The Deen Show – Science vs the new religion Scientism (with Evolution)
AI: Summary ©
The "openness of life" program on a radio show discusses the benefits of using a light bulb instead of a weather warning light for a better day, including avoiding distractions and waking up from napkin's eye. The program also emphasizes the importance of being aware of the surrounding universe and its beauty.
AI: Summary ©
Good production. You got a story when Richard Dawkins was asked about the origin of life meaning if life exists outside our universe, and if so, have aliens made contact with us?
On time we were fish. What is the evidence for this? We're climbing trees. This is not something based on scientific evidence. This is from the world of apes, monkeys, the first person to actually say that Darwinism was a religion. And here you go. And it says,
support here on the deen show.
Subscribe right now. hit that notification bell. Help us get our numbers back up. Did you know that many years ago, the de show when we started 2006 We used to broadcast for many years on Khalifa clothing channel, currently known as digital minbar. So we try to get our numbers back up because the channel at that time got closed, then we started the official diesel channel, we're trying to get our numbers back up to where they should be. And that's this number here, a 55 combined where we currently have 442 We should be over a million subscribers help us to get our numbers back to where they should be with that small setback that we had many years ago. You guys can help us by
Subscribing right now and hitting that notification bell. Thank you very much. Enjoy the show sommelier. And don't forget to support us on our Patreon page Dean
show.
Bismillah Alhamdulillah us Salaam Alaikum. Welcome to the show. I'm Eddie or host subscribe if you haven't already. My next guests have or Ahmed is the author of the forthcoming book, a failed hypothesis. He is part of the Sapiens Institute team. He is a public speaker debater and writer he focused on gauging with new the new Atheism and has also traveled extensively across the globe teaching Muslims how to articulate Islam to non Muslims. So who are specializes in the philosophy of science with a focus on Darwin's theory of evolution. He has debated many prominent atheists over the years including professors atheist activist and internet personalities on the topics of science,
God's existence and Darwinism. He has given talks across North America, Latin America, Australia, Africa, the list goes on. So who here has a MA in philosophy from Birkbeck College, University of London, he is currently a PhD candidate specializing in the philosophy of biology. You got to know him a little bit, you're gonna get to know him a little bit more as we talk about evolution, and also this new religion. There's so many man made religions. Another one's been added to the bunch called scientism. So let's enjoy this week's show with our brother. Our guests. Score Ahmed Salam aleikum. Wa they come from Eddie
Al hamdu, Lillahi Rabbil aalameen. How are you? Alhamdulillah thank you for inviting me on the show. Alhamdulillah. So you heard me talk about this new religion. There's so many man made religions you'd like there's a new one added to the bunch. Have you heard of it scientism? Yet. scientism is a very interesting one. As you know, Eddie, that you know, you've been you've been on the internet long enough to know that every couple of years something becomes more popular than others. And you get these, you know, New Age beliefs, you get all these different types of things. So scientism is one of those things that's always been there in the background, but the last couple of years is
really come to the fore. So scientism is essentially using the cloak of science to push out a religious ideology, a philosophy, so it's using the word science and and the language of science and the if you like the status of scientists to actually push out something, which is nothing to do with science. So we can define it
in the following way, it is an excessive belief in the scientific method, and a popular level this leads to some very false claims by by people who subscribe to scientism. So the thing is, firstly, no one will call themselves a scientism proponent, right? They will not say, I believe in scientism, they'll just say things like, and I'm going to ask you whether you've heard this before. I don't believe in God, I believe in science. There's no scientific proof for that. So I cannot believe it. For anything to be believable. It has to be scientific. Have you ever heard anything like this before? You hear this a lot? Yeah, absolutely. I've heard that. Definitely. Yes, dad is scientific
Person A lot of times who's, you know, just repeating this is just somebody a lot of times who has no idea really what true science is, you know what I mean has probably even taken a science class. Absolutely. I mean, usually, what
It's like his, it's a get out of jail card. It's like, okay, what? Okay, I don't really have a way of responding to you. Okay? So, you know, give me scientific evidence, like, forgot, right? So what we need to do is we actually need to break down this worldview did this actual philosophy, this actual religion of scientism? So the first thing to know about these people is that they say, for something to be knowledge, it has to have scientific evidence. And if something does not have scientific evidence, therefore, it cannot be knowledge. Right. And later on, in the discussions, they will say things like, well, since there is no scientific evidence for God, there is no God,
because they consider the only type of evidence to be scientific evidence. So that's the first claim we're going to break down inshallah. So that's what we're going to start with. Okay, go ahead. Let's break that down. Okay. So we can ask a series of questions to the person, we can ask them. So you've said that you only believe in knowledge, if it can be scientifically verified on the person would have is yes, because that's what they were alluding to earlier. You can ask them a series of questions you can ask them. Okay, my, my friend, do you have?
