Shadee Elmasry – The Problem Evil Part 1 The Wisdom of Suffering
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He
was Salatu was Salam ala Rasulillah he was be human Well,
welcome everyone to sort of a solo not exactly a solo. It's myself
here with Nazmul Hassan, as you said, I'm Rahim salah, and he's
our rookie, masha Allah, but he's getting a solo. We don't just
bring any any goof goof ball on here. So someone who's got
something to offer. And that's what he has here. And he's really
going to do most of the presentation today. And I'm just
going to be with him on it. So Nazmul Why don't we? Why don't you
take it over from here?
Well, I will let him in the shutdown or Jim. So let's start
off with getting you a little mad. Let's show let's show him what we
got. Okay, so you want to start off with Stephen Fry? Oh, yeah.
Okay. All right. So now someone's got some
Stephen Fry clip here that he wants to start off and kick it off
with There we go.
That is the Odyssey I think I will say bone cancer in children, your
day to day you create a world in which there is such misery that is
not our fault. It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. Why
should I respect a capricious, mean minded, stupid God? Who
creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?
Yeah, you know, to me, it's It's strange how someone like an
atheist can be so bitter about a God that they don't even believe
in. That's the bizarre thing is so bizarre. Yeah, but I guess the
real reason is like, they actually do believe in God, but they just,
they just hate that, that God doesn't conform to their own
understanding. That's what it is. That's, they hate that so much. So
anyway, we're going to be looking at that video, we're going to be
deconstructing all of those arguments that he put forward, if
that was even an argument.
We're going to be discussing the problem of evil. But this time,
we're gonna look at all of the varied responses from within the
Islamic and Abrahamic traditions, and go more in depth. So we're
going to answer Stephen Fry and show why His quick judgment of God
shows he has no understanding of the God we believe in. We're also
going to tackle some very, very difficult questions like children
suffering. I mean, that's, that's, that's the, what do you call the
the nail in the coffin, so to speak of,
of the atheists argument for the problem of evil. So let's start
off by mentioning another shocking story. In 2000, for the Indian
Ocean tsunami, devastated the Muslim majority country of
Indonesia, killed over 300,000 people in the worst ways you can
imagine. So after this disaster, there was a lot of soul searching,
because the disaster was especially bad. It affected the
most pious region of Indonesia, I called a que ha, I mean, the
Indonesians listening, probably butchered that butchered that
name. So the question is, how could God allow such a thing? What
was the wisdom in the destruction that followed? These people are
looking for a hope, you know, these people that suffered in the
the tsunami, and there's a recent tsunami too.
And so they're looking for a hope, a lifeline, that the devastation
that they saw and the death that they experienced was not all in
vain.
There's no shortage of evil we could mention to get you worked up
and question everything and make the world appeared hopeless. But
the real question is, if indeed, there's a God, that is all
powerful, and all good, how do these instances of evil take
place? How can we explain them? If He is all powerful? He's able to
stop these evils. But he doesn't. Doesn't this mean he is not all
powerful? If he is all good, he would stop evil out of his
goodness. But there's evil, so doesn't mean he's not all good.
So some of us are often faced with this question in various points of
our lives. And just be tough is just not the right answer that
we're looking for. And especially in the modern world, we
experienced suffering even more acutely, because we're just not as
strong as our forefathers. And, you know, the, there's a special
type of suffering of the modern human being, which is loneliness.
So it's, it's more important than ever to get an answer to this
question and lack of guidance on basic basic things like that.
salutely Absolutely. And you can see the the rise of, you know,
people that all the self help books and everything that really
shows you that people are searching for solutions. But
unfortunately, we're not forced to have blind faith. And Islam offers
a range of answers to meet and conquer the suffering that we face
and make sense of our existence.
So the question is, you know, one of the questions that people would
give when we're trying to do something like this, is should we
even know
For an answer to suffering, right?
They might say, you know, what I'm trying to do is reprehensible.
Right? Who might say that, like some people, let's say some
somebody's mother dies, and they listen to this podcast. They're
like, what you're trying to do? You're trying to explain this
tragedy, you're trying to give a logical reason for the strategy.
It's reprehensible. Right? So am I, am I seriously trying to
justify the suffering in the world and the real pain that real human
beings go through? Am I trying to explain away the trauma of
millions using some fancy metaphysics? Am I trying to
possibly explain away the Holocaust? Right? No, I mean, this
topic is probably the most sensitive within religion today,
as you can hear from the outraged rant of Stephen Fry.
Because so many people cannot bring themselves to believe in
God, because of the suppose that evil that they see in the world. I
recognize how difficult it is for the victims of tragedy. Yet, I
also think that victims of great tragedies suffer exponentially
more, if their suffering is explained as meaningless. Hmm,
good point. It's a very good point. If to the if I wanted a
tsunami survivor and I were to say, you know, this isn't a random
act of nature, and you can't do anything about it. The earth is
gonna self destruct anyway. So just don't cry about it. And that
there's no gain either. Right? Exactly. I think this is the worst
possible thing you could ever say to a victim.
And actually, what you're about to say is that there's gain. Yeah,
and all that stuff. Right? Yeah. And not only does this make the
suffering even more intense, when you explain it like this, it sucks
the joy out of life and existence itself. You know, so many people,
there's an epidemic of suicide these days, because, you know,
people just can't even they feel that meaninglessness. They have no
explanation for their suffering. So to the question of, should we
offer an answer? I say, Yes, we should, because human beings
instinctively look for answers and are suffering, you know, but this
doesn't mean that we go to a victim and we start, you know,
explaining this problem of evil and like detailed logical
analysis, like there's a difference of how we treat
somebody who's just suffered, and how we treat this problem with a
cool mind looking back, right? So I think the greatest gift that we
can offer a suffering human being is meaning. totally right. This is
exactly what, you know, Islam has provided for me and countless
others when and Nietzsche was right when he said that what makes
suffering unbearable, is the meaninglessness of it's sort of
the Trump not necessarily the paint. Yeah. And Nietzsche
himself, he had a mental breakdown, because he saw a horse
getting whipped. And he went into so this was the guy who was
talking about Superman, and, you know, make your own morals, he saw
a horse getting whipped in front of them, and he just had a mental
breakdown. And he died after like, a few months. So I mean, it's,
it's really, so we need to provide some sort of meaning.
So do we. So let's, let's talk about you might ask, Why couldn't
this world not have any evil whatsoever? Isn't that possible
for God? So this is section, I'm just gonna give to the audience.
Now listening. Now. Nas has actually some pretty logical
sections here. We're now on the section of a world without evil.
Is that even possible? Right? So and that's the question that
people have, why couldn't I mean, if God's perfect? Why couldn't he
create a world with no evil whatsoever?
And I would say, Well, yes. You know, why, suppose there isn't a
world in which evil doesn't exist. You know, why? Suppose God hasn't
created such a world. And he most certainly has, like a the data of
Revelation. When we have revelation, it tells us that there
isn't a square inch of space in the universe, but that there are
beings created out of pure light, which are worshiping God
constantly and appreciating his creation. Okay, we know these to
be angels. And it's obvious that their world is much different than
ours. And it's also obvious that their world contains no evils.
Right? Yeah. So actually, that answer is that we have seven
universes above us. Right, exactly. Or seven votes, which are
greater than universes. Yeah. And so we're the only little speck in
which evil exists, right? Whereas the bulk of the creation, yeah, is
purely without evil. Exactly. And there's a there's a very good
reason for why evil exists. Like, it's not just sort of a haphazard
job done by a lot smarter. Now that we learn. There's, there's
actually, as I'm gonna argue, later on, that if evil didn't
exist, there would be certain goods that are lost, right? So
we're gonna get into that. So, but as of now, I mean, when we
approach this question, we have, you know, we know that we exist,
we encounter existence.
There are events that causes pain and suffering, like this is the
data we have. But we also know using a rational mind that there
has to be a creator. So
This is what this podcast is like how do you resolve these two
things? Yeah, that we know there must be a Creator and we also get
hurt. We also suffer pain. So how do we resolve these two things?
So, this is, this is what an essence of theodicy is. theodicy
comes from the Greek feels, which means God, and Daiki I've probably
butchering that pronunciation too, which means justice. Okay, so it
means something like doing God justice or justifying God.
What do you think about that? Like judicious? Same, the same? Second
route? DIC is in judicious Do you know Greek? I know a little bit of
Greek.
Mashallah. Yeah, so, better be careful. Okay. Yeah, it's, it's
actually it's like, like, probably, like some of the
pronounced dice. Dice. Yeah. Okay. It's actually the one of the dike
is actually one of their goddesses. Oh, gotcha. Gotcha.
She's like, she's like the goddess of the court, basically. Okay,
that's where that's where it comes from. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah.
So I mean, that's, that's what the Odyssey means the the word. And
when, when we're saying we're offering a theodicy, we're all
divine justice. Right. We're an explanation and explanation xyzzy.
Gosh, okay. So we're gonna offer a few theocracies from multiple
different angles.
But here's what I'm not attempting to do. Before anybody
misunderstands. I'm not attempting to explain every single instance
of evil that has ever happened to everybody.
Right. I mean, there's no way I could do that. You're talking
about the concept of evil itself? No, not that. Like, like, why you
failed your calc test? Yeah. Yeah. So we're not talking about
specific theory, or the idea of why bad things happen in the first
place. So the the idea exactly.
Yeah. Which if the person gets that, then they'll have they'll be
able to catch their own incident. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because
because there's no way that I could do that explanation, because
I don't know your life, right. I don't know the specific
circumstances that you had to go through. But I'm sure if you
reflect on it using the tools that are, you know, we given this
podcast, and maybe something can come out of it. So.
So the answers to these specific questions, they come from the
person's themselves, as they live their lives, they are on the best
positions to see the hidden wisdom in the events that happened.
For me, a theodicy isn't meant to explain every single thing you
find evil and creation at the Odyssey is meant to prove why it's
completely rational. And in fact, the best option to trust in God
and to have security in that trust and critical. So that's that was
that's what we're trying to argue here. We're not trying to argue,
you know, that when you failed your calc test, you know, last
night, whatever, that that was something good that happened.
We're not trying to argue that we're trying to say that it's
completely rational, to have trust in God, not saying evil is good.
Exactly. We're trying to say that it's completely rational to have
trust in God. Good. So
it's meant to demonstrate that, like God is not out to get us. I
mean, if you heard in the Stephen Fry clip that, you know, he, he
really feels that God is out to get him tell people who this guy
is.
He's He's a comedian. He's actually a pretty funny comedian.
He had a show
called fry and Laurie. Laurie is Hugh glory from house. Oh, so
both? I don't know who that is. House houses medical show. In
other medical Oh, yeah, I missed that. I was one of those phases
where I spent like a decade and a half without watching any TV as a
thought of him.
To they came back to life here and got corrupted again. That's why
I'm a rookie.
So this so this guy, you know, one of one thing that always bothers
me about comedians is that they seem like they get away with
everything. Oh, yeah, by just saying, Oh, I'm just a joker. I'm
just a comedian. It's just I just have a laugh, like, don't make the
worst, filthiest or most outlandish commentary, and then
just say, just, I'm just a comedian. So that always bothers
me about comedians. I mean, what's his name? Was was a good
commentator to
the dude who used to wear all black Carlin and George Carlin was
funny sometimes, too, and he would make some outlandish. He was an
atheist, too. He was an atheist. And he made comment similar to
this guy. Oh, yeah. Because there are a lot, you know, the
professional is just, you know, laughing and laughing. Right. So
it's like, you know, their hearts. The hadith, the prowess. Arson.
Yeah, exactly. I forget the excessive laughter.
Yeah. So they treat everything like a joke. So it's like, yeah,
not until you can't discuss anything serious with them. Yeah.
Yeah. So I mean, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to
like, show that God is not out to get his creation. I mean, think
about it for a second if God is out to get you. Yeah, like, like
Who can stop you? You know what I mean? Firstly, who's gonna stop
them? Secondly, look at this universe. Look how big it is.
Right? And you think that someone's going to outfit you?
Right?
Yeah, you think you're that special and you could have been
crushed by a tree? Or how about of all the sperm that Allah created?
Right? Right. That could have been you, right? That he couldn't have
diverted your little sperm. Exactly. Silly. Yeah. Okay. So you
know, I'm we're trying to show he knows what he's doing. And he's on
our side. And it's meant to provide us with reference frames
from which we see the world good. The world may appear to some of us
as blurry, chaotic, brutal, meaningless. You know, especially
with social media these days, every bad story just going on your
newsfeed. But this is because there's fog on our glasses, and we
keep bumping into things as we walk. So a theodicy is meant to
wipe those glasses clean, good metaphor.
So while I will be discussing a variety of Islamic responses
spanning the Sunni schools, sorry, no Shia schools.
We just note we don't know their stuff. Yeah. So it's rarely
studied, at least in our corners. Yeah, it's all mortality stuff
anyway. Well, the more definitely, though, they have the more Tesla
have great answers. Yeah, they do. Like if he wants to debate
atheists, even though they're a sect in terms of other things or
deviance in front of in terms of other things, but on terms of
responding to heresies and CO photos and other things like that.
They're actually, you know, they got good stuff. Right. Yeah, I was
actually with a. So it comes to Maqbool the other day. And he
said, you know, the responding to her, Cofer, yeah, heresies and
deviations like that is not actually not limited to an Asana.
Right, you know, other people other groups can do those
responses to so I wouldn't be surprised if Shia perennial lists
and all these folks that they have great responses to these things.
So just to be most of it. All right, now you have a heading here
subheading bad use of men say ignore, see, tell us who he is. So
we're gonna be focusing on the works of Sheikh noci from Turkey.
So he was a scholar that lived. It's insane because he saw like
the entire Islamic world crashing. Now. That was last time. It was a
really bad time. I would not have wanted to live as bad as like this
era is at least we know, we're in the gutter. Right, right. We've
already crashed, right? And there was no, there's no like, great,
amazing thing that we left behind. Whereas for them, that was a bad
time. Horrible. And he
is so he lived through World War One. Yeah. He lived through the
fall of the Ottoman Empire. Oh, he lived through seeing Kemal Ataturk
power. So he grew up with a Khilafah he overlapped and with
Abdul Hamid, Mohammed as a child.
And where there was at least some care there was and then things
like that. He actually fought in World War One. He's a veteran. Oh,
really? Yeah. He got taken as a prisoner by the Russians already.
And he was about to be killed by a firing squad. Yeah. And the people
changed. change their minds. He he's like, before I get killed,
I'm gonna pray to lockouts of rarely ever. And then when they
put them up there, they're like, You know what? Nevermind. You're
kidding. The Russians, the Russians. They just changed their
mind. Yeah, he he fought on the side. You know, he was fighting
against the Russians. Because the Ottomans were on, I guess, the
German side both on Yeah, the wrong side again.
It's crazy. And he actually escaped from the Russian camp,
really on foot, while after they saved as they saved them. They
spare them and then he escaped escape, and came back to he came
back to Istanbul on foot. And wow, they just greeted him like a like
a hero. Really? So he was actually heroic before all the Oh, yeah.
He's insane. He he went to there was a tribal leader. That was
like, killing random people. Yeah. And he went up to that guy. He was
like, 17. And he was already like a multi level. Really, he finished
the entire Ottoman curriculum in six months. I jeep. He was he
memorize.
One time he was traveling to Iraq, and he happened to get stranded in
Sofia lodge or Hanukkah. Yeah. So he was there for three months. And
he memorized, you know, almost, yeah, the famous Arabic
dictionary. So he memorized all the way up to the letter scene. So
ha.
Unbelievable. He's insane. Yeah, that is unbelievable.
guess you could say he was in Magento? Yeah, absolutely. I think
I think he's the and the movements. The movements that came
out of him. Are the movements that still exist today. Oh, yeah.
