proofs,
transmitted knowledge and rational knowledge.
So therefore, what we're saying is not a
proof of Allah.
It's simply a proof of some attributes.
And that's what theologically or philosophically they call
God.
God is the result of the mind thinking,
looking around and saying, okay, the Creator must
have this, this, this, this, this attribute just
by pure reason alone.
That's what you call God.
That's the difference between saying God and saying
Allah.
Of course, this is technical.
Most people, they just interchange the two.
Why do we need reason?
We said earlier, you can't have a, you
don't want to have a circular argument.
So sometimes you do need to offer a
rational argument for your sources.
Now keep in mind, we do not offer
rational arguments or proofs or anything about why
we do what we do in the Sharia.
All right.
What's your rational argument for praying five times
a day?
Remember, go back to the previous slide.
Not you Omar, just saying to the people.
You go back to the other slide.
Once you accept the sources, you accept everything
they give you, khalas.
This is sources that you need to study.
Same thing when people, they want to study
fiqh, which method should I study?
Go and use your brain and study the
four imams and see which one is most
worthy of you.
That's where you use your brain.
Once you choose an imam, say yes, he's
the one that is most worthy.
He's the oncologist that's best for me.
He's the trainer.
He's the lawyer.
He's the real estate agent.
That is most worthy for me.
This is the security agency that I'm going
to hire.
After that, don't ask questions.
Do what they tell you to do.
Next one.
We talked about the limits of reason.
The reason alone cannot tell you the name
of the creator, what he wants from us,
where we came from, what happens after death,
what's right and wrong, et cetera.
Reason cannot tell you any of these things.
That's why philosophy, if insofar as we define
philosophy as seeking the truths about life with
the intellect only, that's forbidden.
The methodology is flawed.
The methodology entails kufr.
That means you're going to seek out right
and wrong irrespective of transmitted knowledge, which is
the prophet peace be upon him.
It's not that it's a forbidden knowledge as
if you're going to look at it and
something bad is going to happen.
No.
The methodology itself is forbidden for us to
dismiss revelation, to dismiss transmitted knowledge.
We said in our epistemology that knowledge derives
from three sources, reason, observation, and transmission, like
sensory perception slash observation slash demonstration.
All the sciences, et cetera, physical sensory perception
and reason and transmission.
So the prophet peace be upon him, that's
transmission, the Quran is through transmission.
We get this information.
We get this knowledge.
So for a philosopher to say we're just
going to go by reason to figure out
right and wrong and the purpose of life,
first of all you're going to end up
with nothing more than more questions and waste
everyone's time and that's why society doesn't even
deem you worth paying.
You notice that?
Philosophy teachers are all poor.
When I was young, I used to think
the philosopher, man, this is the wisest person
in the society.
I used to think that because people always
thought, oh my gosh, this is like, who
are the philosophers that they taught about?
You think, oh, this is a philosopher, he's
like a really smart person.
Then I came to realize, read what they're
saying, they're all just a bunch of guesswork.
Most of it.
Ethicists are the biggest fraud, right?
Based on what are you moralizing and telling
people what to do?
The only person who can tell, the only
one who can tell us what to do
is the one who owns us.
And the one who owns us is the
one who made us.
That's why we accept revelation.
He owns you, he made you, tell you
what to do.
So in so far as that, that's a
limit of reason and that's a prohibition of
the methodology of the philosophers.
When I was at Rutgers, I saw the
philosophy professors, these guys are like a complete
miskineon.
And so it says something, society does not
deem you worthy of pain.
You don't benefit anybody with this.
All right, next one.
Reason and revelation often overlap.
Next one.
You kick 11?
Yeah.
Reason and revelation, they overlap.
Why?
Because they derive from the same source.
What I think about and just use my
mind to determine the creator must have, exist,
should be one, because there's so much harmony
in the earth, very knowledgeable because the creation
is complex.
Creation is not a simple creation, all right?
There must be doing everything on purpose.
All matter is created on purpose.
As opposed to, let's say, this napkins.
This specific napkin was not made by the
company on purpose, right?
The whole batch of the whole genus of
napkins was made, right?
The whole concept of napkins, of course, was
made on purpose.
But this specific napkin was not made on
purpose.
But if you tell me now and go
to an art studio and he's got, let's
say, 20 pictures of the same scene, but
each scene is different, like 20 mountains, but
each mountain scene is totally different.
So therefore, these are not prints.
They're not.
That tells me volition.
That's what we're going to get to today.
That tells me that this has been done
on purpose.
So reason is in the blue here.
Remember the aqua-colored blue here.
Rationally determined attributes of the creator.
And we find the attributes of Allah in
the Quran and Hadith, and they overlap.
Imam al-Ghazali even said, whoever studies and
thinks and observes, in other words, you use
reason and you study sensory, demonstrable, observable knowledge,
which is science.
Then he goes to the Quran, he will
find much of what he already observed.
Why?
Because the source is the same.
The source is one.
Next slide.
Revelation commands us to think.
Why?
The Quranic challenge is think.
The more you think, the more you observe
the world, and then go back to the
Quran and go back to the Sunnah of
the Prophet, you'll find the confirmation of what
you saw.
From a person and from a time that
didn't have this access.
The worst creatures.
I translated here as people.
It's not even people.
It's the worst of creatures.
No, you're right.
Oh, you just put it in advance?
Okay.
The worst of creatures.
He didn't even call them sharru nes.
You're not even qualified to be a human
if you don't think.
They're blind.
They're deaf and dumb and they don't think.
Deaf and dumb is the result of not
thinking.
Thinking for us in Islam, in the Sharia,
in the Quran, I should say, is thinking
for a purpose, not thinking for its sake.
Imagine I walk into my driveway and I
see a gorgeous Maserati sitting in my driveway.
And two people come.
One guy, he sits there analyzing every detail
of the Maserati.
I got two sons, for example.
One of them, he sits there looking at
every single detail of the Maserati.
The other person looks at enough of the
Maserati to identify it, then goes and searches
for who put it there and why.
What is the reason that it's there?
So I now come and ask each one
of my sons for a report.
I say, son number, son A, give me
the report.
He says, this Maserati is amazing.
It's got all these specs in it.
And he gives me an hour-long lecture
on the specs of the Maserati.
What did you get?
What did I gain from this?
It's not the information that I needed.
The information is why is it there?
The other one, he only got enough specs,
enough to go around and say, who put
a Maserati that looks like this in our
driveway?
And he found that person, and he came
with the answer for why it's there.
Which one has more value to me?
Thinking must be connected to a practical value
in this world.
Otherwise, it's a waste of time.
There is no one who wasted his life
more than David Attenborough, the famous guy out
of England who spent 60-some years studying
nature and animals and can tell you everything.
You want to learn about nature and animals?
Learn.
You want to learn why they exist and
why creation exists?
Don't ask him.
He's totally off the mark there.
You go back to the previous slide real
quick.
Next one says, So thinking, using your brain,
listening.
What is listening?
Transmitted knowledge.
Listen to the transmission.
The philosophers, they're so astray for the simple
reason that they ignore transmitted knowledge.
The scientists are worse.
They don't even think.
Stephen Hawking said that the philosophers, the enemy
of the science, the science killed philosophy.
You fool.
There's two different versions of knowledge.
Science is demonstrable sensory perception.
Philosophy is reason.
And revelation is proven to us through transmission.
It comes to us through transmitted knowledge.
So you need three sources of knowledge.
And Allah Ta'ala points to that.
Many epistemologists have said this.
That there are three sources of knowledge.
But to confirm it, did not Allah Ta
'ala mention As-sama transmitted knowledge.
Wa al-basr, sensory perception.
Wa al-fuad, your mind.
The heart or your mind.
Those are the three things you must come
together.
If you have reason only, you get the
philosophers.
They're useless to us.
If you have perception only, you have scientism.
Scientism is far less useful.
They're good for tech.
That's it.
But other than that, their society led by
that is a disaster.
They have no morals at all at this
point.
You can't answer any of those questions.
And then if you have scripture and someone
says scripture and that's it, then you can
become a literalist.
You must analyze it with the brain that
Allah gave you.
Not altering it, but analyzing it properly.
So if you say scripture and that's it,
you have literalism.
So next one says, Woe to you.
Meaning, disgust is on you.
Sick of you.
Why are they angry with them?
Because of the result of their lack of
thinking.