A great, great, great, great going back 5060 generations a grandfather? Do you do you actually have a grandfather going back 5060 generations? Or what were they going to say? Yes. They're gonna say yes. Okay. And let's just say I was to push it a bit and say, Are you sure about that you like certain you have knowledge of this? No doubt. They'll say, no doubt, no doubt. Exactly.
Then I'll say to them, Well, can you give me any scientific evidence for the existence of your 50th? Generation going back? Grandfather, what scientific evidence is, they'll say, I got some pictures of me and grandpa. Okay, good. Now, the problem there is, if the pictures did exist, how do we know that actually, your grandpa could just be your great uncle, it could be some other guy. But going back 50 generations? Obviously, there were no pictures back then. Yeah. What other sort of evidence could they use? So they're gonna, they're gonna go ahead and pretty much testify, testify about evidence, you know, said, because it's come down from my, my,
my mother, my father, my grandfather, etc. Yeah, exactly. So they're gonna say, Well, this, I know, because my mom told me and my dad told me and they were told by their parents that so going back, this must have happened. There's also something else right, so that what you just referred to correctly is known as testimony, right? That's a rule of knowledge as well independent of science. So we know history to through testimony, how do we know for example, that Caesar existed or Kangaskhan existed, and Napoleon existed people that we do believe existed? It's not from science, it's actually true testimony. Because no, yeah, if they're to turn around and say, well, I could
somehow find my grandfather's grave and do a DNA test. Well, even if you could find your grandfather's 50 generations going back to his particular grave, you haven't done that test right now. But you believe right now that that your grandfather did exist, going back 50 generations, does testimonial knowledge. There's also something else that they could respond with, they could say, well, I exist, my father existed, and going back logically, his father must have existed. And going back using using logical deduction, my 50s generation Grandfather must have existed. That's just pure logic going down. So again, that's another rule of knowledge, which is logic, which has nothing
to do with science. So so far, just by one question, we've got two sources of knowledge, which are independent of science. Now, I could ask a third. So a second question to the person asking. So go ahead, start. So your testimony, what was the other one? Logic? Logic is? Yeah, so you're using logic to come up with
conclusions, right? That's got nothing to do with science. Okay, so you can ask them another question. You could say to them, okay.
Do you believe that if you see a child being run over deliberately, that you see that happening? There's an evil person and they run over a child and they kill a child? You see this horrific sight? Do you feel that that is evil? Do you feel that that is wrong?
They will they won't they say they're gonna agree. Yeah. They're gonna agree. Yes. And do you believe that if somebody ran in front and save the child just before we got hit, that that would be a good thing to hear? Oh, yes. Okay. So these feelings that you
You have these morals that you have, right? How passionate are you about these things? Very passionate, very passionate. In fact, Eddie, human history is a history of people rising up for moral reasons. You know, you have you have the entire history of humanity, when you break it down, you find that the mole movements throughout history, even today, we get massive moral social movements. So someone says, I only believe in something, if it can be scientifically demonstrated, verified, approved, then we can simply say, then we could simply say to them, well, that child being saved about child horrifically being killed. There is no scientific evidence for right and wrong,
but you believe in it, and you believe it to be true. So if you were to deny
knowledge, that does not knowledge that does not come through science, you are to deny good and bad, and duties and you're to deny morality and in fact, civilization. In fact, you are denying what makes us human? Right. So so far, we have logic, we have testimony, and we have morality, our belief in morals. So just by asking a few questions, we can actually show that scientism is falling apart. Now I'm going to ask another question to the person when I say to them, Do you believe that the world is real? That you and I are talking right now and the world is real?