That's why religions survived in Turkey. I think it's because of a
side note. There are three movements. And they all stem from
him. Yeah. That's on two of them are in grave dispute, right. Yeah.
And then third one's more quietest. But I think all of them
were inspired by him. Yeah, it's upon. I mean, his writing was
like, I
He was isolated for so he was in prison war
and exiled for like most of his life. And his exams were. So when
Kemal Ataturk got into power. Yeah, they they suspected that he
was going to lead like a counter revolution. But side no see when
he saw Ataturk. He was like, this is the dragon like he's gonna He's
gonna kill you, man. He actually met us. Oh, really tell us about
that. So it's crazy. I mean, it gives me shivers. He met Ataturk
and Ataturk wanted him sorry, Nursey to lead the religious
department of Turkey. And everybody trusted other Turkey at
the time, by the way, like because because most of a lot of listeners
have unless they studied Turkish history. They don't know that at
the toric was a soldier who came up and there was no issue with
him. And then when the Europeans came to take, yeah, Turkey as a
colony, he's the one who led the revolt against them and and
defeated the European what was it England or wasn't Trent England
and France? So you think you imagine I mean, Turkey what they
are defeating in the great power right? Came in coming out of
Western Europe. So he was a national beyond hero beyond hero.
Yeah, so that's why it's historic was like basically worshipped. And
this was before he went rogue. Right. So he was still actually,
believe it or not. And I'm we're gonna get back to your topic here.
Hello, we have an outline, so we could follow. But believe it or
not, he has hooked was there a clip was about him, where he gave
jamas. I just took Joomla what was when the Europeans were coming to
take over a turkey? Yeah, right. The British basically calling Hey,
addigy head, right, and giving Aya a hadith about the importance of
jihad, because he still had to speak that language. Yeah, he had
to speak that. So I just sort of people don't know, I think he just
came out of nowhere as a rebel against the religion. No, he
actually played the he was in the game. He played the game. And he
was viewed as a regular, you know, Turk. Right. And then, of course,
he had his movement that he was part of that was a little bit
sector leaning, but it wasn't that bad until he took over. So that's
just to give some people some context. All right, continue with
your story that he saw him there. So he saw him there. And so
Ataturk wanted him to lead the religious department, the
religious revolution or department, whatever. So like,
yeah, the department Yeah, the Khalifa. And Nursey saw this guy,
and he met him. And he said, I immediately realized he calls us
toward the dragon, I believe. And he said, I immediately realized
that, so nervous, he was super involved in politics, right before
before writing his grand commentary or what? As as like,
it's a commentary or seeking to be a to be to be like, in power. He
wanted to be Yeah, okay. So, but once he saw Ataturk, he was like,
the era politics is over. And he said, This man will destroy you,
man. Unbelievable. And he said, So I retreated from the arena of
politics to defending the truths of the Quran. So Ha, and I took
saw that he was dangerous, right? So, you know, exiled him put him
in prison. So he jailed him, jailed him, and then he after he
got out, he sent him off to like this random place of Turkey. It
was just mountains and like a little hut. And notice, he was
like an old man at the time. It's like seven years. Oh, so the bulk
of his life was, was no more chill, just doing all of this
drama. And he didn't. He had a movement. He had followers. He had
like the Muslim Brotherhood. He had like followers, like his
students and stuff. A lot of students like he spoke with
regular people, like, unlike the Ottoman olam at the time, who were
sort of like in the, you know, ivory towers. He was going around
doing street Dow, that was the type of person he was, and sounds
really a lot like hustling. Oh, yeah. I mean, he spoke with, he
went to one of his friend's house, who was a scientist and they said,
like, oh, we cut these scientific books from the west and whatever.
And he taught himself physics chemistry. He taught himself this
simple and if you read his works, it's like it shows was saying, you
know, this, this one letter where he says, like, Oh, can you please
tell the pharmacist brother, that you know this and this, like,
mashallah, you know, he's, he's speaking to the common folk.
And so, anyway, Ataturk exiled him he was and during this exile, he
wrote, what I consider probably one of the greatest books ever
written on the Quran.
And it's called the reseller, nor panel and how many it's in
English, of course, it's, it's, I've heard so much about it, but
I've never picked it up. It's just it's so dense. I mean, he speaks
he speaks in a it's not a technical Tafseer you know, more
of a commentary, a commentary. It's, it's, you know, you know,
when
You talked about the seminar yet? Yeah. It's a defense of all the
pillars of men. Okay. It's from a logical point. Yeah. So he goes
into discussing angels. He says that, why do you think angels are,
you know, illogical. And he shows you He gives you like, all of
these, like he gives regular examples, and we're going to be
reading some loosely in this podcast. Yeah, he gives you like
these parables and these examples that just like, you know, when I
first one of my friends introduced me to nursery like I was a edgy
weird kid back then. And, you know, I had all these doubts. And
one my friend and I didn't know about occasional ism, by the way,
you know, this idea that Allah Swatara is the file of everything.
Yeah. My friend gave me this thought experiment. And I forget
what it was. All I remember was that I just couldn't sleep that
night. Wow. And for like, the next few weeks, I was just like, it was
like a mental shock. You know? And that's what was it? It was he he
gave, he basically deconstructed the idea of causation.
Like that, oh, the plant is the thing that produce the fruit, or
the sunlight is the thing that makes the tree grow. And he just
pushed me on this. He's like, Do you really think it's the the seed
that you know, bears the bears the tree? Yeah. And I said, Yeah, of
course, because of this photosynthesis. And he's like,
pushing, pushing, pushing. And I was just like I was, I'm like,
holy crap. All the science I learned, I'm like, nothing's
helping me. I actually don't know how the world works, because you
can't push them back. Yeah. And then finally, he gave me an
explanation. He said that, you know, what you see in the tree,
there's something that you see in the tree that no material thing
could ever produce. The seed and the tree are so far apart. They're
so unlike each other, that it's a miracle that the seed seed becomes
a tree. Yeah. And he just, you know, he gave all these thought
experiments to me, and, you know, ever since then.
So, Mashallah. Alright, so, what do you have here? How does values
and MedCity? aside? No, see? Yeah, it's actually by Dr. Zimmer, the
wonder of the AG. I wonder if he is. So what is he offering
regarding the Odyssey? One of the amazing things about that there
was a nurse he is, he's probably the first Islamic scholar I've
encountered. And I mean, that's not saying much, because I haven't
I don't know, Arabic or whatever, right.
But he's one of the first to give like a comprehensive view of
Islam.
And just to give you a couple examples, you know, because he
does that, here. Even Taymiyah does that he has his own sort of a
comprehensive view. And side note is one of them. And he, he goes
into depth on the subject of the RSC, because like, if you look at
it, his most of his life is suffering. Let's try that. And
just everything around him is just falling apart. So he's gonna have
he's gonna have thought it out. Yeah. And that's the one of the
things one of the reasons I take them so seriously, because I like
if this guy is telling me, the world is good. Yeah. You know,
like, what am I going through? That's similar to his Yeah, you
know.
So he's one of the those people that have really explored all
these questions in depth, and we're going to be looking at some
of those things. I mean, he's, he's probably the only solid
scholar I encountered, who gives a logical
explanation of why children suffer, like, specifically
children somehow, and why, you know, so many things die, right?
Like the plant, he's like, I find this plant beautiful, but
everything's dying around me. Like This fly is so beautiful, but then
it only lives for like, three seconds. So, you know, he really
thought about this stuff. So So let's hear it. Okay. So
this villa the, we're gonna look at the problem of evil. Now,
we're going to first define the problem, and why this problem is
occupied so many people over the centuries. And this is the only by
the way, this is the only I would say, good. I mean, it's not even
good. But it's the only good objection to the existence of God
from the atheist side. This is the only argument that they have.
Yeah, paired with the divine hiddenness argument, which is
basically God is invisible, but it's kind of a stupid argument. A
lot of things are invisible. Yeah. Consciousness. Yeah. So they have
no other argument, whereas the theist has tons of arguments for
the positive existence of God. Okay. And they also have a
response to the problem of evil. Yeah. So this argument is, it's
been revived in a fresh way by the New Atheists, and it's really
emotionally powerful as you saw from the Stephen Fry clip. Yeah.
But it's a psychological problem. It's not a logical problem. It's
it's what I call the believers problem. Okay, hinges on the
question. Can we ultimately trust in God? Are we reasonable to trust
in God? That's that's really what what's at stake?
So, the first big challenge from the problem of evil goes like this
It says that these three statements cannot all be all be
true. Okay, these three statements, there's an all
powerful and all knowing God, God is perfectly good. There's evil in
the world, that they're saying that these three statements are
contradictory. Okay? So this means that God is perfectly good, and
that there is evil in the world cannot be true. If there's evil in
the world, God cannot be perfectly good. Because a perfectly good God
would do everything he can, or so they say, to prevent the suffering
of His creation, and create paradise. Right, okay. And a
perfectly powerful God would have all the ability required to
eliminate evil, and a perfectly knowledgeable God would know all
the causes of evil and how to get rid of them. Good. So whichever
way you look at it, it seems like if you say there's evil in the
world, then God cannot be all knowing, all powerful and all good
at the same time. You gotta sacrifice one of those things.
Gotcha. Either way, the traditional theist idea of God as
represented in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, all seems to be under
attack from this problem of evil. Yeah.
Notice one thing, however, this argument against God doesn't
disprove his existence. That's true. It tries to attack, isn't
it? Isn't it the argument through absurdity through a consistency
that is it's not?
He doesn't the the idea is impossible, therefore, he doesn't
exist. Right? You're saying that? It's an argument for absurd? Yeah.
Not in this case or argument from inconsistency in his essay, right.
So again, it's not disproving a creator of the world, if we define
God as a creator, oh, they're just saying that he's not good.
Exactly. Exactly. So so this argument has nothing to disprove,
say, the Kalam Cosmological Argument. That's true. You're
right. I see where you're from. So when people say, Oh, this argument
is disproves God, like no, it doesn't. It just just proves it
just tries to disprove a certain idea of God. That's really a good
point. It just just just proves that or seeks to disprove the idea
of God being a personal merciful. Yeah, yes. So that you shouldn't
trust him, you should be basically antagonistic to him, he's become
like Zeus, where you could like hate him, right? Like that, or God
is some type of deistic God. Like, he doesn't care about his
creation. He said, The clock way back when I just left. So it
breaks actually, it's the beginning of it. It's in a sense,
a type of twisted atheism, where you become emotionally
antagonistic to God, but you don't actually become an atheist.
Because if you actually become a truly a cat, a non believer, you
will truly
not even think twice about God like I wouldn't I don't think
twice I personally don't think twice about
Zeus or Ramakrishna or whoever these gods are with arms and stuff
in India. Right? What's your name? If something with a V. Vishnu
Vishnu like I don't think twice about her. Right? Right, because I
don't believe in her. All right. But it seems like this type of
argument actually pulls you to hating him so much that you're
driven to talk about because you're, you're so full of hate.
Yeah. Because he's now the object of all the harm in the world are
the source of all the harm in the world, you take all the
responsibility away from yourself. Yeah. So it actually ends up in a
very psychologically sort of
twisted in a sense, because you become filled with rage, and hate,
and therefore you become an enemy to anyone who loves God. Yeah.
Because now you're a lover of evil.
You know, so that's a very good point. It doesn't necessarily do
anything about existence of God. Yeah. But it does everything about
the relationship between the person and God. And these, these
guys try to be smart about it. I mean, that that's what you said,
is perfectly right, that it doesn't disprove these. So yeah,
they're like, Okay, it doesn't, but there'll be like, you know,
they might try to make a probabilistic argument, like, the
more evil there is, the less likely there's God, though.
They'll try to say, make an argument like that. But again, I
mean, this is, you know, the silly, right, like the entire
world. Could be *, yeah. But it doesn't mean that there's no first
creator. Well, that sort of undermines their own argument,
because their whole argument is that God allowed this to happen or
couldn't stop it, or did it himself. Right. Right. So if
they're ever going to basically say that he doesn't exist in the
first place, the origin of their journeys now undermined? Yeah,
right. Because the whole emotional journey starts with well, he's the
cause of everything. Yeah. And they're turning, it's very
actually closer to the co founder of a bliss. Yeah. Then an agnostic
or an atheist who just doesn't know if God exists or doesn't
believe that there's a God at all.
Because he believes his in enemy has a sworn enemy of Allah to
Allah, of course, right. So that's how that's actually they're
actually quite similar to that. Yeah, absolutely. I think I
believe
his big, big thing is he didn't study. Actually. He has all the
knowledge. Well, that's, well, that's the thing. It's like you
kept saying emotionally charged, right? This is all emotion. Yeah,
right. And it's clouding. Yeah. Now. All right. Now let's get back
to your points where we were at discussing the actual argument. So
what I want to do is I want to challenge the assumptions of the
arguments itself. Good. Okay. And I firmly believe that the entire
argument rests on incredible assumptions, namely, that God that
is all good would never allow anything that is evil. I think
this assumption is incorrect. That's actually a belief. Yeah,
there's no, there's nothing in neither empirical nor anything
that would link that. A God being good would disallow for any pain.
There's got to Yeah, okay, so continue. So, before I even talk
about what we mean by evil, God could have, you know, God can have
a morally sufficient reason to allow evil. This is the entire
point of the theodicy. Well, we, and we would put it as that God
could have a wisdom Exactly. Because he doesn't have to justify
anything. From a believer standpoint, from our sins, He
doesn't have to justify anything to begin with. Yeah, so we would
put it as he could have a perfectly great wisdom right
behind the existence of pain. Exactly.
And, you know, to me is like, why should we be so bold to claim we
have reality figured out
that the entire world is horrible and filled with suffering when we
think we haven't experienced the entire world? And our knowledge is
limited. So we're working off this inductive idea that, you know,
just because I've experienced, so you know, such and such evil, that
there's no good in the world at all. I mean, I think this is the
incorrect line of reasoning. So, the second problem posed, so the
first problem is this idea that, you know, evil is inconsistent
with a good God. It's an assumption. Um, yeah. The second
problem is what I call the argument for quietism. Okay,
what's,
what justification do we have as human beings to fight evil? If we
believe in a God? So the argument goes like this, every event that
takes place is created by God, as you know, correctly created
created, correct. Therefore, if human beings rebel against an
event, they are rebelling against God and his decree? Okay, so that
is conflating the Divine Will for things to happen with the sacred
law. Yeah, that's a spoiler alert.
Okay, so yeah, so this is the this is the argument made for quietism.
Like you shouldn't, you know, you should silently bear oppression
and suffering without doing anything to remedy it, that if you
believe that everything's from God, that you would naturally have
to become a quietus. Exactly. Okay, that you would not go
against any oppression. And we see this and like, there's certain
people that say this stuff. Yeah, I mean, even unpopular people that
say, you know, who do you think gave you the trial? So you
shouldn't do anything about it? I should just Yeah. So if we fight
against evil, this argument says, injustice, disobedience, if we're
fighting against evil, it means we're fighting against God,
because God created these acts of evil, your man, and he will never
create anything that he disapproves of. Right, because
he's so powerful. So if you're opposed to a random person walking
into your house and throwing your, you know, throwing you out, then
you're opposed to God. Yeah. Because God, let them do it true.
So as the argument goes, you should be happy with that. If you
find the conclusion of that argument, absurd, then it must
mean that God is not all powerful and not in control.
So this line of reasoning is the second big question a theodicy
must answer, what is the basis of our actions? Well, should we
interpret what happens in the world? Does everything that
happened indicate God's approval? Should we be silent in the face of
evil because we are going against the divine decree? I'm going to
tackle both of these big arguments regarding the problem of evil but
you got to keep listening to your answers inshallah.