Because you ended up worshiping another god.
Do you not think?
Do you not use your intellect?
So misuse of intellect or lack of use
of intellect will lead possibly to paganism.
So when we look at idolatry, I know
we just had a post out there that
made fun of the Dung Biryani.
And it wasn't making fun of all Hindus
because I have an Indian at the bank.
I've been going to for the last 12,
15 years almost.
Maybe 12 years.
It's the same Indian lady who's been helping
me.
So it's not on all Indians.
But if you have reached the point that
your religion tells you to do something so
off the fitra, right?
You got to think.
And that is the doctrine of Hinduism.
Is that wealth emits from the rear end
of the cow.
That's on BBC.
Anyway.
What's the conclusion that we're going to get
to?
We're going to conclude.
I'm giving you the conclusion in advance.
The 13 attributes.
الوجود والوحدانية والغنى المطلق والقدر والبقاء ومخالفة الحوادث
والقدرة والعلم والإراد والحياة والسماع والبصر والكلام We're
going to get to all these.
Very easily.
It's not going to be long.
And they divide into three categories.
The attribute of the self.
Then the negating attributes.
الصفات التنزيهية The sifat that we negate from
Allah.
For example, oneness is negating a partner.
Independence is negating dependence.
Having no beginning is negating a beginning.
Having no end is negating having an end.
Coming to an end.
In other words, being time bound.
Being within the timeline of our perceptions.
And then being different from creation.
Meaning that the essential components of a created
being, the creator clearly cannot be of that.
Otherwise he didn't create it.
It existed with him.
Correct?
Common sense says that.
I gave some people the example of the
first person who made a car.
The first inventor of the car.
Could he have invented the car from inside
of a car?
He couldn't have.
It's rationally inconceivable.
Alright, and then the attributes of meaning.
Deduction.
We deduce these attributes from observation of the
creation.
And then of course, we're not saying these
are the only attributes.
That will be kufr.
There are attributes in the Quran and the
Hadith.
We're saying these are the 13 rationally comprehensible
attributes.
And is this number sacred?
No, it's not sacred at all.
It's judgment of the scholars.
That's what they came with.
Let's go to the next slide.
It has the Arabic in it.
And then let's go to the next slide.
We ask a question, where did the world
come from?
And if you're a Muslim who reads the
Quran, we go to the next slide.
And that will tell you.
Allah Ta'ala himself commands us to ponder
this question.
قُلْ سِيرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ فَانظُرُوا كَيْفَ بَدَأْ الْخَلْقِ
Travel the earth and ask yourself the question,
ponder.
How did this creation begin?
Because when you keep going back, you will
have to come to a conclusion that there
must be an origin that infinite regress is
impossible.
Infinite regress of creation is rationally inconceivable.
Remember though the point of a Muslim's pondering
is always to get to who brought us
here?
Now what does this creation ask of us?
So this question, Allah Ta'ala is telling
us, if you ponder this, you will come
to the conclusion that there is a creator.
You want these slides?
They're saying yes, we'll get you these slides.
I don't know how we're going to get
them to you, but we'll get them to
you, either today or tomorrow or otherwise.
Okay.
All right, option number one.
Where did the creation come from?
It created itself.
This is inconceivable.
Nothing can ever create itself, because that would
require it to exist and not exist simultaneously.
Nothing can ever create itself.
To create, you have to exist.
But what you're doing is putting yourself into
existence.
So this is two contradictory things.
Option number two is tasalsul, that the world
always existed.
And this is inconceivable because infinite regress is
inconceivable.
Why is infinite regress rationally inconceivable?
The first answer, A, infinite regress has no
starting point.
Go to slide next to skip, go straight
to 20.
Infinite regress has no starting point.
That's the first thing.
You would never arrive at the present moment.
To give an example, if a well had
no bottom, could you ever fill the well
to the top?
It has no bottom.
All right, now I want you to keep
note, next slide, that infinity and eternity are
very different things.
Infinity is no beginning, no end.
Eternity is something that has a beginning and
no end.
So akhira is eternal, but it's not infinite.
Heaven is not infinite in the respect that
it has a beginning.
That's the difference.
It has a beginning.
And now we have day zero, day one,
day two, day three, day four, and so
on.
You have all these days that pass on
one day after another.
But infinity is what we're talking about, having
no beginning and no end.
Next slide.
When someone says, where did the world come
from?
You say, it's been around forever.
Well, appealing to the age of something does
not explain how it came into existence, when
you appeal to the age of something.
Don't you know, a man asks, where were
you born?
Man, I'm 100 years old, but you didn't
answer the question.
You gave me an interesting fact, but you
didn't answer the question.
Next slide.
You can't add anything to infinity, correct?
If I have infinity, infinity plus one is
nothing.
I can't add anything to infinity.
I cannot increase the timeline in any way,
shape, and form.
However, when we look around, we're adding a
day every day to the universe.
We're adding and subtracting constantly.
Someone's just born, someone dies.
We're adding a day.
We're expanding.
So we're constantly adding.
Therefore, this world that we live in, the
universe, cannot be infinite.
لا نهاية لا بداية ولا نهاية Right?
No beginning, no end.
Let's take a look at D.
Actual infinities do not even exist.
فهد.
Come sit.
Actual infinities don't even exist.
Infinity is simply a mental exercise.
It has a mental existence only.
If infinity existed, name me one thing that's
infinite.
Right?
Let's say you have an infinite number of
specks of sand on the earth.
So in order to demonstrate that you would
have to count them, right?
Maybe you tell me there are a million
marbles in a room.
I don't believe you until you count them
for me.
Right?
But in order to count an infinity, you
would have to live in infinity, which will
not happen.
We would have to, let's say we did,
right?
We would never literally get to the end.
So infinity is something that is an imagination.
That's it.
We can talk...
Go ahead.
Exactly, yeah.
It has no end.
You will never get to it.
Okay.
Let's look at E.
Next one.
If you can't count up to infinity, then
you definitely can't count down to infinity.
Right?
So if you claim that I can go
back in time and it's infinite, how do
I know it's not just bigger than...
And you never arrive.
Maybe it's just...
Maybe tomorrow you arrive.
Maybe next year you arrive.
So you definitely can't count down from an
infinity.
In the example, I want you to count
to 10, but you have to go to
negative infinity first and count from there.
You'll never count to 10.
You'll never arrive at whatever date we are,
October 8th, 2024.
You'll never get to this day if the
world was infinite in the past.
Conclusion.
A collection formed by successive addition cannot be
an actual infinite.
That means world history is composed of adding
one day after another, plus one, plus one,
plus one, plus one, that can never be
infinite.
Anything that is formed by adding stuff to
it cannot be infinite.
Anything that involves adding must have began at
zero.
So the concept of infinity exists.
You can talk about it.
You can discuss it.
You can put it in formulas just like
Spider-Man.
You can talk about him.
You can create his rules, but he doesn't
exist.
It's in your imagination.
I can talk about a square circle.
I can say I have a square circle
in my hand.
I put it, but where is it?
You can't even draw it.
It's nothing other than words.
Option number three.
It emerged out of nothing.
This is also inconceivable because something cannot emerge
out of nothing.
Option four is necessary.
The world was brought into existence by something
else.
This is necessary because everything that has a
beginning must have a cause.
And that's what you have to know right
there.
Everything that has a beginning must have a
cause.
So it is necessary to assume and to
deduce, not assume, to know.
Because it's a rational necessity that there is
a cause that brought, there is a source,
something brought this world into existence.
Now we're going to even get to the
point that we can even deduce some of
the attributes of this cause or this source,
we should say.
The origins argument.
The world could not have created itself.
It could not have existed forever.
It could not have emerged out of nothing.
Therefore it must have a maker.
The maker, we're going to now, by necessary
implication, it is rationally necessary to deduce now
that the maker must be transcendent beyond the
nature and laws of this creation.
Simple as that.
The maker must be transcendent beyond these things.
Next one.
Very similar, the cousin of this argument is
the cosmological argument everything with a beginning has
a cause.
So taking the conclusion of the first one,
putting it here, the world has a beginning,
therefore the world has a cause.
Something brought this world into existence.
This world did not just come out of
nowhere.
Next one.
These arguments prove the first rationally comprehensible attribute,
wujud, wujud al khaliq.
There must be a khaliq.
More specifically, it must be a necessary existence.
I exist, you exist, the creator exists.
What's the difference?