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, what if this world is real? Then what is the scientific evidence that the world is real? There is actually no argument you can make that using science that this world is real, all you could simply say is well, for science to even work for anything to even make sense. The world being real is something we axiomatically all accept, we all accept it is something for which we don't need to give scientific evidence for, but it's knowledge we all have. So now we have self evident truths, things that we know to be true, but we don't actually, we can't actually prove those things scientifically. So so far, we've had, you know, a few routes of knowledge. There's also
something else that we could speak about, which is mathematics, we could ask them, you know, a squared plus b squared, a c squared, right? You do this in school, you know, you solve all these things. Are those things, scientific knowledge? No, those are mathematical knowledge. So using these different types of thought experiments, we can show them that your scientism worldview actually completely falls apart just by asking a few surface level questions. So what's the difference now between scientism? And science? Good. So science is the application of reason to the natural world. It is a way of understanding, explaining, analyzing, making predictions, and so on and so forth. So
science is a beautiful thing. We love science, we don't have a problem in science. Science is a method of trying to gain knowledge about the real world. Now, we have no problem with someone that believes in science because we believe in science, when someone takes science and says, No, this rule of knowledge is the only route of knowledge. Everything else is irrelevant. That is scientism where they've taken the garb of science. And they've actually excessively applied it to other domains of knowledge and try to monopolize them and said, No, the only type of knowledge is scientific knowledge. So that's the difference between scientism and science. What are the main
claim claims of scientism? So we covered
their claim about monopolizing knowledge. Another thing that we see is that usually the proponents of scientism, in the popular culture. And I don't want to get into the academic discussion about scientism, and the academic definitions, because those are different to what we face in the public. But one of the things that proponents usually and you get this a lot at colleges, universities, you get this a lot in terms of the internet, atheists, is they will make claims of science being certain science giving absolute knowledge, you know, that science is there to give you knowledge, which is not going to change, which is absolutely certain. And that's a claim that we can actually challenge
through, you know, again, asking a few questions. So what we could do about this claim is we could ask them,
Is it not true that a scientific theory that we have today we are basing it upon the knowledge that we have gained, so that's something that we all agree about? However, isn't it all
so true that we haven't got all of the information that's in the world. So tomorrow, we could gain a novel piece of data or novel, you know, observation, which could challenge our previous theory, that's a very simple point, you don't have all the knowledge in the world tomorrow, you can come up with something that you haven't seen before, that can contradict your previous theory, this in the philosophy of science, is known as the problem of induction, that you cannot be certain of a theory that you've come up with today. Because tomorrow, you can come up with an observation or a piece of data that will contradict your previous theory. So that's the first point that we can make. And it's
known as the problem of induction. The second point is
underdetermination, underdetermination. So underdetermination, is that using the same data, we can come up with many different types of inferences, we can come up with many different types of ways of looking at the ways of looking at the conclusion. So I'll ask you a question on this. Say I give you $5, right. And I tell you to go down to downtown Chicago, and I want you to use up the $5 and to buy apples and oranges. So you have to come back both with apples and oranges. Okay. And say the apple costs $1. And the orange costs $1. So both of those items are $1. And I sent you away with this, you have to spend the full $5.