So, before I go into the proofs where I think the two arguments
above are flawed, I want to tell you the conclusion the two
arguments being the that evil is inconsistent with an all good god
okay, that one we Yeah. And then the second one being, you would
have to be a quietus. Exactly. Very good. So
I want to tell you the conclusion already, okay. God is all
powerful. He has full control over creation and history. He has
complete freedom to do whatsoever he wishes his creation, but God is
also wise. And it is is in his nature to be all good and
merciful. His mercy prevails over his wrath, and he takes care of
his creation in the most excellent way. It is from this that we can
confidently say that God is wise and allows evil to bring about
significant goods. Okay, good. So we would say it's in his essence.
Yeah. To be wise and merciful. Alright, good. And that that one
line if you don't, if you don't remember anything from this
podcast, take that one.
Online the way that God is wise and he allows evil to bring him
out significant goods, okay? And okay, what if someone says to you,
Well, why couldn't you bring it out? Without? While we have, we
have proofs for this. Okay, so we have three significant proofs for
why you should believe this, okay. And the first is, and we're going
to discuss all these proofs in depth, the book of this podcast.
The first is that we can find wisdom and purpose behind the
evils that we face, we as human beings, they're meant to teach us
something of the lordship of God over his creation. And they're
meant to prepare us for Ultimate Bliss and flourishing for life in
heaven. And the second proof we have is that the existence of evil
demands from human beings, responsibility and significant
choices. This is us exercising the blessing of free will, which is a
great good that could otherwise not exist without evil. And
finally, upon reflection, we see that God's creation is
overwhelmingly good, and it has good purposes and blessings, which
make it necessary that some evils exist. So we're going to be in
this first part of the podcast, we're going to be looking at that
first point that we can find wisdom and purpose behind the
evils we face. And then in the second part of the podcast, we're
going to be doing an in depth analysis of what we mean by free
will. And what we mean when we say that creation is overwhelmingly
good.
So So let's dig into it. Let's get some justification for things that
I'm saying. First heading here, preliminary volunteerism,
volunteerism so so before we go into the first significant proof,
and convince you that evil exists for a greater good, we should know
even if God were to allow certain evils without a greater good, even
if he were to do that, he cannot be judged as evil. Okay, that's,
that's what I'm going to argue. The argument of most theocracies
say that evil is unavoidable meaning
if we are to have goods that come with it, you know, for example,
consider the good a free choice
cannot ever exist without free free. Well, I mean, you freely
choosing something can't exist without free will. Correct. But
Free will means evil. Yep. It's a package deal. So that evil coming
from free will is unavoidable. Because you're when you pick up
when you go get a job. You've actually taken the job away from
someone else. Right. Right. It's a it's a logical pair, when when you
it has to happen when you make a product, and you get a sale.
Someone else didn't get a product. Yeah, you didn't get the sale.
Right? Right. So there's no way to have multiple people on the earth
all having free will, free will. Right and having no evil, right.
All right. So this is how we would say that free, like, evils are
unavoidable, right? It's absolutely. So the artist is
trying to say that evils are unavoidable. That's what they try
to make the claim. And by order atheists respond to that, well,
they will try to bring up a huge instance of suffering, something
that there's no way you can justify it, like, like children's
suffering, okay, you can find an explanation on the right, we're
gonna have an explanation. But they might, you know, they might
think of something really, really twisted that if you even try to
justify it in front of the public, yeah, you know, it's, it's
something that, but again, they're going to that emotional, you're
going to look right, like you're vicious and you don't care. Right.
But yeah, and ultimately, though, and I'm sure you're gonna get to
this, that evil tends to show up only in the realm of that which it
has free will even secondary, tertiary causes, like deformed
babies. Well, I mean, it's the environment that we saw what we
did to environment, because you don't see like kittens being
deformed or, or way out in nature, where there are animals with no
human beings. Right? Not even close to human environments. Yeah,
the rate of deformity, right? Some of the same is almost zero. Right?
Interesting. Okay, and you'll see has an explanation for you know,
why we see things that are half complete have to do normally would
say, Why are you saying it's half complete? So that's your bias.
That's actually a good point, when an artist you know, draws a black
line and you don't like the color Black doesn't mean that the
artists you know, which is which is me whenever I had to pass by
one of these MoMA museum of modern art pieces, and I think it's an
absolute, you know, garbage and garbage and the guy's basically
ripping us all off. Right, telling us it's the the emotion in the
triangle, and it's nothing but a red drawing on a canvas. Right.
And, and he's telling and then he writes about his feelings. And he
and he's telling us and we and, and, and in the same world, that
they're arguing against the creation of God. Yeah, in that
same world if you were to rail against a piece of modern art and
say, it's a bunch of nonsense, yeah, you wouldn't be put as
someone who's applying your bias to the pain, right and limiting
and not truly understanding the nature of the pain. One of these
guys put,
like a dead
lamb couldn't have any baby lamb in for live no dead.
The actual real Oh yeah, like like, like a real baby lamb in
formaldehyde and consider that to be art, right? And there's a guy,
there's another guy. What's his name got like Sequoia kind of a
Latin name
makes bizarre sculptures. Bizarre sculpture. They're all over
England. I can't remember his name. It starts with an S
something something Spanish Portuguese name, but
is absolutely bizarre. And every all the art today to me is
absolutely bizarre. Yeah, but if you say that, and these same
people believe in this these things. Yeah. problem of evil.
That's their way out of God. Right, though that you will be so
you'll be hanged. Yeah, you will be ostracized uncultured. Right on
culture. Right, savage SubhanAllah. So that's an amazing
proof from so I know she that's your bias. Absolutely. In the
sight of Allah. It's perfect. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, why should
you give a pass to a he living human artist? Yeah. Who doesn't
have you know, he doesn't have the type of knowledge that God has.
Yeah. And you have this divine artist creating this amazing piece
of art. And, and sidenote, he says, well, even if you look at
deform things, there's wisdom in it, it gives you because the human
being because he's stuck in time he learns by comparison. That's
true. Right? So you know, if you didn't see a half completed, let's
say,
let's say a tree that didn't grow, right. Well, how would you know
what a full tree looks like? You would take the full tree for
granted. Yeah. So I mean, I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay.
This is no wrong, but it's really amazing. You can see why No, see,
that was a great, that was a great point. All right, let's keep
going. So yeah, so the ROC is they try to show that evil in the world
is unavoidable. But see the the argument behind this reasoning to
justify like, you know why all this evil exists? I don't think
it's sound. And it's that if God allowed some evil that didn't have
some hidden good, he himself would be evil and morally fault. This is
the assumption that people Yeah, if God, if God allowed some evil,
that was a reflection of him. Yeah, exactly. And that evil
didn't have any wisdom at all. Yeah, let's say let's say for
example, then it would somehow make God evil. Right. So is this
assumption correct? But how can we say what God allows to happen in
the world is a reflection of his character? On what grounds? Yeah,
what On what grounds? Can he just got, for example, God creates
motion in the universe.
Things move, but he's not moving. That's true. He creates death in
the universe, but he isn't dead. Yeah, true. All over the place.
There are other exams. That's a great point. That's a great point.
So if he for argument's sake, how about limitation? Right limitation
doesn't mean God is limited. Yeah. So if he creates evil, I mean, it
doesn't mean he's evil. Actually, one. One of the ways that I
thought about this
is that wherever you see a defect, yeah, there's perfection
elsewhere. Right, which would indicate that that defect must be
on purpose. Right? Right. Right. So if I look at, for example, and
weeked, enthis, right. Yeah. Well, I also look in the same world and
I see a mountain. Right, right. And I see the exact opposite. Or
if I see something as so dirty, like a worm, like an earthworm,
gooey, dirty, and I like it, right? Yeah. Or a centipede in
your basement. Right. But then you look at, for example, a human
baby. Yeah. Like how beautiful how cute that is, right? So as you see
that to the idea of attributing a limitation that you see in a
creation. Right, right. And thinking, well, maybe that's God's
limitation, too. But wait a second, he's actually refuted that
through his other create, exactly. By creating both, you know, yeah,
for you to see, like, like an exhibit. And it makes you say, it
must be permanent. Yeah. I mean, it must be on purpose must be by
design. Exactly. So the point, yeah, I mean, it's, it's an
amazing point. But there's more to this argument. And in terms of
volunteerism, so it's, it's clearly a moral law among human
beings, that if you can stop evil, you must. I mean, this is
something that we have a moral law, February 5, three, if a
dentist can pull your teeth out without any pain at all, it would
be immoral for him to cause you more pain on purpose. Correct.
Right. So this is a human moral law. Yeah. But if we reflect on
the nature of moral laws and obligations, like where do these
moral laws and obligations come from, you know, we realize that
God is creator can't be judged by these laws. For example, if you
were a toy maker and you decide to destroy some of the toys, why
would you be morally at fault? Like you own them all? True? In
fact, you make the rules, sizes, dimensions and manual for the toys
to be used. Right? So if I'm a toy maker, and I say that this toy can
only use AAA batteries, the toy can
I refuse to do it has to do it. So this this type of limitation that
toymaker is putting on the toy is similar to the moral obligations
that God puts on human beings. Right? The only difference is that
human beings have a choice to disobey. And what about the use?
You use the example of a toy maker? What about a novelist,
right? In which characters get hurt and die? And of course,
they're gonna say this was a wall, they don't feel it's all
imagination. Right? But wait a second, I mean,
creative people do get attached and who's to say that the neurons
that okay, you, the materialists will say, that's just in your
imagination. But who's to say in some other worldview, that the
things you imagine, don't have a reality have an existence of their
own? Exactly, right. The idea of something being limited to your
imagination, as if the imagination is nothing right? That too. Is
that really a fact? Right? Just because we don't have an effect on
it? Yeah. Right. And you have no way of knowing it. You have no way
of knowing that. Yeah. All right, keep going. So I think, you know,
this point of God, owning everything in the universe,
forever. It's never brought into the discussion. You know, whenever
I hear these atheist debates, like this idea of God owning
everything. Yeah, it's not often spoken about when Stephen Fry was
ranting against God. It's as if God is a being among other beings.
Yeah, like a creature among other creatures. Yeah. Then, you know,
this creature is causing me hurt. So I'm gonna I'm gonna blast, you
know, last night. Yeah. So there is actually none of your judgments
apply at all right? Yeah. And we're gonna we're gonna get to
that in a moment. You know what I another thing you could look at?
Yeah. You know, how many
players?
Amateur or semi pro players or professionals have been their
careers had gone down the drain? Yeah. For a couple out of bounds
plays. Yeah, right. A couple, you know, Pete Carroll throwing,
caught making a really funny guy. But making a play call that's an
interception in the Superbowl. Right? Well, those rules are
completely arbitrary. Right, right. Right. And they hurt
people. You know, half the team goes, I mean, half
a whole whole team and a whole fan base are hurt because out of
balance, or interception, right? Or I it's two, but and who created
these rules, right? So that's the rule of the game. No one No one
when when an interception or out of balance goes, happens. No one
says how immoral is out of balance? Right? Right. No one is
in soccer game in a kid's soccer game. The Mom's not gonna say, Oh,
well, why did you put the line here? Right, add a few more inches
because my son that now out of bounds, right? And now he's
crying?
This is the same idea that the rules are set. Yeah, by someone
who is not quoting the question. Exactly. It's, he's not to be
questioned. And it's because he owns everything. And if you own
something, you know, you, you do as you please, you have the right
to set those rules. And we're gonna be discussing, you know,
some people might be thinking, well, you know, then God is
completely incomprehensible. And we can't say anything about it.
Well, you know, we're going to be getting to that and there are
stuff that we know about God, right. But we'll get into that.
Okay. So, I mean, there's an amazing verse in Surah of the
Quran, or Allah Subhana. Allah says, towards the end of the
verse, Alma, Allah who read the full Mullah anatomy, he doesn't do
he doesn't will injustice for any of his creation. And then the very
next verse, you know, God says, What do you love him if you select
what you want? So ownership with mercy? Exactly. With justice?
Exactly. Good. So and he's showing us that he doesn't do injustice,
because he owns everything? Yeah. So and injustice is termed as you
messing around with something that you don't own? Right? So, one
could say that one of the Quranic responses to the problem of evil
is that
God does no oppression to his creation, again, because he owns
everything. So for example, when Hitchens insults God by calling
him a tyrant, the crowd's responses, God owns everything.
Yeah. So by definition, he can be a tyrant. Yeah, you know, a tyrant
plays and imposes his will on other human beings. This is
nothing, you know, he has no right to do this. Yeah. Right. Because
he's, uh, he doesn't even own himself. Yeah. Right. So what
right do you have to impose your will on other human beings? Yeah,
right. But God's moral stature and his frame of reference, and his
being is completely different. Right? And as for what's good or
evil, let us also talk about the subjective and egocentric nature
of human judgments. Okay, before you continue this whole point on
God only everything you called it volunteerism. Yeah. Why is that?
Why did you call it that? It's, it's the I'm not sure where the
word originates from, but this is this is the philosophical
position.
that, that if you believe that God is not obligated by any moral
laws, and he's beyond judgment, this is called volunteerism. So
the the ASHA, the traditional archery position is in philosophy
called voluntary. Okay. And I think I'm suspecting it's because,
you know, God does as he wills like he,
he Volyn volunteers. I don't know, volition, volition. Yeah, yeah,
there you go. Okay. I think that's probably a portion. So in terms
of, let's get back to human subjectivity, okay. Now. Second
point, yeah. Being Human subjectivity. All right, let's
hear it. So if you're living, if you're living in America, and you
say that infanticide is evil.
Now, what a Roman or a Hindu from 3000 years ago, say the same
thing. I mean, they wouldn't I mean, Romans solid, perfectly
morally legitimate. And if you had a disabled baby, you can leave
that baby out in the out in the open in the mountains and just let
it die. I mean, and they've logically, you know, they
logically argued for this, yeah, that is an extra stomach gun for
no benefit, they're not going to bring any benefit back. Exactly.
Like the Jaha the Arabs, and the Christian, you know, the
Christians were so radical, because they said that every life
is
every life is worth saving. That was radical. Yeah, that was super
radical for the Romans. So, you know, say that a human child, you
know, was abandoned on an island, right? And he grew up among the
animals while seeing human society. Like what his idea of
good and evil be the same as ours? can be absolutely, absolutely
different. Yeah. So, so consider this point, some of the things
that we say are evil are actually from a human perspective. Yeah.
You know.
So, for example, is it evil for the flower to have thorns? You
know, not for the flower?
beds, its benefit exactly how it gets protection for deer, right.
So, somebody else tweeted about this, before I prepared this
podcast, but is it evil for the shark to have sharp teeth with
bacteria in them? Yeah. Like not for the shark?
Not for the shark? It might be bad for you. Yeah. Right. So And how
about mowing our lawn? Right? How many? How many ants are killed and
bugs are killed when we mow our lawn? But if you don't mow your
lawn, that's our that's I'm being uncultured, right. But if you if
you want every evil punished, then there will be no human beings
living on this earth. Right. So so some evils are relational. I'm not
saying every evil is right. But I'm saying some evils are
relational, meaning we consider them evil. From our perspective.
I'm not saying all of ethics is subjective, you know, this is
something that relevant relativist say, you know, that perennialism
would say the same thing that all ethics are subjective, that, you
know, different cultures believe different things, right? That's
not what I'm saying. I'm saying that at least some are subjective.