Two differences.
One, God, the creator of this world, exists
by necessity.
Because if he was just another subject of
cause and effect, he'd just be another part
of the world.
Just like Dawkins said that stupid statement of
his, he said, how do we know that
we weren't made up by some kind of
monster trillions of light years away from us?
Well then he'd just be part of the
creation.
The same question would be asked to him.
So more specifically, it exists by necessity.
We exist, we're ja'iz al wujud.
We may exist, we may not exist.
That's the difference.
The creator of this world has no beginning.
Because we said that if this world has
a maker, which we said is a rationally
necessary conclusion.
It's not a rationally possible conclusion.
It's a rationally necessary conclusion.
Everything with a beginning must have a maker,
must have a cause.
So we must also conclude that the stuff
of this world, of the creation, that creator
is transcendent beyond that.
He's transcendent beyond it.
That doesn't apply to him.
If it applies to him, he's just another
creation.
So that's what we're going to get to
next.
So let's get into the next rationally necessary
attribute.
So far we only deduced wujud, existence.
Now let's get to the next one.
The next one is oneness.
We see harmony in the world.
We see a lot of harmony.
The amount of harmony we see in this
world is insane.
Everything matches with everything else.
So for example, one of my favorite examples
is that I was thinking to myself one
day, the poor zebra is black and white
in the savannah.
He sticks out like a sore thumb on
the beige desert plains of the savannah.
It's not really desert, it's savannah.
It's a different kind of geographic plain, whatever
you want to call it.
Terrain, different terrain.
But the savannah is brown.
The zebra is black and white.
The lion gets the advantage of being brown.
The lion is beige too.
So the lion, who is the stronger of
the two, gets to hide.
Whereas the poor zebra, that's just the prey,
to myself I thought, shouldn't the zebra be
beige, right?
To be able to blend in, to survive.
So then I looked it up and I
found an amazing thing, subhanAllah.
Lion's eyesight is bad when it comes to
stripes.
So the lion, when the zebras are together,
the lion just sees one humongous animal.
That's what the lion sees.
The lion's eyesight was created by the same
creator as the zebra.
And also we notice that some animals naturally
are solitary.
Tigers, cardinals, certain animals are solitary.
Within a year, khalas, you say goodbye to
your mom and you move on with your
life.
And you live alone.
Some animals are always in a pack.
Elephants, zebras, monkeys, blue jays, they're in a
pack, right?
Or a flock.
So what created in the nature of the
zebra to exist in the pack?
As long as zebras are in a pack,
the lion can't do anything.
That's harmony right there.
The harmony between the eyesight of the lion
and the stripes of the zebra.
Forget that, even in the bigger sense, water
evaporates up in the air, it actually gets
purified in the air.
And it travels in the clouds and it
falls somewhere where there's no rain.
Or there was no water.
And it falls as pure water for someone
to drink.
So the method of purification and the stomach
and the intestines of the human who's going
to drink it has one and the same
maker.
On top of that, it has a transport
system.
So that it wouldn't be fair if you
had a lake and water goes up and
it rains.
So I'm the beneficiary and that's it.
No.
In fact, you have water evaporates from a
body of water on the earth, gets purified,
travels somewhere else where there isn't a lake
and rains there for them to drink.
I mean, it's amazingly a fair system to
balance out the water.
If water goes deep into the ground, I
asked one time a geologist, why is it
that spring water comes out clean like this?
And well water just doesn't gush out as
well water is there.
He said whenever water, when all the liquids
of the earth go down into the ground,
they go so deep into the ground, really
deep and spend eons down there, hundreds of
years before they amass into a body of
water that can erupt as a spring or
be dug up as a well.
He says in that period of time, there's
a purification system.
So the belly of the earth has a
system that purifies water that makes it acceptable
for our stomach to digest.
So the creator of our stomach and the
creator of that system must be one.
It's the same system.
Imagine if I got a key card.
Everywhere I go, the key card works.
Clearly the one who made this key card
and the one who scheduled them for all
these doors, it's one and the same organization,
right?
So order very clearly indicates oneness.
And we clearly see order in the universe.
All the systems of the galaxy, the earth,
and our own bodies work in harmony.
Didn't people even think back?
Certain constants have always been here.
The sun has always risen in the east,
never decided to rise in the west, never
decides to rise in the north.
The moon is always moving in the same
way.
The fact that we have 30 days in
a month, we can count.
Just throw one of these factors off and
we really probably don't have human history.
We'd be so confused.
We have no clue where we are.
If the stars moved, we had no clue
where we are.
If the moon changed its 30-day cycle,
we would really have no clue how to
measure time.
These constants have been there.
That's order and harmony.
Where there's disorder and harmony is where there's
human willpower.
We create the disorder and harmony in the
world.
Someone said, where is there order and harmony?
There's earthquakes where we have homes.
No one told you to live there.
That's, again, human intervention.
That earthquake is probably very good.
You clean out your garage, right?
When you spray all the corners of the
garage and you're expelling all these spiders and
bugs, to them, that's a hurricane.
It's like a hurricane happening.
That's complete disorder.
For you, it's order.
You can skip the next two slides because
they're just videos that are there for people
to watch.
But the PDF, I don't even think it
links up anyway, so don't even worry about
that.
So, order indicates oneness.
And oneness implies independence.
Oneness implies independence.
If you are dependent, then you're not truly
one.
I need to fly you out to my
house or to our master to give a
talk.
Or I may send you one plane ticket.
You alone?
Yes, I'm totally independent.
I'm alone.
You show up at the airport with three
people.
One to carry your bags and an assistant,
a travel partner.
Then you're not independent.
You're not one, then.
If you are dependent, you're not one.
It's you and everybody else.
Just like you want to make a deal
with someone.
I'm going to make the deal with you?
Yes, make the deal with me.
I'm in charge of the company.
Right before signing, you say, hold on, I
have to ask the president of the company.
Then you're not an independent.
This whole talk was pointless then, right?
So, the oneness of this creator, which is
indicated by harmony, by necessity indicates absolute independence.
If he's dependent, he's not one.
So, keep in mind that dependency and independency,
I should say, absolute independency comes on the
tail of oneness.
You cannot be one and dependent.
All right, next.
Let's ask this a question.
Why can there never be more than one
God?
Now that we said he is one, therefore
independent, and he's the sole creator of this
universe, why can't there be more than one?
So, let's look at the first option.
Let's go down to next slide.
If the gods split the act of creation,
then neither are fully needed.
And if the gods work together, then they're
redundant.
And if the gods had an argument, then
they're not all-powerful.
Therefore, there can only be, by definition, there
can only be one all-powerful creator.
The wills either conflict, or the wills would
come together, or the wills would split the
work, or split the creation.
Either way, it indicates a lack of power.
You're not all-powerful.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
The easiest way to understand.
What do they say about that?
I don't know the back story, but an
old woman was asked, how do you know
there's a creator?
Yeah.
And she said, well, if I think about
when I'm stirring a soup, it wouldn't move
unless I was moving it.
It wouldn't stir itself.
So there has to be something causing this
universe to be in motion for us to
be doing what we're doing.
And then she was asked, how do you
know there aren't two creators, or two people
controlling this?
And she said, well, if there was another
woman stirring the soup, it would be chaos.
It would be chaos.
Complete chaos.
And in Syria, they say, they draw a
line.
They draw two dots, and they tell the
students, you put a pen, and I put
a pen, and let's make a straight line
across.
And of course, they keep hitting each other.
And it's just a mess.
Show me any one operation where two heads
run the operation, and it's successful.
Firstly, it never exists in the first place.
You always have to have one leader at
all times.
So the whole universe also has one creator
at all times.
And that creator cannot be dependent.
If he's dependent on anything, then he's not
one.
Then you're still believing in a multiplicity.
Okay.
Let's ask a question here.
Maybe an idol worshiper will say, I believe
in one idol.
And you believe in one God.
So we're the same.
We're both from the monotheistic family.
Here's my God.
This little idol right here, the guy says
to you, is my God.
I only worship one.
And you only worship one God.
What's the difference?
I'm a monotheist.
He shows up at the interfaith, Jews, Christians,
Muslims.
All right.
I'm a monotheist.
Here's my God.
I got him at 99 cent Hindu store.
I got him for 99 cents at the
store.
But I only worship one God.
Just the elephant.
Nobody else.
Then why would we say that you're not
a monotheist?