And when you come back, I want you to bring apples and oranges. And both of them are $1 each. Okay? Now,
what are you going to come back with when you when you come back? From shopping? Apples and oranges and no money? No apples and oranges? No money. Exactly. Now here, here's the problem, Edie right? You could get three oranges, and two apples. That's a possibility. Or you can get four oranges, and one apple, you get the point. There's many different combinations using the data that you have to use $5 using the data is $1 each, and you have to get both apples and oranges. Just those three pieces of data. You can come back with a lot of combinations. Yeah. Likewise, I theory is inferred from the data, but the data we can use to infer other theories, okay, this is known as
underdetermination. Now, a lot of the time these people who believe in scientism, and are using the garb of scientism, as you rightly pointed out, they probably haven't even done a science class at a graduate level, right. So they usually run away by the time you've highlighted just one or two problems. But just just for the sake of it, I'll just quickly go over some more.
We also have theory lateness in which the theory colors, the data, we also have
problem of unconceivable alternatives, where they are solutions to the data that we have, but we can't think of them because we haven't actually conceived on them. This happened during the time, we can see between Newton and Einstein. And then there's another issue of methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism. You know, Eddie, even before you get to these points, usually find that you don't need to go that far.
They realize that they tried to hoodwink you. And you know, you're not having it. It's over. Yeah, it's over basically. Yeah. Yeah. So there's, there's one claim, I think this is the most preposterous is that science disproves the creator god. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is the most ridiculous one. Yep. So what you because because I haven't there have been I mean, there are so many scientists, and I want to get into this. In a few that now, the institution has been pretty much set up. That is the atheist secular Institute and these secular institutions. Atheism is the religion pretty much and now all these people who who fight for creationism, you know, they've kind of been
blacklisted. You know, they're the ones who are not invited to the parties they're like, is like they don't even exist. Yeah. So they're scientists, also, they're also academics who went to the same schools. Absolutely. Look, I think the first point to note here is they're using an argument, and their argument is this. Hey, look, guys, look at all these scientists, you know, all of them today, or most of them or a large percentage of them. They happen to be agnostic or atheist. So, therefore, agnosticism or atheism must be coming from science. That's their basic argument, right? And they'll throw out all sorts of statistics like 90 something percent in the American Association
of scientists or whatever
Do not believe in a personal God and all this type of stuff. And you find people like Richard Dawkins, who are quite well known, popularizing these arguments in their books. Now, the problem with this argument is let's just not break down why this arguments wrong. Let's actually use this argument against them. So their argument is, oh, wow, look at all these scientists today. And they all must be, you know, they all doubt the existence of a personal God. So therefore, we should all basically become atheists. The problem with this argument is, this is a very small snapshot of history. If we actually go back, and we look at the entire scientific enterprise, over hundreds of
years, we will find that the majority of the scientists were fierce, they were people who believed in God. So if we were to use this argument for the 19th century, 20th century, 21st century, going back all the way to the 10th century. And if we were to do that, then we would say the vast majority of scientists throughout history, were theists. That's what we should all become theist. So the problem with the argument is it can work against them. The second thing is, it's not actually a valid argument, if all the sign if all the scientists in the world today decided something that they believed in, right? Does that mean that we should all like sheep without thinking, start following
them? That's not true at all. What we need to understand is that the Atheism and agnosticism of today, which generally dominates the scientific domain, in terms of the Western world, this has cultural origins, more than anything to do with science itself. So we have to understand that this argument is not valid, it works against them and to
is trying to invoke this type of sheepish behavior from us. But the fact is, we shouldn't actually fall for those types of arguments. There is nothing absolutely nothing that science can do to undermine God's existence. The issue they have is scientism. They say, because there is no scientific evidence of God. Therefore, there is no God. And we're going to we're going to turn around and say to them, we never said there has to be scientific evidence for God, we can come up with rational arguments for God. The problem with you guys is you think rationality and science is the same thing, which is the problem of scientism.