And if you consider the earth as a living organism, yeah. It has
functions that it needs to do by itself. Yeah. Right. So if you
were to be choking right now, and then you someone did the Heimlich
on you and you vomited on top of my documents, right, right. Now, I
wouldn't consider that to be bad. Because your life is more
important than my documents. I can just reprint them. Right? It'll it
might be a hassle, but your life is better. Well, when we think
about things like tsunamis and things, the Earth doesn't has
never shown itself to be a willful creature. Yeah, that splashes its
water on purpose on you to to hurt you. Right? Anything that happens
as a natural function on the earth is necessary for the health of
this organism. Right? Right. Especially with climate change.
Like if you're screwing the earth up. Yeah, it's gonna it's like a
sick thing. It's like feed, you're feeding it junk food for years and
years and years. Now, that thing needs to vomit. Right? So
earthquakes need to happen. It's almost like the earth like
cracking its knuckles or something right now and you're like a little
being living on the edge of that knuckle. Right, right. And then
when that knuckle gets cracked, then you cry. But what does that
mean for the earth? That is necessary? Right, that earthquake
is necessary volcanoes necessary. If they're how many micro
organisms exist around our nose, right or in the air? When we
sneeze we totally destroy it. Right. Right. Right. So you can
imagine that the Earth Yeah, for sure. We know for sure. It is not
a willful creation that goes around hitting people knocking
people down spinning fire through volcanoes just because it hates us
because it hates us for fun. So it's it this things are happening
for a reason. And we may have happened to be in the wrong place
the wrong time. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's completely I mean,
nurses complete an agreement with because our creation is much
larger than just us. And as we'll get into later on that, like just
having a life that you live up to seven years old, and you get a 401
K like that's not that's not the entire reason for that.
The creation of the world, you know, there's something deeper.
Okay, so yeah, so let's get to this section on obligations and
natural laws we're gonna break down. Like how exactly, we get
more laws like where do we get more? All right, so there's
another section obligations and natural laws. All right, let's
hear it. So we all agree that preventing evil, from a human
perspective is something we can all agree on. Right? Every culture
is going to agree on this. Yeah, it's there's no subjective ethic
that says, you know, you shouldn't let somebody suffer just because
you like it. Yeah. Nobody says that. So this is a moral
obligation on human beings. Yeah. But see, we agree on this, because
it's something called natural law. Right, which is Federa. It's like,
fitrah. It's like Twitter. And so ethical obligations come in two
forms. Okay. So you have natural laws. Okay, you have obligations.
Now, obligations? Are those things that you take on voluntarily?
Okay. So you didn't need to take it on, but you take it on
voluntarily. So it's like a you have to keep your promise
contract? Yeah. But natural laws are those things that it demands
you as a human, you have to fulfill it, even if you don't
agree with it. So are you like, for example, seeing someone being
throbbed, right? Or, for example, if somebody, let's say, you don't
like somebody, and you want to kill them, so you can't say, Well,
I didn't agree not to kill Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. So
but you're still bound by it. Even if you don't agree with it. I say
human society is gonna hold you accountable. Right. So you have to
you have to be obligated with it. So that's actually fun. Funny. I
mean, in a secular world, right? Why would natural law not be
contested?
Well, philosophically, well, we're gonna get to them. We're gonna
say, how the secularists define natural law. Okay. And you'll see
that the way they define it, by definition, you can't apply it to
God. Yeah. Okay. So even with their own definition, right. So,
so where do we get this type of natural law from? Okay, there are
two opinions on this. Okay. One is the secular opinion. The other is
the the Muslim, the religious opinion that these natural laws,
obligations or commands of God, okay, so you can't disobey them,
even if you don't want to, because there are some commands that are
so basic that other humans will have to hold you accountable.
Okay. So I mean, you would know better than I do, and felt like if
somebody commits murder, they can't say that. Oh, I didn't
agree. In command. Yeah. Like, even if he's a disbeliever, you
hold them accountable. Right? Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
So
from from the religious perspective,
natural law comes from the command of God. Yeah, God makes the rules,
like we said before, and built in us. Exactly. So God commands us to
prevent avoidable evil, and provide commands us to prevent
evil, but he's not held to that standard. Yeah. Right. So he
commands a specific law towards humans, he might command a
specific law towards shards, you might come in a specific law
towards gravity, right? So he can't be bound by the specific law
of sharks, or specific law of humans. Or, you know, he's the
creator. Yeah, like there are all these little laws in his creation.
He's not bound by it. Yeah. So. So that's, that's from the religious
perspective. But that makes total sense. Because a person who is
trying to absolute size our own natural law, will cats and kittens
and fish have their own natural fish. If they're hungry. They eat
their own babies. Yeah, right. Yeah. Certain fish. Yeah. So if
you're a super naturalist, I mean, yeah, let's follow nature, right?
Let's
serve babies. So but even from the secular perspective,
look at how John Rawls, John Rawls is like a famous American
philosopher. Yeah. So look at how he defines it. I mean, he's, he's
big, like, he's, I'm pretty sure Alex knows so alive. No, he's,
he's dead. Okay. So what did he say? So he said that, so here's a
complicated quote. So he says natural laws obtained between all
as equal moral persons, and that they are principles that free and
rational persons concerned to further their own interests would
accept an initial position of equality as defining the
fundamental terms of their association. What the heck is
this philosophers? Yeah, that's how they talk. It's just by job.
Okay, so what he's saying is that, like, if we all lined up for a
race, yeah, you know, natural laws or those things like, what would
those things that we could all agree on? Yeah, that would keep
the race fair. Correct. And further our own interests, chance
of winning. I agree. Like no pushing. Exactly. Etc. Yeah. So
you can't you can't say, so even if you push you initially agreed
on, you know, no pushing. Yeah. Because every rational person is
going to choose those things that's going to further their own
interest. I gotcha. If all of us are equal. What are the rules of
the game? That would make life fair for everybody? Right. So this
is what natural law is, according to John
Monroe's. But see, like, God doesn't even fall under this
definition because this is considering rational human beings
and their association. Exactly. And he doesn't have an associate,
he doesn't have an associate. He's not a human being to begin with.
It's a great point. Right. Great point. So even from a secular
perspective,
you know, it's, it fails, right? That's not bound by natural laws.
Yeah. Right. Natural laws require others equals Yeah, equals. That's
a great point. And God doesn't have an equal. How does a great
point and its natural laws motivated by human interest? Yeah,
no need? Need? Right. Yeah. So what possible interest or need
could the Creator everything have and the ability to be harmed
right. To avoid harm and weakness will need his weakness? Yeah. So
you know, these are these are great points.
You know, so so he's outside of the realm of natural laws. Right,
good. And we're not saying that he's outside of the realm of all
natural laws, for example, there might be a natural law.
Actually, yeah, I'd probably say that, that he's outside of all
natural laws. Yeah. But to be concerned with the law that he
applied on himself. Exactly. And, and for people out there, what is
impossible for Allah Tala is only that which is linguistically and
rationally impossible, such as a jumble of of words, such as a kind
of square become a circle, can there be a square circle, or a
four sided shape that has zero sides? It's basically a jumble up
of Johnson's right. It doesn't mean any, it doesn't mean
anything. So that's the first thing we would say that it's
impossible for Allah to Allah because Allah is above silliness,
and not in this type of inconsistency and nonsense. So
that's the question itself is invalid. The second reason, thing
that is impossible for Allah is what Allah made impossible on
himself. Exactly, which is in that case,
there is no natural laws upon him. But there's what he made
impossible itself, which has obligations, the obligation
obligation, he took on obligations that second type Exactly.
obligations.
So he took on obligations on himself. Yeah, that he said, I'm
not going to break.
Yes, catch up and NFC. Right. Yeah. So he entered into this from
himself. It's not rationally impossible for him to do
otherwise. But he is telling us that he has
decreed it upon himself. And he didn't need to write because the
remember obligations are those things that you voluntarily
voluntarily go. So So we're not saying, you know, some majorities
might be freaking out. Yeah, we're not saying that God is like bound.
We're saying that he has a nature. And that's just how he is here.
Right. We're not saying that there's some external moral law.
That's overhand right. We're just saying that he wrote these things
on himself. He said that I'm going to do X. He can't break that.
Yeah. Right. And he won't break. He can't because he won't, he
won't. And that his he can't because he's already said it. And
His Word is true. Yeah. Right. And I would I would also put that it's
logically impossible. And some people might get triggered by
this. But I would say it's logically impossible for God to
lie. Yeah. Right. And some people might be well, that's sad position
anyway. Oh, is good. Yeah, it's impossible for a lot to lie. Okay.
It's not even a possibility. Because a lie is motivated by
fear. It's a form of trickery, that's only done out of a
weakness. One must be threatened in order to do to tell a lie
exactly. And a lie is the opposite of an Huck and his name is Al Ha,
ha, great. And if he if he were to lie, let's say there is a
possibility that you could lie, theoretical possibility. We have,
we have no reason to trust anything that the Prophet said
that's, that's exactly it. If, if it was even possible for Allah to
tell a lie, then the whole Quran is undermined, everything's under
Right. Like if the Quran it was possible that 50% possible. The
Quran is a lie, like, yeah, you know, so So is the, that Allah
tells the truth, in all things, is not something he obligated upon
himself. Right? It's as hard as it's, it's part of his nature,
just like Allah is no part of his nature. immaterial. Right? Yeah,
it's part of his nature that he doesn't tell lies. Yeah. So and we
think that somehow certain moral obligations are, you know, created
by humans. Well, they're not, you know, certain moral obligations or
divine justice is something divine, like, you know,
Mercy is something divine. Right? What we see in the world is simply
just a pale reflection of that divine justice and that Divine
Mercy right so if we're saying that God is by nature merciful
it's just God Himself. We're not saying that you know, there's this
external mercy thing that's overpowering him right when I say
now one thing about nature I would use the word essence essence
instead, simply because when I when you translate nature into
Arabic,
it implies that that's what it was imprinted upon so much. Yeah.
Gotcha. Okay, so now you have the next section is how then is God
good? Right. So we did this. We talked about the tsunami. We
talked about should we even offer explanation and explanation? We
talked about a world without evil. We talked about bad use Eman,
sidenote, see. And then we got into the significant proofs. All
right, the formal statement, and it's problem. We talked about
quietism.
God is wise. And now we're on three significant proofs. The
first one was obligations and nature natural laws. What was
the first significant proof is that, that God has always like,
there's a purpose behind it. God is always good. So now we're doing
a preliminary to that significant proof. Okay, right. Because that
proof is trying to justify God's actions. Okay. And here, we're
trying to say that, even if God created evils that are that have
no wisdom in them, yeah, he's not evil. So we want to get that out
of the way before we even jump into the proofs are human human
subjectivity? Yeah. obligation, obligations and natural laws. And
now how then is God good? Right. I was so far we've been discussing
how God's not applicable to any standard. And, you know, he's
completely outside human judgment. So a person might ask, you know,
how is God good, then? Yeah, how can we even say God is good? He's
not good. He's not evil, okay, was completely unknowable. irrelevant,
right? But this is not true.
If, like, while we can't judge God, using natural human laws,
like we get a sense of him from creation and revelation, right.
And these tell us that God is good, because he voluntarily
fulfills his obligations, the things that he takes on himself,
yeah. And he fulfills his obligations, because God is truth.
And when God makes a promise, it's a logical impossibility that he
break it. And God voluntarily chooses to promises reward for
good actions that we do. He's just with his creation. He takes
perfect care of the cosmos gives life to things when he has no need
of them. He punishes the unjust, he never judges us beyond our
capacity. So let's many unjust injustice of our personal
injustice go and for such a being of such power to do all these
things, I mean, clearly this shows us goodness, that's true. So this
is the way we can say that God is good. And the fact that idea that,
that Allah Allah has no size, no big and small is no physical
nature. But we see big and small in the world, right? Which
actually gives us appointment with Subhan Allah that this whole
cosmos and the size of these mountains even and yet Allah to
Allah is creating a chipmunk. Right, right. It tells you
something about the length. Right of the creator, the delicacy, the
delicacy. Yeah, it's like this fine stroke. Yeah, exactly. It's
amazing. So
okay, next you have soft volunteerism. Yeah. So this is I'm
trying to do some damage control here. Okay. People People might
think, you know, when I'm discussing volunteerism, God's
completely out of the question, and you can't know anything about
him. So don't even ask. Yeah.
So I'm not defending this hardcore type of volunteerism where we say,
you know, God's completely incomprehensible. You can't say
anything about a morally that all good and evil is arbitrary, right?
It's just arbitrary that God just chose that certain thing is good,
certain things evil, for example, unbelief. You know, God just chose
that unbelief as bad. Yeah. And belief is good. Yeah. I mean, I'm
not trying to defend that. Right. And I kind of think it's
completely incoherent. You know, because this would mean that
belief has no intrinsic value. Yeah. That, that him sending
prophets in sending revelation. You know, none of this is it's
just arbitrary. Yeah, there could be another world where Chef Ah,
now the biller is the victorious one. And God's rewarding him with
agenda. You see what I mean? Yeah, if you if you think everything's
arbitrary, yeah. So this is completely incoherent to me. So.
So then you're saying that there is a degree of rational ability to
understand rational or comprehensibility for his actions?
Yeah, absolutely. And otherwise we'd go crazy. We'd go crazy.
Yeah, we wouldn't be able to trust anything. And the thing that gives
us information about his actions and why he does things is the
Quran. Yeah. So Allah tells us how his character is in the Quran.
Allah says catabolism see Rama and the Quran and you say, you know,
it's a possibility that he could have been a tyrant and sutra Allah
and His wrath could have prevailed over his mercy. Yeah, like, Allah
says that His mercy prevailed over his wrath, that that should be the
end of at the end of it, right. So I'm not subscribing to a hardcore
version of voluntourism. Like, there are some moral laws. God
Himself follows right, because these are within his essence,
right? They're not you know, they're not external. It's his
essence to be just to be merciful to say truth.
It's his essence that you know, just
Just mercy and truth are virtues, because God is just merciful and
true. Yeah, there are virtues because of that.
So there are universal moral judgments like speaking truth, and
the correct time and place is good. And these are universal
things, because they are inherent in God's nature. They are how he
is. This is why, as we'll see later on, when we discuss
optimism, we find these qualities beautiful. So, God is not
arbitrary, it doesn't make logical sense to impose a subjective human
centric natural law onto God. But it also doesn't make sense to say
that God is arbitrary, right?
So, after the section, I want to talk about quietism. I didn't put
a label on this section here. But remember how we talked about
that second problem posed by the the problem of evil, which says
that you shouldn't rebel against evil? Because God does everything?
quietism? Yeah. So I want to take a look at that. All right.
refutation of rights is good, let's hear so.
So God allows evil to exist in the world, it's quite clear. It's not
that he's impotent to stop it, as we discussed with voluntarism. He
can even possibly allow avoidable evils, like even evils that have
no wisdom, and he cannot be held to moral judgment by human beings.
But doesn't this mean that God approves of the evil that is
present in the world? Right?
For example, if God has allowed such a person, like if a person
takes you as a slave, and God allowed that person to take you as
a slave, what reason do you have to fight against the slave master?
Right? And so these are these are all these types of absurd
questions. Yeah.
Now, all the schools of Islamic theology and you can correct me if
I'm wrong, I got this from Dr. Shimon Jack's book. So I haven't
read Arabic.
All the schools of Islamic theology unanimously agree that
just because God allows something to exist, does not mean that it
deserves his love and approval. Totally true. The true meaning of
God's power, like this is why God is all powerful. Yeah, it's that
it's because he, he doesn't just create things that he loves and
deserves his love. He also create things that he doesn't he doesn't
love correct, like disbelief, you know, God allows his creation to
reject Him and commit shirk. God allows Satan ship on to fight
against his prophets. God allows believers to experience hardship
at the hands of Kfar God allowed that the process can be defeated
at or, you know, Can Can anyone honestly say that God loves these
things that ship honors? Right? But he, you know, he allows them
to exist out of the generosity of his power. Right. So, you know, he
gives them respite, because he's all powerful, because He's
forgiving with his creation, because he doesn't compromise
their freewill. You know, he has a greater purpose in human.