Why would we say that you're a pagan
and an idolater?
It's because the concept that we're talking about
does not just require Tawheed.
It requires Tanzeeh.
Tanzeeh.
That is part of our Aqidah, is Tanzeeh.
This is so important.
You cannot underestimate how important is the concept
of Tanzeeh.
That's what separates us from idolaters.
What would be the natural response if someone
said, here's my God?
I'm a monotheist.
What did he say?
He broke the idols, right?
But even, let's say, I argue back to
you, those were many idols.
They believed in a pantheon of idols.
I believe in one idol.
Why isn't it an unacceptable Tawheed?
It's one.
It's because Tawheed does not just stop at
that.
It requires Tanzeeh.
Tanzeeh versus another guy who never, I say,
hey, have you ever heard of Islam, Prophet
Jesus, Abraham, Moses?
No, I never heard of any of that.
We go onto an island and we find
these people.
I say, well, what, do you believe in
anything?
Created the world?
He says, yes, I believe in something created
the world.
I say, where is that?
Do you have that creator here?
No, no, the creator is not part of
this world.
He's not a physical creator that we worship.
I say, okay, you're actually a monotheist, right?
You just don't know about the prophets.
Whereas the other guy says, no, no, we're
also monotheists.
Here's our God.
So the answer is that true Tawheed also
involves rejecting for the creator anything that would
make him of the creation.
So what are those?
We have to go to a key term
here.
I'm going to go down now.
Next slide.
The creator must be transcendent.
That's the key.
All right, next slide.
Transcendent from what?
When I say you're above this, you're transcendent
beyond this.
Transcendent beyond what?
Al-Hawadith.
One of the most important terms you'll learn
in theology.
Al-Hadith is anything that has a beginning.
The Hawadith are all created things and they
share a few main attributes.
They're made up of something.
They're composed of something.
They take up space.
They're subject to time, and they're subject to
cause and effect, and all these are connected.
Obviously, if you're made of something, you take
up space.
Matter is anything that takes up space.
And once you exist in a physical form,
then time applies to you.
Time exists mentally.
Time is not something that we can feel
and touch, but it exists mentally as a
result of matter.
Because matter exists, time exists.
We're not going to get into that discussion.
It's Bedihi that time exists.
And time is something that dominates over the
one it applies to.
Time is not something I could play with
and go back and forth and rewind forward
and backwards.
No, once you exist in time, you are
a subject of it.
Time dominates over you.
You are dependent upon it, and it is
controlling you, in a sense.
It controls.
We're not going to have this discussion, are
we subject to time?
We clearly are.
So that is Bedihi.
It's just accepted without contemplation.
That's what the creation is.
When we say Hawadith and creation, we're talking
about these things.
Made up of something.
Taken up space.
Being in a location.
Being subject to time.
And being subject to cause and effect.
Next slide.
Since the Creator made all of matter, time
and space, whether you want to say time
is a'arid, I'm not getting into that.
It exists.
Space exists.
Therefore the Creator will not be bound by
that.
He couldn't have created it then.
Then he's just part of the creation.
The inventor of the car could not have
made the car from inside of a car.
So what is transcendence?
Oh, sorry, did we skip a term?
Yeah, we skipped Tenzi.
Sorry about that.
I skipped a slide.
So Tenzi is transcendence.
Rejecting the attributes of creation from Allah.
Whenever your Muslim says Subhanallah, that's what you
just did.
Subhanallahi amma yasifoon.
Transcendent be our Creator.
Glory be to Him.
She's transcendent beyond these things of creation.
Being physical.
Taking up space.
Time.
Cause and effect.
Next slide.
So this is the difference between the idolater
who worships one idol and the believer who
worships one unseen God.
That's the difference.
It's Tenzi.
That previous word that we just mentioned.
And this is the argument.
Since the Creator made all of matter, time
and space, He cannot be bound by it.
So if we're saying that this is what
He made and it didn't exist before Him,
therefore His existence is wholly other than this
material, mukawan, makinun existence.
That means it's in time and place and
matter.
His existence is totally different from that.
That is the whole point of Aqidah and
Tenzi and understanding this from reason and revelation.
As we're going to show you, it's both
reason and revelation.
All right.
Next one.
So the transcendent Creator has three main attributes.
Al-qidam wal-baqa wal-mukhalafatu al-hawadith.
Al-qidam.
The Creator was uncreated.
He was not created.
Otherwise, He'd just be part of the universe.
And the Creator, since He has no beginning,
He has no end too.
He has no end.
He's not on the timeline at all.
Munazzah an al-zamani wal-makan.
Munazzah.
Al-mukhalafatu al-hawadith.
He's different from the creation, which we already
mentioned, those things that the creation, hawadith mean,
refer to, beginning, time, place, etc.
He's different from all that.
He is wholly transcendent beyond that.
Subhanallahi amma yasifoon is a word that implies
to that, or implies all of that.
All right.
Next.
So thus far, we have rationally deduced the
following attributes.
The existence of a Maker for the world.
The oneness.
The ghina al-mutlaq.
Remember, ghina al-mutlaq is attached to oneness.
It's a necessary implication of oneness.
No beginning, no end.
And completely transcendent beyond created attributes.
These are negating attributes.
You can also call them the attributes of
transcendence.
So transcendence.
He's one, transcendent from having a second.
Transcendent from dependence.
From beginning, from end, and from similarity to
creation.
Okay, next one.
Reason and revelation overlap.
Let's look at tanzeeh in Surah al-Ikhlas.
قُلْ هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌۭ Allah is One.
One and One in Himself, as we're going
to show.
اللَّهُ السَّمَدُ الْغِنَا الْمُطْلَقُ Samad.
Everyone needs Him, and He needs nobody.
لَمْ يَلَدُ He has no end.
وَلَمْ يُولَدُ He has no beginning.
He was not born, and He didn't give
birth.
وَلَمْ يَكُنْ لَهُ كُفْوًا أَحَدٌۭ And He has
nothing like Him in the creation.
There's nothing like Him.
How can there be anything like Him?
If there was anything like the creation, it
would not be a creator.
It would just be another creation.
All right, so let's go now to talk
about something else.
As we're going to see, Surah al-Ikhlas,
by saying God is One, it clearly refutes
atheism, and it refutes polytheism, but it also
refutes Christianity.
That middle thing that is Christianity, that is
One and Three, right?
So why does it do that?
If I was to say the word Wahid,
it just means it's singular.
Singular is not here the opposite of plural.
It's not grammatically singular.
I mean by it One.
For example, let's hypothetically say this remote control.
I'm pretty confident there's only one of these
remote controls in the room, right?
However, this remote control, I can describe it
as Wahid, but I cannot describe it as
Ahad.
It consists of parts.
It has multiple pieces of metal to make
the antenna.
It has about seven, ten buttons here.
It has a blue part.
It has a white part.
It has an inside.
It has two.
It has a back.
It's not one in itself.
This actually may you can say, we can't
even say this is one in itself.
Why?
I can rip it in half.
It has a right side and a left
side.
It has a top and a bottom.
It has a front and a back.
So the Creator is not only one.
We agree with that on the Christians, but
He's one in Himself.
So by saying Ahad, you're refuting atheism and
polytheism and the Trinity.
If you said Wahid, you would only refute
atheism and polytheism, but not Christianity.
We say Allah Wahidun Ahad.
He's one, unique, and He's one in Himself.
He does not consist of parts.
The Christians say Wahidun Mutafarriq, one, but within
the one, there's a multiplicity.
Okay, next one.
All right, next slide.
And again, a review.
Christians agree God is transcendent, but they say
He can enter the creation.
Here's a good answer.
Someone says, okay, I get the example of
the car.
A man could not have invented the first
car from inside of a car.
I get that.
But he can go into a car, right?
So why can't God enter His creation?
Why can't God go inside of His creation?
You have an answer to that.
Go ahead.
Water, and you say, okay, imagine, now this
water is dependent on this glass.
This glass goes away, the water is no
longer.
Great point.
So the moment God would enter the creation,
well then, He entered a body of a
human.
If I then kill the human, what happens
to God?
Right?
If I hurt the human, what happens to
God?
Just like the example of the glass and
the water.
Right?
If I put anything inside of something, it
becomes dependent.
You just negated something we already said.
If God is one, He'll never be dependent.