That takes me back to what you mentioned a prominent
I would say, because you've instead extensively studied, I mean, debated and you've got a lot of knowledge in this new Atheism. What's the difference before prior to my ads, asking my question atheism for people that I know and this when you put the term new Atheism? What's the difference now show theism and new Atheism? And then rescue my question? Yeah, that's a very good question actually. Because that can get confusing. So, atheism is generally a position in which you do not believe there is a God or you are,
you know, you, we have agnostic atheism as well, where people are kind of like unsure, but it's just a position that somebody holds that look, I don't believe in God, I'm, I'm an atheist, right? new Atheism is actually a social movement, or we can say was a social movement is really dying down now. So this movement was really spearheaded after 911 by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens, who are known as the Four Horsemen of atheism. And their ideas collectively came out so you had The God Delusion coming out by Richard Dawkins. Yeah, at the end of faith you had God is not great. I forgot Daniel Dennett spoken all these guys started
publishing books, they started doing conferences, they started doing debates. Their view was okay, we're gonna finish religion you know, we're gonna kill religion, we're gonna do this. And you can see this in the videos, them openly saying this. And it turned out to be a really flat footed assumption of theirs, that they could just, you know, swipe away Islam swipe away, Christianity just wipe away faith from the hearts of people because, you know, back in 2006, when they were making these types of noises were here in 2021. And what we find is that their movement basically fell apart. It didn't really gain as many followers as they actually wanted to. They even wanted to move
into politics, some of them right
I mean, other New Atheists started you know, rallying for these types of reason rally in America and you know, all this type of stuff.
But But that's, that's the actual difference. So one is a social, contemporary movement, and one is
Just a position that someone holds. So is it safe to say these are like the radical atheist like the ISIS atheists? Well, the thing, which is very interesting, and I'm glad you get my point, these, these are the ones who are kind of the extreme atheist. Well, what we what we would say is that,
say when you come up with because then then, uh, Sam Harris, wasn't he the one that said I'd blow up Mecca, we should, we should actually actually one of the things he wrote about was new king, new new king, Makkah. And also what you find amongst them is they openly talk about discriminating against Muslims, they're doing these types of things. Edie I think is very important to understand that these people they do they do not call for violence. So even when when Sam Harris says these things, he's saying them as a hypothetical thing. So you know, they wouldn't, they wouldn't be violent themselves or call for violence. But what we do need to understand is they don't have power, right?
They don't actually have power, they just have the ability to write some books. And so they're playing the system, but if like if they had the power be a different story. Well, I, I wouldn't say if these guys had the power, they would actually be violent. Why would say is, let's look at what happened when atheist did have power? That's the point. Yeah. When you sample the, you know, communist Russia, you know, the hundreds of millions of people, not hundreds of
what's it called? One of the stats is 100 million people died in the century because of communists, you know, how many times during the reign of the bushes? Yeah, exactly, exactly. You get, you know, horrific crimes against religious communities, you get, you know, all these types of destruction of religious property. Innocent people get killed, you know, and we see this in, for example, not only when these communist countries take over, you know, their own regions, but also when they take over Central Asian countries, like was Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and all these places. Because you often hear the, you know, the cliche, the argument, the mantra that people are like, all
religions are the cause of our war, right. But when you get down to the nitty gritty, I mean, it's actually the people who are godless who don't believe in a God because there's no moral compass, so they can do whatever they want. And historically, this is what we see even currently, what's happening. A modern day Inquisition is happening. What right now with the, with the ogre Muslims, right, and that's a communist party that's killing, * in the world is like asleep. Absolutely. And the thing is, when these people say, Look, we're peaceful atheists, but we're just, you know, intellectually trying to challenge you guys, we would return and say to them, well, that's fine. You
know, you're peaceful, and all of that, you guys, but look at what the people who subscribe to your worldview have done in the past. So you can't say this against the Muslim community, oh, Muslims are violent, because this this, this thing happened and those people share your faith. And then when it comes to the people who share your faith, because atheism is a faith that you don't need to answer for them, I mean, we will openly condemn terrorism, we will openly condemn extremism will openly condemned these things. But you guys, you don't even accept that they're part of your flock, when they clearly are Stalin, Lenin, Chairman Mao, who were these people, they weren't Christians, or