In our own discussions, people say that if you shut down commentary
that you don't like, it's a sign of weakness.
Right, right. Right. Like if, if all if you only surround
yourselves with people who just say yes, yes, yes, yes. Right.
That's a sign of a weak kink. Follow, right. When he surrounds
himself with people who are, you know, you know, be say what you
want, right? That's actually a sign of strength. Right, right.
Because I'm gonna win anyway. Yeah. Because you're not worried.
Right? So the idea of creating a being that has free will to
disobey Him, which is the worst of evils, right? The worst of bad
things that he disapproves of. And then in fact, Allah doesn't
dislike anything, really, except for sin. Not followed up by Toba.
Right? As in terms of what Allah does not love. Right, right. It's
those qualities, right? So hello. Yep. So yeah, it really shows us
power. So we call this irida
konia. The will for the cosmos. What's willed in the universe?
Yeah. Is one thing and Iran, the Sharia. Right, his will for all us
to follow as a law as they're completely another thing. And if
you look at it, secular humanists have converged the two, because
they have no sacred law. There's nothing sacred. Right? Right.
Right. So what is objective? Well, what's happening? Statistics are
objective. Right? Right. It's happening that people are doing
XYZ, therefore, morality should adapt to that, because how could
you say that you're right, and all those people are wrong, you should
follow the crowd. So this so morality evolves in secular
humanism based just on one thing, what's happening in the world?
Right? If it's happening, it becomes morally Okay. Acceptable,
right. And to go against it would offend those people. So you can't
go against it. Right. So and that offense will
be a pain to them and therefore, to reject something or disparage
something, right, that harms many people. Alright, harms offends all
those people should now be considered morally reprehensible.
Right. All right. So they've converged the two. That's a good
point. Yeah. There's actually like, big philosophical words for
what you just said. Yeah. The era The konia. Era, the konia. What
Allah allowed to happen in the world and era the Sharia, okay,
which is the law that Allah wants us to follow in the world. Nice.
Yeah. And, and the beauty is our era, the Sharia never doesn't
change it up. The sacred law doesn't change, no matter how far
off the other konia is. Well, right and wrong will not change.
Yeah, of course, there's going to be flexibility and room. Right?
Because the prophesy centum said, the moment is like the blade of
grass. If the wind blows, he blows with it. Right? Yeah, East and if
it goes west, he goes west West, but he never leaves his, its
route. Right? It's not too hard that it'll crack. And it's not too
unrooted that will just float away. So that's the facade
you know, the shadow doesn't change. So we can we can look up
to role models from the past, like almost a bucket as a dip. All
those Sayyidina you'll be right virtues are still relevant. Yeah.
Whereas in the if you look at in the world, in the universe of
moral relativism, right, or evolution of morality, will in a
few years, George Washington will be like a horrible guy. All right.
Give it some time, right. And you'll find that Thomas Jefferson
set them give it some time, the whole the constitution will have
things in it. It's already like that. It's already they're already
turning Jefferson known slaves. Yeah, they're already tearing
people's names out. So then you end up being completely unrooted.
Like your sense of morality, no one in the universe shared it at
all. Right? It just keeps changing to and that, and that, if that's
the case, and those were heroes who built a civilization. Right,
then for sure, my great grandchildren and great, great
grandchildren will look at me as a uncouth, right, immoral guy,
because it's just a matter of time. Yeah. So that's a good
point. Now, next point you have. So So I think what we've discussed
so far is enough to destroy this charge of quiet isn't that there's
no
there's no problem for God to allow evil for some greater
purpose, even if he disapproves of evil. Correct. And, you know, this
is out of his generosity and power. So there's no logical
necessity that just because there's something evil that God
created means that you should love that evil. Right, right. We're not
We're not commanded to love Chevron, Allah tells us himself
that Chevron is, is an enemy. So this refutation of quietism I
think, you know, that's sufficient. And I'm gonna do Allah
Han, he refuted a person quiet as you know, he once found a man
drinking alcohol. And the man said, God decreed it, so yeah,
right. And to which Oh, my
God decreed that I give you lashes.
So that's amazing. Yeah. So if evil actions are allowed to occur
in the world, God's decree, our response to them, or
struggle against them is also dictated by God. They get God's
approval and they get God's reward. Beautiful. Hello. So. So,
you know, there's there's a technical term for erotic Colonia.
So we call that deontological. Decree. Sorry, sorry. ontological
decree? Yeah. Meaning what actually exists? Yeah. And then
God also has a deontological degree, which is the Sharia, what
God approves of what God wants His creation to do as long. Yeah. And
these two things are different. They don't need to be the same
thing as you, as you mentioned. Yeah. So let's do just a very
quick review. Actually, I think we already did a review. We can just
go we can continue significant proof one wisdom behind the behind
you. Yep. Great. So this is this is the meat of the podcast. So
shout out to sister Saman Rusik. By the way for her. She she's a
friend of I don't know if you know, Walker. Walker. From from
Britain. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So it's actually like my first Oh,
British friend after from from the internet. Oh, basically. Yeah. So
she she shared a she wrote a dissertation on the Odyssey. Oh,
and she shared that with me. So it's hard material on Nursey was
excellent. I mean, wow, the bibliography really helped.
Because that's great. Sometimes, like the references are like
really useful, because you can dig, you know, further down and
yeah, so it was super helpful. Right. So God can do whatever he
wishes using his power. We've made that clear. Yeah.
But we want to argue that God has another attribute that directs his
power, which is which is wisdom. He doesn't create anything
pointlessly. Yeah. And we said this before.
or even if he were to, he could not be morally judged. Correct.
But you know, some people have this reservation of saying, Oh,
God has wisdom and things, you know, but God does have wisdom and
things. I mean, we read in the Quran, Allah has him and the MaHA
Konerko. Abbath. Correct. Right. So who would have?
You're saying that atheists would have that? Well, probably watch
for hardcore machetes, would would question what they would say that
God has wisdom or reason behind anything they do. Like anything he
does? Of course he does. Yeah. Yeah, he does. But who would
object to that? Hardcore Asher is probably object. Yeah. Saying what
they would say that, like, God has no reasons for his actions, that
you cannot even put any reason behind. See, the reason and wisdom
are different things, though. Yeah, Reason is like implying
being compelled. Right. Right. Right. Which is very different
from having a wisdom. Yeah. And this is what the material is,
would argue we believe that he's not compelled by anything, either.
Yeah. I mean, most of us don't have a problem with this. I'm just
making it clear for us to be compelled is completely different
than to always have a wisdom. Right. Okay, continue. And so, you
know, we read this in the Quran of Asif Marva. You know, we think
that this is just that this creation that we vain for vanity,
so Allah Himself tells us that creation is not vain. Yeah, so
he's telling us he has wisdom. So in this section, I'm going to be
providing what's called an optimism theodicy. So an optimism
theodicy tries to show that the evils and creation, there's wisdom
behind them. Right. And remember, there are two types of evils.
There's moral evils things done by human beings. And there are
natural evils things beyond our control. The stuff that Stephen
Fry was so horrified that you know, deformed babies, tsunamis,
all this other stuff. I think that's actually still in our
control. Yeah, just indirectly. Yeah. The environment that we
corrupted. Yeah. Okay, definitely. And so this optimism theodicy
tackles, the, it doesn't talk about freewill as much it's going
to be talking about those things that seemingly are out of our
control that happened to us, right. Okay. We're gonna be
talking about freewill in the second part of the podcast
tsunamis. Yeah. So. So let's take an in depth look.
So why and optimism theodicy? Why do we want to give this the
Odyssey? Well, I mean, it's pretty, it's Quranic? I would say,
and, you know, and because voluntourism, it doesn't solve the
problem completely. Yeah. You know, okay, we're absolved, you
know, God is not evil. All right.
Great. But I suffer. Yeah. So what's the explanation for that?
You know, you saying God is not evil doesn't solve that you have
to still provide an explanation for, you know, why do I suffer?
Okay, God's not evil, but what's the point of my suffering? Right?
So this is why, you know, we got to do 50% more of the work with
this optimism, theodicy. Okay. So, you know, to give you a better
idea of why the volunteerism itself doesn't work, is imagine
you have an incredibly powerful boss. Yeah, right. voluntourism,
is that just to saying that? Well, he owns you. So just when you
want.
So let's say you have an incredibly powerful boss, if we
hold on a second now, it doesn't work. If a person is weakened his
trust in Allah.
But what reason does he have to trust in Allah? That's, that's
really the question, which this theodicy tries to sell. tries to
give? Yeah, okay, fine. Because let's say you have a powerful boss
at your company, and all you know is that he's powerful, and he
controls everything. He owns you. He could do whatever he wants. And
then let's say you make a mistake in your work. And then your boss
asks you, you know, as to meet you. Yeah. Now what's gonna be
going through your head when you go to meet your boss, you're gonna
be nervous. You gotta be super nervous. You're gonna be like,
This guy is gonna destroy me. He's gonna kill me. Yeah. But this is
not the way a man meets with Allah smarter. That's true. Right. So,
you know, that's why voluntourism doesn't solve the entire problem.
Yeah. So
yeah. So in the same way, we're saying, we need a little more
than, you know, you can't just judge God. Right? We need the
Quran and God isn't some distant entity. That's the oblivious about
humans. He's wise. He has direct purpose. Yeah, he creates he cares
for his creation. He has the name of ROB so now you're now you're
moving from the philosophical discussions to what Muslims
actually believe about Allah right? From the Quran. This
wisdom, this optimism, theocracy. Okay, let's hear it. So.
So let's look at let's look at first, why purpose and wisdom is
fundamental to God. Okay.
Well first look at how important they are to us. Right like we
We go through so many of us might suffer a lot in our childhoods, we
might be growing up with a lot of defects and bad habits, but then
something clicks and we get this purpose behind our life. And it
sort of transforms all of that dark past into something. Almost
beautiful. Yeah. There was this MMA fighter
that makes smarter martial arts fighter. Yeah, he was one of the
best bass Rutten.
So he, he was bullied ever since he was a kid. And he had like, all
these sicknesses that forced him like to hit tiles, like the hit
anything, just so he could feel pain, because like, his entire
body was filled with this itching and whatever. Right? So so he was
a very difficult kid growing up. But the thing is that, that, that
childhood prepared him to be one of the greatest fighters that ever
lived. And he he's a Catholic. Now he's, he's, you know, he's much
more decent person, much, pretty nice. And he says that if I when I
look back at my childhood, that it actually prepared me for the type
of person I am today. So So you connect the dots backwards?
Exactly. So he has this wisdom and purpose in his own life. Yeah,
right. So human beings are driven by purpose. They're driven by
wisdom. So this is why we're asking, you know, what purpose
does the evil that we experience have? Yeah, this is why we ask
that question. So in a sense, the the idea that of not knowing
actually heightens and increases the value of it years later. Yeah.
And when that's heightened and increased at that point, it it for
it compels a person to make sure that the next generation doesn't
make the same mistake. Exactly. Like I was stuck on this for like,
30 years. I want to make sure you don't make the same mistake. And
they're very passionate about it. Yeah. Because of you know, because
because they were it was limited to them. They didn't have that
knowledge. For years. Yeah, right. Well, now they're passionate about
protecting others, like an entire generation, like they could it's
almost like a slingshot than being slung back. Yeah, that for 2030
years, you couldn't solve this problem. Now you can solve it, it
slings them forward, they might solve that problem for an entire
generations to come. Right. So look at the benefit, the cost
benefit, right, exactly. Now, if someone the atheist is always
going to come back and say, Well, why couldn't God had yourselves in
the first place? Well, in that case, I mean, you can say, Well,
why don't we live on Mars? Why don't you can you get a question?
But if God solved that, you wouldn't have that exactly. ship
and exactly. So we say he did. So he just used the creation.
Exactly. Right. He use the tool, and it's a blessing that you got,
you get to own Yeah, exactly. It's a blessing that we have memories.
And we're going to talk about this in the second part of the podcast.
It's a blessing that we have consciousnesses feel things and we
get attached. We have relationships, like these things
are blessings, that, like if we don't didn't have a consciousness,
we just be a rock. Yeah, no. And so. So yeah, definitely.
Absolutely. Okay, continue. So Now somebody might object and they
might say, you know, that, okay, suffering, there are different
types of suffering and different types of purposes, right. So for
example, the purpose of you going to school and you suffering to get
that degree, that's different than let's say, your mom dies, now, the
biller, and then you don't know why she died. Yeah. You know,
like, she was just she died in a car crash, and you have no idea
about the wisdom and purpose. Correct. Right. One of them you
have idea about wisdom and purpose. And one of them, you have
no idea. Correct. Right.
So I've waited a long time, you know, given these two differences,
but I think we need to talk about what exactly is evil? Right? We
need to look at that. Good question. Yeah. So most of us
think evil is simply suffering, just suffering. Yeah. But remember
that first example, I gave him, the guy going to school for a
degree.
He's willing to endure a lot of suffering, to get that degree. So
to him that suffering isn't necessarily evil. Because just
inconvenience, it's just part of the process. In fact, he asked for
it himself, right? By signing up for medical school or whatever.
Right? Exactly. And, you know,
for example, why would anybody go to the gym? Yeah, there was this
fat Victorian guy. He's like, exercise is bad for the body,
because it makes you sweat. It makes it makes your heart
palpitate. So it's died at 50.
Right, but if evil is just suffering, yeah, then nobody would
be going to the gym. Yeah. You know, because people endure tons
of suffering in the gym to get that one piece of muscle on, you
know, whatever. Right. So suffering is something different.
Evil is something different than just suffering. Correct. Right.
So there's definitely different categories of evil as we can
clearly see, yeah, we might consider some evils, actually, to
be good. Like, you know, going to the gym. Yeah, but
But why do we do that? Well, here's here's the reason because
we have our hearts fixed on getting something. Right, we have
our desires fixed on getting something. Yeah. And we don't mind
enduring the suffering to get it. Correct. And when we get it, we
think it's actually good. Yeah. So
we actually become secure, right? In a sense, because we know how
treacherous the path was. And we're quite confident that very
few other people will track that path. Right. So whatever we
attained, we feel like well, the harder it gets, the more elite the
club, the harder again, not to look down on people but to feel
secure that it's not going to be taken away from me tomorrow,
because to the path of attaining this or that degree was not easy.
Right? Right. So if it was easy, no, there'd be a brain surgeon on
every block. Right? It would be easy to become one exactly. So but
brain surgeons, knowing how difficult it was, or climbing a
mountain, you know that for sure. There's not going to be 10 other
guys up there? Because of how hard it is. Yeah. So you're gonna have
that record for yourself for a long time. And we voluntary take
these, like voluntarily take these on, because we think it's gonna
increase our flourishing. Yeah, it's gonna increase our end goal,
it's gonna increase us as people, right? So the but think about
this, you could have your heart's desire fixed on something that
doesn't increase your fuller flourishing.
Right?
So for example, let's say you have your heart's desire fixed on
something, let's say, you want it to be a pro wrestler.
And you just you don't have the built, right? So reality decides
to take that away from you, let's say you break your hand, or
whatever. So what happens then? There's, there's a tension in you,
because you had your heart fixed on something, and you couldn't get
it. And you couldn't get it reality decided to take you
somewhere else. Yeah, so there's this huge tension. And that's what
we call evil.
That's what evil is, when we have our hearts attached to something.