So those are some rational basis for why
we say the rational refutation for Christianity that
God cannot enter His creation.
We don't say He cannot.
It's rationally inconceivable.
There's a big difference in the language here.
Because when we say cannot, someone may assume
He has the inability.
No, we're saying it's rationally inconceivable.
So the way we argue this is we
say that the perfect being never changes.
If He's perfect, He's perfect now and at
all times.
So what is the perfection argument?
Let's go down to that.
The rational reason why the Creator never changes.
If the change is for the better, then
He wasn't perfect to begin with.
Right?
If the change is for the worse, then
He's no longer perfect.
And if the change was neither for better
nor worse, then it's redundant.
And perfect beings don't do redundant things.
Right?
So that's the rational argument.
If a Muslim was to claim, the hululiyin,
people who believe in hulul, that God enters
His universe, this hulul, this is kufr, bil
-ijmaa, God comes inside of His universe and
He can make Himself exist in the universe.
Okay.
We ask you then, are you saying that
God changes then?
That means prove to me by sharia that
He increased in attribute or decreased in attribute.
What attribute are you saying increased or decreased?
Are you saying, and we didn't cover this
in this thing, but some people say, well,
He created today.
A newborn baby was created, He created them.
Right?
Or someone was spoken to, so He spoke
to them at that time.
So these are the af'al, sifat al
-af'al, they are with ta'alluq.
That means that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
ordained it pre-eternally in His knowledge.
It's always existed in His knowledge and commanded
it to manifest at this time.
Or we could say willed that it manifest
at this time.
Not a brand new idea that He came
up with.
That's a type of anthropomorphism some people sometimes
imagine.
Or for example, this is an honest question
that many people have, I made dua and
it happened.
So am I the one who instigated the
happening?
Right?
No, we say to you, Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala willed for this to exist from
pre-eternity and He willed for it to
come into existence after you prayed for it.
Right?
So it's all in Allah's will.
Then the person says, well, then I guess
I sort of feel like what was the
point of my prayer if it was going
to exist in the first place?
The point comes is that when it exists
after you prayed for it, it comes as
a sign of His existence for you.
Otherwise, it'd just be another thing.
Like if I was praying to find my
phone versus, oh, there it is, right?
The difference is when something comes to you
after you prayed for it, it comes with
extra goodness which is a sign that Allah
is hearing you, a belief that Allah is
listening to you and a reward from Allah,
all these other things.
Right?
Increases you in Iman.
And also, is almost always good.
When Allah answers your prayer and you're righteous,
it almost always means that this thing is
going to be good for you.
Okay?
Key point, and you're righteous.
All right.
So that's the perfection argument.
We've now gone over three arguments so far.
We'll go over all of them at the
end.
All right.
Let's now go to the next part.
The attributes of meaning.
The first one, next slide, is that we
see design and complexity in the world.
The world or universe, when we say that,
it refers to everything besides the creator.
That's whether we say world, whether we say
universe, whether we say galaxy, whether we say
creation.
It's everything beyond, besides the creator.
All right.
What does this term mean, complexity?
Next slide.
You need the whole thing to get any
benefit from it.
That's what complexity is.
Let's say, for example, a human being has
how many organs?
I don't know how many organs.
Let's say we have 365 bones, or 360
bones.
All right.
We have 360 bones.
And with 360 bones, you can walk, let's
say, 12 miles a day.
So if I took out 50% of
your bones, can you walk six miles a
day?
You can't walk at all.
Your eye, one eye, can see a certain
amount.
If I took your eye, and I took
out 50% of the constituents of your
eyes, the ingredients of your eye, can you
now see 50%?
No, you can't see at all.
If I took 10% of your eye
out, you can't see at all.
The bird's wing is a great example.
Half a wing does not help a bird
fly half the distance.
It's not like a bird got better at
flying every centimeter you added, millimeter you added
to the wing.
You either need the whole wing or no
wing at all.
In fact, half a wing slows the bird
down from walking, and it can't fly at
all.
So it's actually a deterrent.
It's detrimental.
Having half a wing is detrimental to a
person, to a bird.
It needs it all or nothing.
That's what complexity means, which gets to the
core of it is that this world is
created on purpose by design.
This is a couple videos that I got.
All the videos were made by non-Muslims,
but one of them admits to getting all
his stuff from Ghazali.
That's what's-his-face.
William Lane Craig.
He's a really nice guy, but fortunately he
is a believer in the trinity, which is
why the change argument is important to him,
that God does not enter the creation.
He doesn't change.
He's perfect as is.
He doesn't need to increase or decrease in
anything.
But remember what we said here.
All of these proofs, all of these indicators,
all these deductions are made with the intellect
only.
Therefore, Christians can make them as much as
Muslims.
So let's go to the next slide.
I guess skip two then.
And that is the design argument.
That which is complex must have been designed
by one with power and knowledge.
Oh yeah, that's typo.
That's weird.
I thought I fixed that typo.
The world is complex.
Therefore, the world has a powerful and knowledgeable
designer.
Complexity must indicate to you both power and
knowledge.
So let's go down two slides now, or
actually one slide.
So I want to point something out here.
Qudra, power, is deduced by far less than
knowledge.
Let me give you an example.
If I walked into this studio and I
found everything out of place.
The camera, instead of being here, it's there.
The TV is in the middle of the
room.
The lamp is on the side of the
room.
Complete disorder.
I must deduce that somebody, the person who
was in this room, has enough muscle to
move this stuff.
Or whatever the force was, whether it's the
wind, whether it's a human.
I do know that power exists.
The power to move the camera.
The power to move the screen.
So Qudra, I just bundled them here because
it's easier.
But Qudra is indicated by far less than
knowledge.
Now I come back.
The next day I'm all in a huff.
My studio is ruined.
Next morning I come in.
Hold on.
Everything is perfectly in place and better than
it was before.
What does that tell me?
That tells me that someone was here who
has power and knowledge.
He has the power to move this stuff
and he has knowledge.
He knows where the lighting should go.
There should be a light here at 75
degrees.
There should be a light there at 15
degrees.
There should be the camera at 5 feet,
the TV at 7 feet, etc.
So I just bundled them that complexity indicates
power and knowledge for the sake of efficiency.
But power is indicated by existence itself.
The existence of the world itself indicates power.
Okay.
All right.
Next slide.
Next slide.
So far we've done 8 out of the
13.
Existence, wahdaniya independence, no beginning, no end, difference
from creation, ability slash power and knowledge.
All right.
Now let's go to the next, the ninth
attribute.
And what is that ninth attribute?
We look at variety.
The creation is not just well designed.
It's full of artistic variety.
Every single thing is different.
Next slide.
Every iris is different.
Every tiger has unique stripes.
Every snowflake is unique.
See how many colors are in the jungle?
It's amazing.
You go to Antarctica, everything's white.
Penguin's white.
Polar bear's white.
Everything is like white or black.
Penguin's white and black.
Seal's black.
Well, seal's like dark brown.
But there's just the...
Snow is white.
It's like everything is like white.
Antarctica.
You go to the desert, it's just a
big...
It's two colors.
It's blue skies and brown.
Go to the jungle, must be hundreds of
colors in the jungle.
Everything is different in the jungle.
So you see Allah Ta'ala, He's even
created landscapes that are so different.
Some have some colors.
Some have almost like monochrome.
One color.
The jungle's got a million colors.
So everything is different.
Even every snowflake is different.
Every thing that you can imagine, every human
face is different.
I mean, human face consists of what?
How many bones are in the human face?
Let me say this.
You got a skull.
You got a nose.
Cheekbones.
Jawbone.
A bunch of cartilage.
A bunch of fat.
A bunch of skin.
But it's not an unlimited number of factors,
right?
Yet, from the beginning of time, everyone looks
different.
It's an amazing thing.
So what does this indicate to us?
Well, first, let's look at the variety first.
Can you hit play on this?
Oh, it's a PDF.
We can't play it.
That is a squid.
In water, it's black.
Outside water, it turns translucent.
Unfortunately, it's a PDF, so you can't really
see that.
All right, let's go to the next slide.
We're just looking at these things.
It's a really far stretch to try to
tell us that there's a reason why some
of the feathers are white and some of
them are orange.
There's no reason.
It's just Allah's...
It's an art for us to look at.
Allah Ta'ala tells us the reasons for
some things to exist is jamal.
حين تريحون وحين تصبحون Allah says that certain
things are created for no other reason except
for us to look at them or multiple
reasons to use and to look at.
But He separates the looking from the riding.
For example, horses.
والخيل والبغال والحميرة لتركبها وزينة The zina is
not what benefits the riding, right?
So the zina is beauty.
The beauty and the form and the function
are two separate things.
This bird here...
You're making stuff up if you're going to
tell us the difference between the orange and
the white.
Who knows?
But it's zina.
It's just made for beauty.
It tells us it's made on purpose.
There's no...
It does not have to be a function
for everything.
Next slide.
Now look at this.
It looks like a top-notch microphone or
something.
No, rather what it is, it's the housefly.
Your standard old housefly.
That's a nuisance, right?
Well, that's what its eye looks like.
4,000 lenses in each eye.
Allowing it to see in all directions at
once.
It never has to turn its neck.
Hence, it was created without a neck.
Like, wouldn't it be redundant to have 8
,000 lenses?
4,000 times 2.
And a neck?
Well, why do you need a neck at
that point?
You know what someone asked me?
He said then, why are we able to
kill it so easily?
Kill flies really easily.
You know the answer to that?
The answer to that is that with 8
,000 lenses and a brain this big, the
download is really slow.
And flies actually see with a delay.
Whatever they're seeing actually already happens.
They're seeing with a tape delay.
Just like we're seeing information out from outer
space, we see it in the past.
Even the stars themselves are not where they
are.
They've already moved.
But by the time the light got to
us, time passed.
So that's why we're able to kill flies.
We're able to swap them because although they
see everything, they have a delay.
All right, next one.
This is probably my all-time favorite.
We breathe in what trees breathe out and
they breathe in what we breathe out.
Hence, harmony in the creation.
The creator of the lung and the creator
of the tree must be one.
How else would these two things become matching
and harmonious in this creation?
And they obviously look the same too.
They look identical to each other.
It's like you have a tree inside your
body and then there's a tree outside your
body and you need each other.
Take out all the trees, you won't breathe
well.
It's amazing.
All right, let's take a look at the
next one.
This random-looking fruit fly has pictures of
red ants on its wings.
Yeah.
It's created with pictures of ants on the
wings to scare off predators from their sting.
These ants, they have a sting to them.
Is this just not the same creator, right?
Here you have the ant, the fly, and
whatever eats the fruit fly.
That's the same creator.
But it's also just like the artistry of
it is amazing.
A fruit fly could have been created with
so many different ways.
All right, let's go to the next one.
Here is the cow of the sea or
the peacock of the sea.
Pick one.
Imagine you took a cow, a peacock, and
a sludge and you made it a sea
creature at the same time.
This is a tiny, tiny creature in the
sea.
And it has whatever you call those things.
Looks sort of the colors of a peacock,
even though peacock is more like purple with
a little bit of green.
This is sort of, but it looks close
enough.
And it has the face of a Texas
longhorn cow.
Isn't this nice?
And this is microscopic, by the way.
This is like, you can't see this with
your naked eye.
So what does all this variety indicate?
Let's go to the next one.
Variety indicates irada.
Variety indicates will, meaning that it was created
on purpose.
I'm going to fix some of these typos.
It's created on purpose.
Now, let's ask a question.
What are the necessary implications, and you go
to the next slide now, of a being
that has knowledge, power, and will?
The necessary implication is that they're alive.
So for example, you cannot attribute AI to
doing something.
AI cannot be taken to court.
An algorithm cannot be taken to court.
Who goes to court?
The one who made that algorithm.
If I created an algorithm that hacks people,
randomly hacks somebody, randomly harms somebody, and that
harm happens to that person, the algorithm is
not what needs to be removed.
It's the person who planned it.
So knowledge, power, will, the point being is
that you cannot have these three things without
having life.
So the indicator of life, or the dalalah
of life, is by the rational necessity.
It's attached.
Just as we said, al-ghina al-mutlaq
is attached to oneness.
You can't be one but then be dependent.
Likewise, you can't be dead and have knowledge,
power, and will.
So you have life.
Alright, next slide.
And what's the necessary implication of haya?
There's a lot of things that can have
life.
But the necessary implication of haya is hearing
sight and speech.
Missing any of these would result in an
imperfect form of life.
So the forms of life is the rock
formations, the vegetation, the animals, and the humans.
Each one of them, well, first of all,
rocks, you would assume do not have life.
We only believe that the rock formations have
life because of revelation.
وَإِمَّنْ شَيْءٍ إِلَّا يُسَبِّهُ بِحَمْدٍ And the Prophet
ﷺ, Qur'an says there's not a single
thing except that it makes tasbih.
We also have a hadith that the Prophet
ﷺ put out his hands and the rocks
made tasbih.
We also have a hadith in which the
Prophet ﷺ spoke to Mount Uhud.
He said, أُسْكُن He said, be at rest
for on you is a Prophet, what was
it?
A Prophet, a Siddiq and a Shaheed.
A martyr.
A Prophet and a Siddiq and a Shaheed.
That is the Prophet and Abu Bakr and
Umar.
If I got the narration correct, I know
something like that, right?
But point being, the Shaheed here is not
what the hadith says, is that the Prophet
talked to a mountain.
Therefore, only by transmitted knowledge, Qur'an and
hadith, we fully believe that even the rock
formations, every molecule, everything has its own consciousness.
The question now is the completion.
Is it a complete consciousness or not?
So we say the consciousness of the rock
is naqis kamal.
It's lacking in perfection.
The vegetation, world of trees and plants, clearly
they grow, they sway, they move towards the
sun, etc.
And in fact, we know that if you
talk nicely to plants, they grow better.
If you're mean to plants, they die down
or they die faster.
So, but they're also naqis kamal.
They're lacking in perfection.
You go now to the animals.
The animal grows, it eats, it sees, it
hears, but it can't talk.
It can't think.
So it's also naqis kamal.
And the final, the highest life form on
this earth is the humans who see, talk,
hear, etc.
And they have will.
So, when we talk about something being alive,
by necessity, we must add assama wal basar
wal kalam.
And to match the transcendence with that, we
say, he hears without an organ.
We hear with the need of an organ.
You take someone's ears, you ruin them, he
can't hear anymore.
You poke someone's eyes out, he can't see
anymore.
Allah, the creator, must see.
If he's transcendent, as we said, he sees
without use of organs.
He does not need organs to see.
He does not need a tool by which
to transfer the information to himself.
His speech, he speaks without organs.
Without a throat and a voice box the
way we have to speak.
He speaks without these things.
Missing any of these would result in an
imperfect form of life.
Okay, so in summary, what are the attributes
known through reason?
al wujud, wal wahdaniya, wal ghanan mutlaq, wal
qidam, wal baqa, wal mukhalafatul hawadith, wal qudra,
wal ilm, wal irada, wal haya, wal sam
'a, wal basar, wal kalam.
Nine says will, volition should say will, or
volition in brackets should say irada.
And we divide these up into these three.
The attribute of the self, the negating attributes,
which are the attributes of transcendence, and the
attributes of meaning.
This breakdown is ijtihad of the scholars.
It's just ijtihad of the scholars.
What's missing here, as we said, these are
only the attributes known through reason.
The whole, this whole thing is badih.
It's like just by thinking well and thinking
clearly and a group of people come together
to come up with something like this or
something similar.
And this is what the ulema settled on.
On top of that, I'm telling you this
is not the greatest proof at all.
The greater proof is to prove the Prophet
ﷺ and the Qur'an through themselves, through
prophecy, through other things that could not be
known in the time of the Prophet ﷺ.
And that would prove to Islam.
This does not prove Islam.
This does not prove Allah ﷻ.
This just proves some attributes of the Creator.
Through reason alone, we could not know the
Creator's name.
Through reason alone, we could not know anything
about His will, His sharia, His religion.
So, but this is, it's good to know
that when I use my mind, I come
to these conclusions.
Right?
And these conclusions are found in the Qur
'an.
As we said, the five negating attributes line
up with the five verses of Surah Al
-Ikhlas.
Thank you very much.
By this, there is no belief system in
the world that holds what we just held.
The Christian does not hold that God never
changes.
He holds that God changes.
The Christian cannot uphold Al-Ghina Al-Mutlaq.
Clearly, he is dependent on the other two
persons within the Trinity.
Clearly, Jesus had a beginning in this world.
Right?
Clearly, what is the Qur'anic response?