And reality doesn't match up to it. Yeah, that's when we suffer
the most direct. This is why a person in the gym, he has his
heart's desire and getting fit. So he doesn't suffer, right. But a
person, let's say he has his heart's desire attached to his
mother, as we all do. And his mother's taken away from him
right? Out of nowhere. Yeah, so he's gonna suffer because oh my
gosh, you know, this is not this is not what I was expecting. So
attachment to an ephemeral, ephemeral thing, and unguaranteed
or you, however you want to put it. And the way we would define it
is evil is whatever comes between us and the desires of our heart.
Right. So that's, and by the desires of our heart, we mean,
like, any expectation of how reality should be for us. Yeah,
right. Now, how do we get that definition of you?
Or is that just a it's something of natural law view of evil? It's,
it's more from experience. Like if we if we look at, if we look at
why, for example, somebody might say, well, all suffering is evil.
Yeah, obviously not. Right. So what is evil, like what type of
sufferings are evil? Now what happens? Now, you can imagine,
though, that people are not always wise. They attach themselves to
something like, I want to become a baseball pitcher. Yeah. And then,
alright, so but it's known for you that that's not good for you.
Right? Because the life of pitchers most likely going to be
in the minor leagues, and you're gonna end up short and not gonna
have a college education, and then you're never going to make it to
what you want. So I'm actually going to sit here and disallow you
from that, and tell you to go to medical school. Right. So is that
father? Has he done evil at that point? Right, exactly. This this
is the this is the main point that, you know, when we don't get
what our hearts desire, like, people say his hearts broken.
Yeah. So this is what breaks our hearts. So the the pitcher
example, he couldn't be a pitcher. So it breaks his heart because
he's so attached to it. Yeah. Right. But the thing is that he
could be attached to something that's stopping his flourishing.
Yeah, right. So for example, John Milton, he's a he's a famous
English poet, right.
In his early life, he had a gift of poetry from very beginning, in
his early life, his sole goal, his his life's desire was to become a
clerk in the in the government of Cromwell, you know, the Puritan
guy who overthrew the overthrew England and yeah, he was, yeah. So
his sole desire, John Milton, such a smart person, his desire to just
be part of that government. And he didn't, you know, he wasted all
his life like writing a propaganda for them. And really, he lost his
eyesight because he was just reading legal documents all night.
And what happened what ended up happening is Cromwell got
overthrown, obviously, and you know, his
empires sort of fell apart. And the he was the guy burning
Catholics at the stake. Yeah. And then the the previous government
came back into power. Yeah. And now John Milton's 100 men. Yeah.
And on top of that, he loses his eyesight. So his desire was his
harm is, right. Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. And then he's, he's sitting there. He's blind. He has he loses
eyesight. Yeah. And he writes a poem. He's like, God, I wanted to
achieve something, right. Yeah. But you took away my eyesight. So,
like, I'm in like, you know, darkness and darkness. But it's
during this time that he writes Paradise Lost. He writes paradise
regained. He writes all of his great poetry. And these are like,
epics, like Paradise Lost is an epic, unmatched. It's the most
it's some people debate whether John Milton's the greatest English
writer for Shakespeare. Yeah. And actually, I think John Milton was
some this is more intriguing to me than Shakespeare. Absolutely. And
he took all of his theological knowledge and put it into epic
poem. Right, which was his calling, which was his
flourishing. Yeah. So something that he thought was bad for him
ended up being good for him becoming amazingly good. Right.
So, so we could, it could be that, you know, so then would you call
that evil then? Exactly, it's not. At the end of the day, it turned
out that there was a greater wisdom for what he was going
through. Yeah. And even him being blind. It's there's a greater
wisdom because it forced him actually to improve his memory.
Right. And what would happen is these bouts of like attacks would
come on him. And he'd start reciting poems, like revelations
coming down to he just keep reciting, reciting. And then he'd
have his clerk, write it down. That's crazy. And if you read
Paradise Lost, usually Subhanallah wow, you know that this guy is
just freestyling. Wow. You know, so it's, I never knew that about
it. It's amazing. Really amazing.
So yeah, so So you could have you know, you could have your desires
in in the wrong place. Yeah. And what suffering does is, God could
use suffering to redirect your desire. And that's exactly based.
Isn't this similar to what I mean? Basically, it's what Buddha said,
that suffering is attachment. Yeah. Right. But but the thing is,
it's not unlike the Buddhists, Muslims. I mean, we don't believe
that attachment itself is bad, right? No, we, we would define
evil in a different way. Right. Right. We would simply define evil
as
disobedience against Allah. That is not followed by Toba. Yeah,
right. That's it, because we don't have the same approach as the
Buddhists to attachment. Right? We encourage certain attachments.
Exactly. Right. And we say they're good. And that when it gets
broken, and you suffer it, that's also part of the package. That's
good. Right. So we but But basically, what you're saying,
though, is attachment to fend yet, attachment to vignette are
ephemeral things that are gonna go away. That is harm. You're
inflicting harm on yourself. It's more than that's true. Absolutely.
It's more that you're attached to something that doesn't increase
your flourishing. Yeah. So you're attached to the wrong thing. Yeah.
And then flourishing from from what of dunya? Only? Exactly. So
here's that severe. Here's the next question. Well, how do we
define flourishing? That's a great point. Yeah. And that's the thing
we think that flourishing is something that Oh, my heart's
desire is attached to this. And if I get it, I'm going to be
flourishing. But maybe you don't know what flourishing is for you.
That's great. Yeah. So your knowledge is actually limited,
right? And it's beautiful. It could be that God knows what the
true flourishing is. And he uses suffering to redirect you towards
what's going to actually give you flourishing. That's amazing. And
this is why the Muslims of the way we view things like what's
happening in Syria or the Rohingya people, if you think about it, if
Allah loves the people, and they're in a world of
disobedience, then suffering, in fact, is a sign of his protection
of them. Yeah, right. Yeah, that if you're in a situation where
you're just doing wrong after wrong, and you can't handle the
temptations, and then suddenly, you find yourself
in a sickness, right, where you can't continue sinning, right,
right. This is beautiful, right? So it would be like Subhan Allah
make dua for me, because Allah chose you. He chose to protect
you, even if you can't protect yourself. Right. And I actually
know, my entire dad side of the family. Yeah, was a normal
Egyptian family. Then the eldest granddaughter,
a second eldest daughter, she got leukemia. And in that period of
time in which he got leukemia, her mom started to go into the MCRA
which is the Quran. Yeah, study Quran, right. And then she did
that to soothe her pain. Right, because how are you going to
handle that? Yeah, pretty sure before
that she was not doing that. When things were hunky dory and
everything's normal. She was not doing that. She went to the Quran
school for a reason. Right? She persisted in it, she brought she
dragged her other sisters. Right, who dragged her other sisters
until like four or five of them were in there. And then 10 years
past, like the daughter died a long time ago. Right. But but she
kept up with the with the school was cool. Yeah. So if you think
about it, the pain of one person was used to protect and redirect
everyone else. Right. That's amazing. And great point. It's a
great point. Exactly. And even that even that suffering of that
one person, it's not going to be in vain. It's not in vain. How
many people benefited? Right, right? And not just for other
people, even for that one person that died? Yeah, we're gonna
discuss later on that, you know, somebody who dies in that state.
Revelation tells us that there's reward waiting for them. And in a
sense, they're they took the fall for the rest of the fam. Right?
Right. Right. They're the ones who bear the bore the suffering, but
for the rest of the family to to benefit to benefit. Even what they
don't even know yet. Yeah, right. And not only the rest of the
family, what about if you're a teacher now she's mine is actually
now a teacher in the MCRA. She advanced so much is this teacher
now? What about the people that she's benefiting? Right? And it
all goes back to one person? Right, patiently bearing? Right.
And one one bad incident, that redirect it to all this good? So I
mean, it's, it's clear that, you know, like, we might not know what
true flourishing is, yeah, I mean, and God tells us that true
flourishing is actually connection with God. Yeah. SubhanAllah. So So
if, if some suffering, redirects our wills, to being closer to God,
which is the ultimate flourishing, right, and we're gonna give a
proof of why that is. Right. Then there's a wisdom behind that evil,
you know, that evil is not to favor exactly, then even our
thought says that the person who never discovers that point that
you just said that it's connection to Allah, that that person is ends
up being like the mule that goes around the mill, all right, he
just goes because when he gets redirected from suffering, he
moves from the passion and attachment to one created being
too passionate attached into another greater being right. And
from one another, greater being to another, and Western civilizations
like this one, as soon as some bad thing happens, we just turn to
some other ism. Right? And then suddenly, this Yeah, that we
turned, we went from, like, some kind of liberation. Alright, and
now that would then allow me to hit us. And we're going to turn to
another thing, and I can guarantee you that thing is going to be
deemed bad and evil. All right. So there are there there were like
Jim Crow laws, give us civil rights. But the civil rights
movement now, you go to BLM and look at their literature. Yeah.
Right. And their spin on BLM on the civil rights movement. They
hate those, some of those assumptions that they had and some
of the culture that they had. Right. So it's just from one
creative thing to the next to the next. Stop. Yeah. So instead of
like going horizontal, you should go vertical. Yeah, we Yeah, we're
going horizontal. Yeah. All right. The next thing you have here is
the unpopular kid analogy. This should be interesting. Yeah, so we
already discussed this, like, what the pitcher? Yeah, you know,
unpopular kid is like the MMA guy, MMA guy in the pictures. Yeah,
where you might be wanting something with your heart's
desire, but it's not good for so like a teenager in high school,
you know, all he wants his entire purpose in life is to just get the
approval of his peers. That's true. But that's not good for him.
It's part of the stupidity. Yeah, I actually always tell my kids
that I was I tried to, like, repeat it over and over in a way
with them that what you guys think is cool now is actually a bunch of
nonsense, right? And you just need a little bit of it enough that you
don't get laughed at? Right? Enough coolness that you don't get
laughed at? So because this becomes a distraction, if you do,
yeah, but otherwise, I show them the sort of the, the backgrounds
of the people who are doing cool jobs, like in Silicon Valley and
stuff like that. I mean, these people are hitting the books.
Right, right. Exactly. Okay, and good. And I want to and this
particular section by, you know, we're not saying that, we're not
saying that, you know, if somebody has to be suffering,
to like, you know, to experience evil, somebody could be living an
amazing life, but their life is evil. Yeah. Like, like, if, for
example, if there's a person who's a serial killer, right? And he
doesn't know he's a serial killer. Let's just take that analogy. He
doesn't know he's a serial killer, but he kills people. And nobody
knows about it. Yeah. It says like evil. It is, doesn't matter if he
doesn't know about it and doesn't suffer a stroke. His life is still
evil. So just because we see somebody living an amazing life,
it doesn't necessarily mean that he's somehow, you know, being
favored by God and knowing what was happening to him. Right. A
rich CEO, I mean, he could be extorting that
Millions of dollars from people and ripping people off. And he's
living a good existence. But we would never say that his life is
good. Correct, right. So, you know, we have to really think
about what we mean by flourishing, like what we wear, our hearts
desires are attached to that spirit, you know, to be able to
answer some of these questions. And I'm not saying that, you know,
if you have your heart's desire attached to something that it
doesn't matter, right, I'm not saying that. Like,
for example, you might be attached to a certain type of relationship,
right? I'm not saying that you should throw that out, and then
just, you know, arbitrarily go to God or something, right. But if we
realize what it is that we're attached to, like, for example,
let's say we're attached to beauty. Yeah. Like we're attached
to, I don't know, beautiful woman or whatever, right? Yeah. No, see
what say what you're actually attached to is beauty itself.
Yeah. And you're gonna find more of it if you go to God. Yes.
Right. So you don't have to? It's actually beautiful. Yeah. You
don't have to leave your attachments. For example, I love
what did I used to like? I used to love video games, right? Yeah. And
then I found out that, you know, one of the things that I used to
always play role playing games, like, you know, being being
a knight or something, you know, some of these people play and you,
you know, save the kingdom, whatever, right? Yeah. What I
loved about that, is that I loved stories. I loved theoretical. What
do you call tangents? Yeah, that's really what I loved. And I mean,
you can get all of that and
you know, I'm having this podcast. Well, well, one of the things
similar to that is that the Quran does not denounce attachments. So
Miranda, de denounces attachments greater than the love of Right,
exactly right, exactly. Allah, His Messenger, and striving in their
panic, right? And also say, naughty. He wasn't, I wouldn't say
attached, but he did, was seen drinking cold water. And this is
from the Sahaba, there were seven that were considered the
aesthetics of the companions. And their chief was say not right.
Yeah. So he, they said, Oh, Adi, the Zohar, the ascetics don't
drink cold water, but you're drinking cold water? He said, Yes.
Because it brings the gratitude out of my heart, Paula, right. So
sometimes what we interact with and are attached to, is, in fact,
something that extracts from us, you know, a lot of Allah's love.
It's a gift from God, it's a gift, and we are attached to it even
more, if you know that that's exact, and it doesn't harm us,
right? If we if we remember its source, because then when it gets
taken away, no problem. I remember this. I know who the sources
exactly. Okay, good. What's next? So we're gonna have just a quick
overview of the musalman horizon story, okay, because it's some
proof. But do you think we should skip it or No, no, that's good.
Anytime you do we want to pause and make this into two parts,
because we're hitting two hours now. Oh, wow. Okay. Tell me
where's the good stop point? Because I don't think we're gonna
finish the whole.
Everything that you have here. We like we're halfway through. Yeah.
So we went over most of the stuff in our tangents. Yeah. So I think
we should be good. We're halfway through. I'm scrolling down in
some of these points we already discussed. No, good. So you tell
me, where is the next stop point within?
Maybe 510 minutes. Okay. And then redo your notes. And then we'll do
part two, after another time. Great. So
the next point I want to discuss, I'm going to skip the most awesome
stuff. I think most of us know how this relates to this. To this,
that's, that's the hope. That's the purpose of it. That's the
point. So go go through sort of Caf again, and you'll see all of
these things coming out. Yeah.
So I want to give an argument for why God is wise, right? We believe
God is wise, because, you know, Scripture tells us.
But reason, you can also reasonably come to that
conclusion, you can come to that conclusion using logic, right? And
what's that? Nursey. As always, he gives a beautiful argument, he
says,
he says, Whoever has created the seed must have created the solar
system. It's a logical link. Now, that's a huge claim. That's huge.
Let's hear it. So he says that whoever has created one atom must
have created the entire universe upon one atom. And the proof, he
says, right, is because things are so linked together, and you're so
interconnected, so that you can separate them, like look at one
atom, right? One atom. This atom can somehow know how to function
properly as an atom in your eye.
But if I take this atom and put it in your leg, it knows how to
function properly and you're like, if I take this atom and put it
into two
Read, it knows how to function properly in the tree. It's as if
the atom knows the entire universe.
And even we were discussing this in the previous podcast how, like,
this phenomenon of quantum entanglement? How, like, if you
entangle two atoms together, yeah. And then you like, make them go
several lightning, you know, millions of years apart? Yeah. If
you change one of them immediately affects the other one. This is
proven fact in quantum physics really, it's a proven fact, that
is insane. And that means that the universe, everything in the
universe is so closely tied and linked. Yeah. Right, that you
could not have one person designing one part of it. And
another person.
It's all of it is all of it is one creation. That's amazing, right?