The Qur'an is not telling us some
information.
He is guiding us on how to respond
back.
Allah says, Jesus and Mary used to walk
in the marketplace and eat food.
What does that mean?
You are dependent.
So, they cannot argue Al-Ghina Al-Mutlaq.
Clearly, he had a beginning.
Clearly, he died.
He cannot tell me he is endless but
died.
Which one is it?
Died for your sins or is he endless?
So, these and transcendence, that is out of
the window a long time ago.
Right?
But, also, I think the Jews whenever people
ask me about the Jews, they are more
of the Mujassima.
If you look at their theology, they don't
emphasize transcendence the way we have it here.
The only one who did, I think, is
the one who was influenced by Muslim scholars
which is Maimonides.
Rabbi Moses ben Maimonides also known as the
Rambam, the Andalusian.
His work of theology on God, it just
looks like a copy paste from Sunni works.
It is a copy paste.
Right?
You want to say something?
Yeah.
I was reading something recently that was talking
about how he actually added a lot of
things to their Akhidah, the Jewish Akhidah, specifically
to negate the possibility of the prophecy of
Mohammed's Salvation.
Some of the things that they had indications
for in their own theology.
Meaning, even when they package it up, they
have got to look to our theology and
specifically pull things out and create loopholes to
keep validity for their own beliefs.
And he also ended up getting rejected for
this.
Like, when I was at Yale and I
was saying about Maimonides, is he like one
of the people you look to?
He's like, no, he had some innovations.
He's like a heretic to them.
And the innovations were the things he copied
from, firstly, his whole structure.
For example, he said, it's obligatory to believe
in heaven and *.
But the structure of it, the idea of
what's obligatory to believe in, he took that
from Muslims and a lot of the stuff
he said were like that too.
So, let's get to the podcast of, I
can't remember which one it was, but from
all those podcasts that had Dr. Ali Atai
discussing Jewish theology, there's a section where he
lists all the beliefs of Maimonides.
It's 100% Sunni copy.
100%.
You don't find it in other Jewish sources.
In any event, these are the 13.
Now let's go to the summary of the
five arguments here.
The origins argument, the cosmological argument, the oneness
argument, the perfection argument, and the design argument.
These five, I don't even know if you
guys can see it on the screen if
it's small enough or too small, but these
are the five symbols.
You know what I didn't put here?
The contingency argument.
I found it difficult to put it into
simple language.
This is made for really simple language.
That's the goal of this.
But these five would indicate to you these
main attributes of the creator.
In the future, bi'ithnillah, maybe in a
month or two, we're going to do the
same deck, the same similar type of slides
with the arguments and the rational indications and
analysis for prophethood, for the prophet ﷺ.
But right now, we'll stop here.
It's 3.14. Let's go to a few
Q&As and then we'll wrap up for
the day.
I know that some people wanted to talk
about current events, but we didn't get a
chance to do that.
So I'll try to post these slides in
the description and maybe send it out in
the channels.
There are a couple of typos, but it's
no big deal.
How do we explain the verse that states
Allah resides between a man and his heart?
It means he is in control of his...
It means control, refers to control of the
person's will and his heart.
If one did wudu or ghusl incorrectly, are
they obligated to do qada of the prayer?
Yes.
As long as it's not valid in any
of the four madhabs.
If it was in any of the madhabs,
valid, then that's acceptable.
And you don't have to repeat it.
Harrison Pickett says, there are no polar bears
in Antarctica, but we get the point.
Yeah, so what was it?
The North Pole, that's where the polar bears
are.
In the North Pole.
Allah even alludes to the uniqueness of the
fingerprints and how he will recreate them and
the fingerprints grow back the same.
Chocolate Wala, correct.
Life is presupposed by the previous conclusion.
Likewise, as we said, al-ghina al-mutlaq
is presupposed by oneness.
Haroon says, have we ever looked into the
mirror to see what Allah created?
The lips over the teeth, the eyebrows, the
nose, instead of a triangle hole on the
skull.
Subhanallah, I mean, think about the holes of
the nostril.
If they were in any other location, water
would come in constantly.
Like they're protected by the nose.
If they were straight on the face, then
things coming towards you would go into the
nostrils.
Amazing.
Can you fast on Fridays in the Madaki
school?
Yes, you can.
There's a great Malaysian nasheed called the 20
sifat, yes.
The 20 sifat, what they do is they
just take the seven and they reword them
as samia basir mutakallim, like that.
Jackson Lamb, what is he saying?
That the wills would conflict.
You can't have two creators, their wills would
conflict, of course.
Let's see what else we got here.
Need a pose?
Why can't I send superchats?
No, you should be able to send.
What's your opinion of Abu Ubaidah?
No, I haven't looked into that.
What is the issue with Abu Ubaidah?
Is the latest clip that you're talking about?
Haven't looked into it.
Speaking of the superchats, I added some new
stickers.
If you guys want to get access to
them.
New stickers?
Subscribe and support the channel.
Let's see your stickers.
We got some nice stuff.
So, inshallah, support.
Nice.
What's the second to last sticker?
No, the in the no, the first batch?
The white one, yeah.
What does that say?
Oh, okay.
Okay.
All right, here's one.
Here's a question.
This is just about Salah.
Why don't we say Bismillah out loud when
reciting Fatiha?
Is it the first ayah or no?
This was differed upon amongst the jurists.
Whether or not Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim
is part of the Fatiha or is just
the beginning of the saying Bismillah ar-Rahman
ar-Rahim before writing the Quran.
So, it's differed upon.
And the Shafi'i and Hanbalis deem it
to be part of the Fatiha whereas the
Hanafis, Amalekis do not.
Is it haram to babysit a woman who's
going to do something haram like she's going
on a date and she's spending the night
at another guy's house?
Yes, you are at that point helping with
ma'asiyah.
But if you know that.
If you show up and she's just going
out with somebody and says I want to
be out all night.
You don't know that, right?
So, if she's telling you come so I
can go and spend the night with my
boyfriend then you would be helping her do
that so that you can't do.
If you're a babysitter at all times every
day you come on Tuesday nights you don't
have to ask what she's doing.
One day she does something haram one day
she says haram.
You don't have to ask.
But if it's that one time come in
so I can go and fornicate then no.
Listening to people who are not Muslim for
mindfulness such as Eckhart Tolle okay.
Halal is halal and haram is haram.
The general ruling on listening to people who
are talking general life advice whatever they're talking
about is that whatever of their experiences that
they're talking to their conclusions are acceptable in
the sharia then it's acceptable.
And if it's not then it's not.
So, you are totally allowed to benefit from
non-believers' experiences in life.
If you limit for example your medical knowledge
to Muslims only you wouldn't go to medical
school.
Right?
Good, huh?
You want to do it again?
I like it.
Yeah, it's good.
So, does du'a being rejected for 40
days include salawat too?
No, the du'a when you're there is
a sinful act done and then someone's salawat
is not accepted or du'a is not
accepted that is inshallah ta'ala if they
didn't do tawbah but if they made tawbah
sincere repentance then hopefully it will return to
being accepted.
Sure.
No problem.
I got to help Omar out.
He gets frustrated looking for the splicing the
right picture to take so we got to
because the slides too.
Yeah, that's true.
Many of the brothers complain about suffering from
depression and anxiety.
What's the best adhkar to heal this?
Well, first of all they bad things in
bad feelings on the inside.
Good things in good feelings on the inside.
Dhikr Allah going to the masjid a lot
hanging out with other Muslim brothers check your
make sure that you're the things going in
your body are halal.
If haram and bad things are going in
your body even junk can make you depressed.
If you eat junk food all day and
all night you will become depressed.
Bad stuff is going in your body.
Haram is going in your eyes going in
your ears then what do you expect?
Poisoning then you're going to feel miserable.
So go and hang out with other people
where they're going to encourage you to either
A.
not do those things or B.
They're going to help you make certain things
do certain acts of worship that you may
have not done before.
They got to work out.
I'll tell you another reason why people get
sad and depressed is because sometimes it's like
there are toxins in the body that never
get released.
Sweat you need to sweat.
Is working security at Walmart allowed?
Yes.
Why wouldn't it be?
It's fine.
Can you get the Muslim undertaker on the
podcast?
Don't know who he is.
Sorry.
Am I supposed to know who he is?
Is he someone well known?
Like did I just never heard of him?