And this shows us that there must be wisdom. If if that's that's the
simple proof in the theology books, you'll see that the proof
of oneness is order. Yeah, absolutely. So the proof of
knowledge is complexity. Yeah. Because it is complex. Yeah,
absolutely. Very, very complex. And the proof of volition is
variation. Yeah, right. We're not composed of like three different
pixels that are moving around are composed of things that are for
No, for no apparent reason to us are different. What is really the
need for every snowflake to be different? Right? Is there really
a need for that? Alright, but it is they are shows his artistry, it
shows. Yeah, so just like that. We're not the witnesses of this
universe that matter. Yeah, that they're there that this universe
is being witnessed. And for the sake of
it, that that's who Allah Tala is, yeah, every single one is
different. And every single one is beautiful. And every single one
may only live or exist exactly. For point three seconds. Yeah.
before it hits the ground. Right. Right. And yet, that's, there's no
big and small for Allah. Exactly. And the thing is that if the
universe is such an amazing symphony, yeah, speak, and God is
the composer. I mean, it's bad analogy. But if the universe such
that everything in it is linked to everything else, so how can we say
that suffering itself is completely pointless? Oh, that's a
great point. It also is linked to something to something that is
linked to some wisdom, right? So hang on. So this is this is a
logical proof of why, like, God has wisdom, because he orders
everything. A definition of wisdom is that you know, where to put the
right thing, correct that the weather condition and family
family, right. And so this is this is the the amazing proof for why
God must have wisdom, right.
So yeah, so we talked about, we talked about why God has wisdom,
we talked about how suffering is really the desires of our hearts
being attached to something that doesn't help us flourish. Correct.
And we also talked about what flourishing means flourishing is
attachment to God. Which adds up what you just said, being the same
exact definition of disobedience to alumni followed by tob right
because if it if it's if it's not followed by Toba, then it's
against our flourishing. Yeah. And if it is followed by Toba, it's
not flourish. It's for flourishing. And that flourishing
isn't just some type of abstract good that we worship God or
something. It's actually agenda so fun so so when Allah's redirecting
somebody for himself, like he's, he's wants to give him, right. I
don't want to use the word wants, but he desires to you know, he
wants to give him Jenna. Yeah, so he's gonna have unlimited
flourishing. Yeah. Right. So this is this is one of the one of the
proofs that we have, and Allah says, Allah wants to take
that person away from the bad consequences. Because if that
person, let's say, Allah keeps giving him certain tests and
trials, come back here, come back to your company. He says, no, no,
no, no, yeah. Now, there's no way that God can force that person
into agenda without violating his free will. Correct Bassano right,
true. Why would you take a person who doesn't want to be with God?
Yeah. and force him to be with God. You could do that with an
angel. I guess. He doesn't have free will. But this is what we
mean by how I mean, the people in *. They, I mean, they don't
belong. And that's what they want. They wanted that. Right. So they
didn't get the point. They didn't get the lesson. Yeah, they just
kept. But so in that is divine justice in the sense that you
asked, this is what you wanted. You just want it. You were
ignorant, right, in a sense, willfully ignorant, right. And
didn't believe what the evidence that people gave you. Yeah,
absolutely. And, I mean, what would we say about a person who?
Everyone told them don't eat that Berry? Yeah. Right. In the woods.
Yeah. And he said, Well, you guys just written writing books, right?
I mean, I'm a human and you're a human. Yeah. So let me just eat it
anyway. And then he dies. Well, the people are gonna say, Well, I
mean, we have to say he deserved it. Right? Right. Yeah, exactly.
But one of the big questions would be like, does the ends justify the
means? Because we're saying that suffering, there's wisdom behind
it. And you know, people suffer? And it turns out good. And of
course, atheists is gonna say, and yes, because in human society, it
never justifies me. Correct, right? Well, you can't you can't
kill a bunch of people and say, Oh, it's gonna bring about this
many goods, right, direct, and we get away with it. Yeah. Well, see,
here's the thing.
God has a certain right over his creation.
And when you have when you own your creation, you could do
certain things to it, that the creation can't do amongst
themselves correct? If if, let's say, for example, a parent with a
child, the parent has full right to do certain things to the child
to increase his flourishing. Right? Even if he doesn't, even if
he doesn't like it, right? Correct. Because the parent is in
a position of authority to do that. It's morally good for him.
Right? God, so we can't do that among ourselves. But God has full
right to your suffering to teach us correct. So we can't do that
amongst ourselves. Because we have no right to do that. That's
beautiful, right? Because we don't own any of that's actually one of
the names of a ramen. Right, right. I mean, the, one of the
Divine Names out ramen is the name which is signifies
that Allah to Allah can, will do good for His servants, including
Yeah, what they don't like, right as a way to benefit them. Imagine,
for example, this. This is an example that just occurred to me
out of nowhere. Imagine a master artist, and he's given a huge
block of marble in front of them. Yeah. And then he starts chipping
away at the marble. Yeah, right. And then he creates this David
sculpture would have this beautiful sculpture. Would anybody
say that this artist is morally wrong for chipping away at the
marble?
So and so we in relation to God is like the artist in relation to the
marble. Yeah, that so forget about? Okay, let's say the marble
feels pain, right? Let's say the piece of marble filled with the
marble want to go back to the hunk? It is? Yeah, nobody's
looking at or no one's no one's admiring. It would actually say,
you know, it's worth it. You know, I'm this beautiful statue that
people are going to look at now, though, the atheists will
constantly go back and say, Well, why couldn't God just create the
everything perfect as it is really, at the end of the day,
they're asking for Paradise, right? And at the end of the day,
we all have even despite with all this sense that you're that you're
talking about, we end up having to get back to the statement that
Allah has not asked about what he does. And Allah knows, and you
don't know, namely, in other words, we have we are told by
revelation, it's almost like a revealed knowledge that we must
not necessarily would have come to on our own. Or maybe we would have
come to on our own, there's an argument for it. Yeah, that the
intellect of the human being is essentially limited, will never
fully understand the cause of everything. Right. Right, and must
recognize that fact. And if it does not recognize that fact, and
then all of its attempts are folly. And that's why Allah says,
I know, and you don't know, and don't ask why I do certain things
the moment doesn't even ask, right. Like, once you arrived at
what you're saying, of the of you men, you wouldn't even ask these
questions, right? Because you trusted the source. Yeah, we're
all getting to why we should trust the source. Right? Exactly. And
trusted once we trust the source, that full circle comes full circle
that Allah says, You don't you don't even ask anymore. So but the
thing is that even if God, if God created, everything has happened,
right? Yeah. And he didn't create freewill, no human beings. There's
some good that could never have been correct. And God is concerned
about creating, he's the most good. So yeah, he creates all
good. How would there be triumph? Right? How would there be
competition? How would there be hard work that resulted in a
reward? Right? How would there be pity? If there wasn't, if I were
on Paradise, there'll be no pity there'll be no generosity, there
will be no patients, there'll be no resilience.
So you said that there is a rational reason or basis for the
idea that our intellects are essentially limited? Absolutely.
You want to share that? Because
I mean, think about it. Our knowledge is gained through
induction. Right, we see certain things happening, we see certain
other things happening. And we already give an example that your
heart's desire could be attached to something that's not good for
your flourishing, we see it all the time. So if God tells us that
the greatest flourishing is to be in Ghana is to have a relationship
with Him, then your intellect, you know, you should be like, You know
what, maybe I don't know if that's true or not, but there's something
to it. And especially if you believe in the Quran, you're like,
you know, there's something to it. I think that the study of human
history, yeah, takes us to the point of that we were actually
pretty dense at some points, every era in history. Like you go back
just a while back, and we didn't even
know a thing or two about medicine? Yeah. Right. So we were
limited in that respect. And the fact that we are absolutely
reliant on the preservation of our word. Yeah. And before paper, if
you notice societies would collapse or die off or be
destroyed by other societies. This is the generation after them,
basically starting from scratch. Yeah, in terms of civilizational,
knowledge was lost. Whereas we're operating on the fact that we're
building on civilizational knowledge. Yeah. And every step we
take, we look down and say, Wow, we're like, progressively we're
ignorant. Right. So the I just the whole notion of progress. Yeah.
Which is to the secular mind. That's the theme, right?
necessitates existence of our existence without limitation
right, necessitates that the human nature is limited. The intellect
is limited. Yeah, we may have potential to understand. But in
itself, it's limited in self. It's limited here.
So one last thing I want to finish this point on, and we actually
have, we went through a lot of these points, just in our in our
tangents. So we're almost close to the finish, actually. Okay. So I
want to just give a story that sort of summarizes all of these
things in the story of Cain and Abel. Yeah. Have you been copied?
I mean, this story perfectly mirrors what we're talking about
when we say that God uses suffering to lead us to
flourishing. Yeah. Now look at Abel, who's the innocent brother,
he gets killed by Cain. And Abel is righteous, and worships God, he
has a good relationship with God. But he's the one that dies. That's
true. And people might say, you know, this is just really
horrific. Evil. Yeah. Right. But if you think about it, is it
really like is that the worst thing that could have happened to
evil? He he gets gender? Because he's close to God? Yeah, he's
achieved his perfection. He's achieved closeness with God. So if
he lives for even 70 more years, or 90 more years, what difference
does it make? Is there what is he going to get over right over this
relationship with God, which is infinite? Right? So is it is it
the worst thing that could have happened to him? Yeah. So that
goes back to your point of once you define flourish? Exactly
right? Yeah, then that then the whole ballgame is basically over.
Because you could have 1000 years of being tortured. Have in
exchange for infinity. It's nothing. It's nothing. Right? And
you could have 1000 years of pleasure and change of infinite
* is nothing. And it's nothing, because just a very small example.
If I put you in a room, yeah. For an and there's like, all the
pleasures, you come on. Yeah. Everything You Ever Wanted. But I
say 10 minutes from now you're going to be killed?
Or any of those things gonna matter? Nothing. Nothing. Yeah. So
if every single thing that we like, if everything single thing
is just going away, it's just going into non existence. Yeah.
Then it means that none of our pleasures are worth anything.
Yeah. So so even if you were told you're going to Paradise, yeah.
And you're gonna have a decent life, that decent life really
becomes no benefits. Right? And we'll get to Paradise. Right?
Right. Right. That's actually becomes a term if you actually saw
your paradise or felt at once. Then you said, Okay, go back to
life and have a decent life. It wouldn't taste good. Right? It
would be pale in comparison, and you'd be miserable. Exactly, which
is one of the great wisdoms of why paradise is hidden. If it wasn't
hidden from us, if God wasn't hidden, you said that they argue
about God being hidden. If if paradise wasn't hidden, if God
wasn't hidden, we would never be able to enjoy life, because of the
relativity would be so. So off. And in Narnia, they showed that
that's what he tried to show. Right. So they go to Narnia. They
live like kings, it comes back. And he's a regular schoolboy. He's
absolutely miserable. Right. Same idea. And the other thing is even
for Cain, like if Cain was the one killed, he's the evil one, right?
Yeah. But if Cain was the one killed, would it be good for Cain?
They wouldn't go straight to *, the *. So he lives a longer
time, so we can repent so we can repent. All right. So so that is
actually
the best possible scenario, that best possible scenario. I'm not
saying like, all of our suffering fits into that picture. But I'm
just trying to give you an example of like, what we normally think
about as evil and bad might necessarily not, you know, be that
Yeah. And and, like, there's a, like, there's a very good argument
that
resurrection that the afterlife is something that you know, we should
be attached to.
Because you know, as I'm gonna go on, now, that death is not the
end. Okay, that is not the end and there's a logical argument for it.
There's there's a lot logical argument you tell to somebody, if
you give them all these examples. He could not believe that
everything just fades away. Yeah. Right. And Lucy says that if
somebody the greatest
evil that can actually exist is being detached from God. And he
says he takes the story of a UVA liaison as an example. He says
that look, are you by someone suffering, suffering, suffering?
He doesn't make any doctor God, he just patiently bears it. Yeah. But
then he makes a.so Nursey says it is the fear that are you by slam
made the DA only when the sickness was so bad that he couldn't praise
God Subhanallah So, and no, see, it takes a lesson from this. He
says that, look, whatever you endure, the greatest loss you
could have is if you lose that connection to the physical realm,
right? Because life itself doesn't mean anything. If you don't have
the afterlife, like the example of the person locked in the room, if,
if you're going to die in the next 10 minutes, what what matters,
nothing matters. That's why one of the Olia his dua was oh, Allah
tasked me with anything except hijab, which is the barrier
between me and you. I'll take any tests except because that test, at
that point, you don't even know that you're being tested. Cuz you
have no sense of what is what anyway, because we only get a
sense of stuff. Only when we have our perspective on fo Yeah. And
the asset. I mean, there's so many signs in the creation that the
asset is real. And the design of Allah subhanaw taala. You know,
there's a cycle of life and death resurrections. A plant is born, it
dies, it comes back to life. There's so many there's so many.
We see resurrect, we see resurrection all the time. And if
we say that Allah azza wa jal is just going to take all this
creation that he's done, and he's just going to destroy it. Yeah.
And he's never going to do anything else. This is like a
master artist. He creates a beautiful piece of art. Yeah. And
just right after he just destroys it. Yeah. I mean, we would we
would call this person insane. Yeah. Or you would say he's got to
have a better one.
Well, yeah, he's got to have a better one. So these are some, you
know, indications that resurrection and the afterlife is
something that's perfectly reasonable. It's not we're not
making this up. It's not
weird things that religious people are coming up with. Perfectly
reasonable. I mean, you know, how the iPod the iPod was a massive
thing. And one time Steve Jobs came in, and someone asked him
what's going on? He's like, we're gonna kill the iPod. Right? So
when you have a genius like him, or even forget genius, if you
didn't think he was that smart, but
someone as ambitious as Steve Jobs telling you that you know, for
sure that he's got something better up his sleeve. Right. Yeah.
Which was the iPhone, which had an iPod in it. Right. So because it
had I bought in it, you know, like it it basically you have no need
for an iPod if you on iPhone. So he so when you got a guy like him,
telling you that he's destroying his creation? Yeah. Right. You
know, that he's going to get some bring something better and much
better, right. And Allah to Allah.
Like in creation, like what you said, things are destroyed when
they come back. Right. So So we've so that's remember, that's the
first significant proof that there's wisdom behind evil
Superman, we broke down what evil means. We talked about what wisdom
means all that. So now let's use all what we've learned. And let's
tackle that probably the toughest question, which is, how can
children suffer? They have no no connection to anything in the
world. They're completely innocent, but they're made to
undergo so much suffering, right? And today, so I'm just gonna, you
know, I'm just gonna we've done a lot of groundwork, we said that
every evil that God has, there's wisdom behind it, we said that God
is concerned with people's flourishing, He guides them to
their flourishing, so on and so forth. So now we have an answer.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to read probably as a
beautiful letter written by Nursey, to somebody who actually
lost a son.
And so what he does is he
he starts off with the famous I have the Quran I'll do later,
wishy washy to Sabrina Lilina. Alberto will call you in LA or in
LA Roger, that gives good tidings unto the patients. A patient wants
who when they are visited by an affliction, say we belong to God
and is to him that we are returning. Right? So after some
words of condolences, Nursey says very interestingly, he interprets
a verse in Surah insaan, which says, We have to follow Him will
Daniel Halligan
Everlast everlasting youth youths will attend to the people in
Jannah. If you could see them, you would think they were scattered
pearls, so no see, interprets this? And he says that what the
Quran means by immortal children is this. If a believers children
dies, believers child dies before puberty, they will live eternally
in paradise as lovable children. They will be the eternal means of
happiness and pleasure to their parents, who will enjoy their love
for them in their embrace.
Some argue that the people of Paradise will enjoy all pleasures
except love for children, because paradise is not the place of
generation, people been giving birth. However, the Quranic
expression,
immortal children, indicates that they will be eternally rewarded
with the pure affection of their deceased children. Whereas in this
world, that love or affection is restricted to 10 years at most
somehow, and then is wounded frequently by grief and filial
piety somehow. So this is how nursing interprets it. And he says
that, you know, these children that are dying are being taken
from us, that God is going to reward us for eternity with the
love of these children to Parliament. But that sounds the
let's say that brings comfort to a person who's lost a child, right?