When you're praying Salah and you're only allowed
to read out loud and to what extent?
Only if it's the out loud prayers such
as we know Fajr Maghrib Isha Okay
next question says Do we pay Zakah on
our pensions when you receive it?
Money that you've given away for someone to
invest for you and you don't have access
to that money or you don't have it
in your possession is not Zakahable.
The day you receive it you pay one
times Zakah the day you receive it.
Thoughts on Islamic apologetics and polemics?
It's necessary to a degree but it's also
harmful to a degree.
Yeah Yeah They're bringing about energy that's good.
Right?
That's good.
But too much of that spoils your heart.
Is a hair unit allowed for men instead
of a transplant?
Does that mean like for example like what
is it like a synthetic material that you
would put on your hair on your head?
How would you make Hajj though?
Right?
I mean I can ask the Shaykh about
that but how would you make Hajj?
How would you run the blade over your
head?
Because you know that that's how Hajj and
Umrah it is.
Even in the schools that say Umrah you
can just clip a piece.
Fine.
What about Hajj?
So you got to think about that.
Hajj all the Madhabs require you to either
cut all of your hair or run the
blade over your head.
So the let's say someone who doesn't grow
hair they put some of that scentless cream
and they run the blade over.
Imrar al-mus is what the books of
Islamic law say.
Jam Jam it's a wig that you glue
on and can take off.
Oh!
It's like that.
I didn't know that.
I thought you meant it's embedded in the
head.
I thought that that's what you meant.
But he's saying it's a wig.
Oh it's a toupee basically.
I think the only problem with the toupee
would come if it entails misleading people.
I think that's what my Shaykh is going
to say.
I'll just double check with him but that's
the only issue it would be.
Good question.
I'll ask about that.
That's a good question.
And also with the person if he made
hajj he doesn't have to worry about that
at all?
If he made hajj once in his life
already?
Yeah.
If it's not it is the ihram is
one of the arkan but the that isn't.
That is could be hadi for that.
Yes that's true.
So the Jam Jam 236 saying that it's
you just glue it on and off.
Alright let's go to Paul Owen.
He says I'm atheist I want to practice
Islam because it's good for raising a family
but I'll do major sins privately.
Is it better for the ummah to be
a hypocrite hide my sins and not discuss
my lack of belief or stay out of
the ummah so as not to corrupt it?
No.
We would say that you entering into Islam
with all that baggage and just being part
of the Islamic community is better for you.
Why?
What we're going to say you may not
appreciate this but we would say enough interaction
may at some point put a drop of
iman in your heart.
Secondly for Paul Owen at least you raise
your kids in Islam.
Your kids don't see your atheism.
But here's the thing you cannot say I'm
a Muslim and then turn around at home
and say I'm actually an atheist I'm actually
an atheist.
So you'd have to keep that to yourself.
Right?
And that's what would be a hypocrite would
be.
Hypocrite would be somebody the hypocrite of belief.
He says he's a Muslim for a benefit
external benefit but on the inside he doesn't
have any belief.
But guess who knows who's a hypocrite?
Nobody.
Because he doesn't say it.
He never actually says it.
Right?
So for that umm umm umm Omar why
don't we make that title umm proofs of
a creator or something or proof of a
creator exists something like that.
Yeah.
Proving a creator exists.
How's that?
That's good.
Omar with the colors these days.
Alright.
So that's what I would say to the
person because I mean it's better than nothing
at all.
And you're going to have kids anyway.
He wants to raise them in Islam.
Well his kids going to the masjid in
and out reading Quran seeing Salah Iman would
enter one of their hearts at least.
Right?
Yeah.
Good point.
Yeah.
Correct.
100%.
We don't know who's who what's in your
heart.
So we would just treat you as a
Muslim or we buried you as a Muslim
and then if your heart is different that's
for Allah to judge.
Is it okay to sing lyrics into songs
in private for fun with no musical instruments?
Yes if the lyrics are lawful.
Half the lyrics in some of these songs
if you had to silence everything unlawful you'd
have silence.
Sports that involve hitting the face not lawful.
Not lawful.
Is there a method nuance to this issue?
It's not lawful to hit someone's face at
all.
Oh wow.
Omar those are great.
Pick a nice color.
Yeah just put that up.
SubhanAllah.
Yeah.
Random SubhanAllah.
Put up maybe the purple the black all
of them are nice.
Whatever you pick is nice.
Omar's picking choosing thumbnails here.
Making the thumbnail.
Should I pray sunnah tahajjud or taraweeh while
having qada?
No.
You pray qada.
Pray qada.
Maliki fiqh salah.
Yes someday we'll do one.
Alright here's another one from Paul.
So it's better for the ummah for someone
like me to still practice?
Yes because A.
You may increase in the ummah.
B.
You may enter Islam.
B.
You're bringing your kids into the ummah.
Would I not corrupt the ummah?
You would corrupt the ummah if you betray
the trust of Muslims.
For example you work against them in some
way.
When you go home and you don't pray
Fajr youth doesn't affect us directly.
Yeah maybe you could say yes spiritually.
Okay but directly no.
The direct betrayal or corruption would be if
you are continuing to spread sins.
What are you doing?
That says a Muslim or a Kafir doesn't
make a difference right?
But you are corrupting the Muslim youth for
example.
If you were to come and say I'm
not a Muslim but I'm going to live
with Muslims but then on the side you're
corrupting youth or corrupting other guys or telling
the guys that you're an atheist or telling
guys that or siding with the enemy donating
to Zionist causes or something like that then
we would say yes that's a problem.
That's what you would and whether or not
you believed regular believing Muslims do those things
too.
So it's irrelevant what's in your heart it's
your actions that matter.
I'm saying to you it's irrelevant in comparison.
Of course it's relevant but in comparison corrupting
the Ummah is by outward behavior.
We don't know what's on the inside or
not.
So it's irrelevant to us.
Go ahead.
Historically right when we had Islamic societies you
could as long as outwardly you were a
Muslim the society was fine with you.
The Qadi could not create any sort of
ruling against you as long as the outward
evidence suggested that you were a Muslim.
Now let me tell you this as an
example for you.
Hey Omer the brown doesn't look good.
Yeah.
That's earthy.
Give it a get a different color from
there.
The red maybe.
So let's talk about this.
There is a story I heard it was
from Uthman ibn Mad'un.
I cannot find this story anywhere.
I need to find it somewhere.
I need to find this story somewhere.
But the Prophet ﷺ continued to urge a
companion a certain man to enter Islam.
He only entered Islam because he was embarrassed
from the Prophet ﷺ's asking.
So he entered Islam with no belief in
his heart just because he was embarrassed.
And then he said after a few days
of praying while not believing in the Prophet
or the Quran or anything he said the
Prophet ﷺ recited a verse that moved my
heart so much that Iman entered my heart
at that moment in time.
That's what the logic is of someone should
just come and live with the Islamic community
live around the Masajid and the Quran and
they will eventually enter Islam and believe.
Can you clarify Qada Salah as I thought
once the prayer time has passed is gone
it cannot be made up.
Of course it can be made up.
It has to be made up.
You have to make up your prayers.
You don't get the reward of it but
you don't get the sin of it.
Yeah Omar that's good.
Make that brighter.
Yeah you're doing good Omar.
Yeah that's good.
And the MBF the bottom one?
What about no no magenta?
I love magenta.
Let's see magenta.
But let's see magenta is going to match.
No that's purple.
No keep going.
Magenta is there.
Does that arc view of that red?
Go down down down.
That's magenta.
No no.
Yeah that's magenta.
Too bright?
Okay.
All right fair enough.
Darken it then if you want.
Yeah just darken.
Yeah there you go.
That's good.
All right we got to go.
We got class.
If you want to study with me three
four times a week we study one hour
a week today one hour a week Thursday
or one day one hour today one hour
Thursday and three hours Sunday you go to
arcview.org and you go to essentials arcview
.org and you go to essentials and right
now folks we have to stop.
Unfortunately we have to go and we will
see you again tomorrow.
Jazakumullahu khairan everyone.
Subhanakallahumma bihamdika nishadu wa la ilaha illa anta
nastaghfiruk wa natubu ilayk wa al-asr inna
al-insana lafee khusr illa al-lazeena amanu
wa amilu al-salihaat wa tawassu bil-haq
wa tawassu bil-sabr wa salamu alaykum wa
rahmatullah Al
-Fatiha.