But what about the child themselves, the child side has
lost his life had suffered, right? So no see talks, you know, he has
this, you know, amazing analogy again, this analogy of a prison.
Right? He says, Once a man was thrown into prison, along with his
child, so his child and the man is in the prison for whom he was
responsible, he was responsible the child. Not only did he have to
endure his own affliction, but he had to care for his child as well.
In the prison. While he was suffering, the country's
compassionate ruler sent a messenger with an offer to care
for the child in the palace. Because the child was the subject.
The man's response was the aggrieved cry, you know, this
child is my only means of consolation, I can't give her up.
His fellow prisoners, however, advised him, your grief makes no
sense. If you pity your child, let her be taken out of the
suffocating, dirty prison to a beautiful, spacious palace. If you
prefer prefer to have her stay here for your own advantage,
consider how much effort it costs you to look after her. It is in
your interest to give her to the ruler who has compassion and
sympathy, she will certainly arouse, so that he will wish to
meet you, the ruler will not send her to prison, but instead will
summon you on the condition that you will be entrusted.
It is this So Lucy says here, it is, as in the parable above my
brother, that all believers whose child or children have died should
think thus, children are innocent, they're all compassionate and all
munificent creator has taken them into his care out of his perfect
compassion. Whereas I would be unable to give them adequate
training in mind or morals. Also, their creator is much more
affectionate towards them than I could be how happy the children
are, since God has taken them from this world's wearing life to the
highest heaven. If they had lived longer, they might have been led
astray. So I shouldn't agree. So, you know, in this beautiful
letter, what Neurosci saying is that the child that's being taken
away is like, you two are stuck in a prison, which is the dunya. And
the king is taking a person that stuck with you in the dunya. And
he's taking it back to him to give him Jana, right, and mercy saying
that this is the example of a child that we lose that this child
is actually gaining something in the afterlife with the agenda. And
this analogy would necessitate as well that we attribute the pain
that children suffer to ourselves. Because in this in this analogy,
you said the man committed a crime. He had his child, and they
both got sentenced. So this was just an analogy for like, just you
know, so now people are stuck in prison. Well, what? So that that
explains the death of children? What about their suffering? Their
suffering, the suffering could be used as a lesson for others, like
you said, the
was your grandmother's family? What was it? Yeah, yeah. So it
extracts from other directly it extracts it creates a greater
good, yeah, but the child is themselves. They're not lost. Like
they're not like just, you know, thrown away. They get rewarded
with gender. It's part of a practice. Yeah, yeah. They get
rewarded with Jana. And
like, people might say, Well, okay, then why doesn't God take
all the babies to Jana? Don't make them live through this difficult
thing? Why live it off? Well, here's the thing. There are some
blessings to this life, right? I mean, people attain sainthood.
Well, well, if he did that, there'll be no human beings.
Right? Right. Right. You know, if if we expanded the number of
babies who died, right? Eventually, it would eat away at
the population, you'd have no human beings. And if Allah simply
put everyone who deserves to be in heaven, and everyone who deserves
to be in *, then the people in heaven wouldn't appreciate their
Paradise because they never seen Earth in the first place. They
just got it. And the people in * will say, Hey, I never got a
fair chance. Right? All right. So life itself, okay. It might be
weary, it might be difficult, but there's certain blessings in life.
You can attain the highest status in Jannah with life, but life is
also pretty dangerous because he could go to * yeah, right. So
certain babies out of Allah's matalas pure choice, as we said,
voluntarism he can do whatever he wants. He takes certain babies and
he doesn't let them go through the trial of life. Yeah, right and
he's reward
Add them he doesn't the babies don't lose out. So, you know, I'm
not trying to be like people might be listening. It's like this is
cold and calculated like, no, no, we're not. We're not trying to say
that we're not trying to justify suffering, right? Because
only the doctor can use the knife on you. Yeah. I like human beings.
God is the doctor. And you can explain though, why the doctor
uses them. Right. Nothing wrong with that. But like a regular
human being. They can't use a knife on somebody else. Yeah. Like
the doctor can administer poison to cure somebody of cancer.
Chemotherapy. Yeah. But I can't do that. I mean, doesn't mean Oh,
please drink chemotherapy. It's good. Yeah. No, we understand the
logic behind it. Exactly. So why we should trust those doctors who
do so. So God has full right to use suffering to teach us Yeah,
but doesn't mean that we should have more of suffering or though
Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't know. Yeah, we're not asking for more
like the wisdom of poverty. Yeah, a lot wasn't by poverty doesn't
mean we don't fight against it. Yeah. I mean, Peter Atkins has
something to say like that. You want to pull that up? Yeah. All
right. Let's see what
other copper he's got some of these people Oh, man.
All right. Let's see what we got here
let's pull that up. Here we go.
Don't tell us who this Who is this guy. This guy. He probably wrote
your high school chemistry textbook. Oh, really?
So he's a chemistry teacher. He's a chemistry teacher. I think
Oxford oh god and but he's also like a very vocal atheist and like
like he's people come atrocious Peter Atkins just because like
he's so close minded. Really, the only thing he believes in is that
the entire world is just made out of atoms and there's no point in
living Yeah, I'm just like, then why are you a professor you know
all right heroes. Yeah.
significance for what happens in the world? I think despicable
nonsense, if I may say so. I think I would like to see you nailed to
a cross in order that you should experience the the extremes of
pain, I would like to see you rate I would like to see you hang hung
drawn and quartered. That would make me feel very comfortable,
because it would give you such pleasure to bring in the Arthur
peacocks. So explain to those what, who was he talking to? And
what was he saying? So Richard Swinburne was saying, the guy who
was speaking in the first, the beginning, he was basically trying
to use the same argument we were doing, but a very, very summarized
argument, saying that God could allow evil to have some greater
good. And Peter Atkins is like this is complete. Yeah, it's
horrible. Okay, then you should be you should be right. Yeah. So this
is like saying, for example,
there's evil in the world, and God brings good out of it. So let's
have more evil. Yeah. But remember, we said that God has the
right to use evil. He knows how he knows how it works. Yeah, evils.
evils, like the knife of a surgeon. Yeah, only the surgeon
has the full right to use it. Because he he knows what it's
going to do. So you are I don't have the capacity or the or the
right to inflict evil on anybody else. It's just like saying,
someone came out of chemotherapy. Yeah. And then you tell them, you
know, well, this is this is the only way to go. Then you say,
Well, I'd like to see you down there and take this stuff and lose
your hair and you're miserable. Well, it's that that response
doesn't make any sense. We're actually trying to console you
Exactly. Right. Because whether or not it because the not having a
purpose to evil. Yeah. Does it improve your state? Yeah, it
doesn't, right. It doesn't. So so we just have two more points here.
And surely we can finish? We we covered a lot of ground, honestly.
Yeah. So I guess to summarize, this argument that God has wisdom
behind evil. The way that we can summarize it is God's creation
maximizes for virtue. Yeah, it doesn't maximize for pleasure. Oh,
that's a beautiful statement. And that is beautiful. So we have this
is the punchline. Right? God is not obligated to make this world a
hedonistic paradise. Yes. He's already done that. I mean, gender
is like that. Right? Yeah. So it's not there to maximize bodily
pleasures and make the streets flow with honey and wine, right.
This is quite clearly not the type of world that exists.
But, you know, a hedonistic pleasure is not the best possible
world. It's not, you know, let's say a world in which everybody
just enjoys pleasure and there is no virtue. Would we say this is
the best possible world? No. But in this world,
what do we value the most? What are you
When beings value the most Crowl courageousness. Honesty, beauty,
love virtues are greater mastery. That's why we have heroes who, our
fallen heroes, they sort of I guess you could say failed. Yeah,
right. And yet they they're heroes. Exactly. And we admire. We
admire the tragic heroes. Yeah, tragic heroes. We admire the
virtues that they possess. Yeah, even, like, for example, I mean,
the Christians say that you saw some died on the cross, right?
From the outside, it looks like as if he's failed, you know, he led
this movement, and he got crucified. Now that will,
according to them, and he's just done, right. But everybody, I
mean, 2000 years later, to 2018 years later, people still take
sides. And as an example, you know, they they're just odd add
the courage that he had, the his ability, right. So it doesn't
matter that he supposedly outwardly last, what matters is
his virtue. So, you know, our creation, the world is there to
maximize virtue is not there to maximum. That's such a beautiful,
right, and it's critical. And so just to conclude all this up,
this first point, that the things that we find beautiful, and the
things which our hearts are attached to, or they originate
from God. And what we find beautiful in them, is God himself,
is God acting in them somehow. And this way, we can see where evil
can be resolved. If we direct our hearts to the to the right thing,
and we position it towards God, then it's possible to bear any
type of evil and you have stories of the earlier you have to stand
really, there is no evil. Yeah, the only evil is weakening in our
thicket, and our remembrance that they couldn't hear and think about
it that yeah, not of the tongue or the heart, whatever they are even
of the mind of thinking about the value of things and the
justification and the justification and reason to trust
in Allah. That's got to be the only evil. Alright, distraction,
and that's exactly what neuroses says.
It's so amazing. So like, again, just to summarize the, the first
this optimism theodicy says that evil is there to lead corrupted
wills towards the thing that's going to make them flourish.
That's right. And people can misinterpret that, right. God
doesn't force his creation to change because that would
compromise the free will. That's true. Signals give them signals.
Exactly. So somebody got could send a tragedy their way they
misinterpret it. They're like, Oh, Gods out to get me. So they become
even more evil subprime. But the opposite is also true. Some people
become more righteous after tragedy, right. So this is what
you know, this first significant proof tells. And I want to
conclude by reading, probably one of the most beautiful things she's
ever written this, this small passage here, and he wrote this
when he was exiled in this random part of Turkey. So old man is no
help. He's just this hut. He has to hunt for his food. Like it's
very difficult, really very difficult living, he's not allowed
outside contact. And it's just Subhanallah and his family is
dead. His really his alone, literally alone, literally alone.
I believe Villa Mathis is right. No, no, not even followers.
Because the followers, the elite contact with me exactly, illegal,
unsolvable. So this is what he says. And he writes this letter
that later goes to one of his friends. Okay, so he says,
I've been very lonely for the last three months. At most, a visitor
drops by once every 15 or 20 days.
Otherwise, I'm alone. In addition, it has been 20 days since the
Mountaineers left the area that people in in his area. At this
time of night, in these forsaken mountains, silent and amidst the
trees, sorrowful sounds, I find myself immersed in five sorts of
loneliness. being old, I'm separated from most of my
contemporaries, friends and relatives who have gone to the
hereafter, and left me in a most wretched isolation. This
loneliness makes me feel a second type of separation, coming from
the disappearance of most creatures with which I feel a
connection, such as the past spring. The loneliness arouses yet
another feeling that of separation caused by being far from my
hometown and relatives. In addition to these, the mountains,
dark nightscape makes me feel a fourth kind of separation. Lastly,
I have been seen, I've seen my soul and complete separation
during his journey to eternity from this guest house, the world.
I yelled all of a sudden glory to God, wondering how I could endure
separations. In the meantime, I felt my heart grown out this poem.
Oh, Lord, I'm a stranger. I am lonely and weak, impotent, old and
ill, and I have no choices at all. Oh, God, I beg your mercy ask your
forgiveness. And I cry for help from your throne of grace, while
at just that point, beliefs light, the Quran the use of grace and the
All Merciful favor, comes to my aid and change to five counts.
lines of separation into five circles of warm companionship.
As I recited God is sufficient for us. An excellent Guardian is he,
my heart recited, if they turn their backs say God is enough for
me. Suppose there is no God but he and him I have put my trust. He is
the Lord of the Mighty Throne.
Upon this, my soul conceded that people can open the door to light
by understanding their helplessness and poverty before
God's power and riches. And by trusting and seeking refuge in
Him, I therefore praised and thank God for the light of belief and
submission, I came to understand how sublime a truth is contained
in the couplet, and even a tabula scan. That is why saying, What has
he found was last God. And what has he lost? Was found God,
unbelievable.
Unbelievable. That is so amazing.
That letter is so amazing. Subhanallah
that is amazing. That's all I got. And that's what you closed with.
So Patil
and he just died a lonely death like that. Well, not lonely for
us, for him, that he didn't lie in that exile, but he got back. He
got back to Turkey, but even has like, you know, he's, he's, like
80 years old. And the government's bring him to court for like, all
these charges, and oh, my goodness, and no family. No, he
never got married. He never married, he couldn't, you know,
his half as long as in like war in prisons, jails. And, and so and at
the end of all this, he's still going to a core and at that point,
what are they going to do? He's already been through everything.
So what did that what did it what was the result? The result was
they couldn't get anything on him. I mean, he died a natural death.
And, like his, his one come out to Turks, anti religious program went
into full swing, his Tafseer of the Quran was being shared
secretly, like all over Turkey. And when Ataturk got you know, his
power went away. There was this, like he couldn't destroy faith. So
Islam survived because of the wrestler nor in Turkey. And let's
let's see.
In 30 years, yeah, when the last of the chemists have died, who
already a small number, anyway, yeah, they're dwindling. But when
the last of the Kemalists have died, how many praises are sung of
Ataturk and how many sung of
which is go up by what you said virtue, search, resilience and
trust in a lot. And some of those moments in which he was alone with
Allah Tala. That's when Allah comes to love a person.
Absolutely. When Allah loves a person, that's it, he's going to
meet, he will raise their name. He'll raise their name, even if
it's across seas across centuries. So Parnell I mean, I read this
stuff. I'm like, I'm nowhere near the ballpark of these people. But
I'm like, I know that's possible. So just because I see this written
in books by actual people that lived I'm like, you know that
that's possible. Yeah. And here's the thing when when you have
people like him, yeah, they this is not what they wanted. Right?
But what Allah has planned for them is something different.
Right? So people get people plan for one thing, they end up being
really legends for totally different reasons. And he was
hated during his lifetime. He was an enemy of the state, and he died
as an enemy of the state. And I was also unpopular in the eyes of
people. Yeah. And he was he was known, right, though he was known
he was, the thing is that people loved him, but they couldn't
express it, because of the Comala thing. Right? He had a small band
of followers, he or many, he had many, like COVID followers,
people, like people loved his writings, because for the first
time, he was making, like he was speaking to them. You know, he
took on the materialism of his time. And he you know, he showed
why belief at God belief, the six pillars is so actually argued that
that's amazing stuff that is amazing and change lives.
Well, there's a biography of him, that I actually have it on my
shelf. And for some reason, I didn't really know much about it,
to be honest with you. And I never read it, to be honest, but I'm
actually going to pick it up soon. Oh, he's definitely an Olia is one
of the miracles, He has miracles. Unbelievable. I mean, just his,
his his, that fight is greater than any miracle like to last, to
be resilient to make it through this trial. Or what's better that
or someone who walks on a lake, right? Okay, that's really nice.
But that's a peacetime miracle. Right? We need the serious ones
where it's a wartime and the and the whole society is being fought.
So
that's beautiful. And we got two hours and 38 minutes one of our
longer podcasts, but this is almost like a textbook type of
podcast. And if you're, you know, someone who's who's interested in
learning this stuff.
Can Can you start leaking these sections into little blog?
posts short just in little sections or little sections and
then people could actually slowly get the yeah get the get the
written content as well as the, you know this audio content. Just
come along here on everyone. Close with our duat Subhanak hola como
behenic Chateau La ilaha illa, Anta stuff we're going to do in a
class in Santa Fe hosted Illa Lilina Avenue. I'm going to slide
ahead what Soviet Hawk was Saab was Salam o.
Thank you very much.