Muslims or Jewish people. They were militant atheists. And they believed they actually believed and reinforce this throughout their territory that they wanted to basically replace religion and have themselves and their ideologies as the supreme things. Because if you don't believe in God, if you do not have any belief in God, if you reject the hereafter, and you have ultimate power, we know in their minds, at least the the sort of power that they thought they had, then what's to stop that evil that they have within themselves, right. And that's why you find mass atrocities committed by these atheists in the 20th century. So you can take a you can make a good guess that the people that
you mentioned, these are like the modern day Prophets for the new Atheism, these militant atheists. Now the new who follow this new Atheism, I mean, you could just take a good guess, like, what side would they be on? Where were they kind of like fit in if they had the power? Well, why why it's not a far stretch. What was a nation where someone is talking about, you know, oh, we should nuke it. But, you know, if they had the power, why would they push the button? Well, this is quite interesting, because I think a lot of these people would never want atheist to have that much political power. And, you know, it's very interesting. I've actually been seeing
amongst some of these atheists that they see a utility in religion, as long as someone else does the believing, right? Because they know themselves
they know themselves deep down, that they would rather be in a society in which you have, you know, you have many different religions, many different systems, many different things going on, then be in a state like communist Russia, or you know, the states, which are, you know, we there's only one ideology, and they have all this type of power. But I mean, definitely, with people like Sam Harris, and you know, these like who, who openly advocate, you know, these types of ideas, one can only guess what's going through their head, and what would happen if they actually had power? That's crazy. So let's go back to because it's intertwined. All together, scientism? And then how would you
fit in evolution with scientism?
That's a good point. It doesn't kick it off. Yeah, I mean,
it's like,
once they get the first assumption wrong, once they, you know, the first assumption wrong, yes, once they step into the arena with the wrong lens, then everything else starts messing up. So if they go into evolutionary theory, with the idea that science is the only route of knowledge, with the idea that science is certain, and with the idea that science undermines God, which are the three main claims that you hear these popularizers talk about, then you will come up with really absurd conclusion. So one of the things that these guys do, is they say, evolutionary theory, undermines Darwinian theory undermines the existence of God, it does away with God's existence, there is no
need for God's existence. Now, this is one of the most popular ideas out there, that somehow Darwin came along. And he absolutely destroyed intellectually, the any idea of, of there being a divine being. Now what's interesting about this is although you find people like Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss and all these people saying this, they themselves, deep down, no, this is not the case. Darwin was never an atheist. This is something very interesting. Hold on. See, this is a lot of people don't know this. I mean, this is something that is just for someone listening to you right now. Please repeat that. Yeah, so Darwin
was never an atheist. In fact, Darwin did not like his theory being used to buttress atheism. In fact, he said in my wildest fluctuations, I was never an atheist. When he published his book in 1859, he was what we would call a deist, according to his own words, a Deist. a deist, is somebody who believes in God but does not believe in religion. So when he published the Origin of Species, he believed in God, prior to that, some decades back, he was a Christian, near the end of his life, he became an agnostic, because of the problem of evil and suffering. Now, what they do is they only take what fits their narrative. So when Darwin openly says that, you know, someone can be a theist
and believe in his theory, they'll ignore that part. But what they will do is when Darwin is, for example, being attacked by like, he was attacked by some Christians when he was alive, they would use that and say, look, they were suppressing him. And you know, he was being mocked and this and that. So they try and create this false dichotomy. Use Darwin versus theism, Darwin versus God, when Darwin was a lot more sophisticated in his thinking, and he was a lot more respectful to the belief in God and a lot more respectful, in fact, to Christianity as well. Most people don't know they hear the term evolution they ascribe that it's scientific. It's golden, this the new discoveries where
we're in the modern day, so I want to I want to share this video with you and let's just kind of you know, look through it real quickly and then get your thoughts on it
see, notice one thing I want to show you got good production, you got a story, and you got a lot of fun.
So I kind of go through this quickly.
You're familiar you're biologists you're familiar with all these right? Okay, keep going. Keep going. One time we were fish
this is the evolution
they're explaining Correct. Yep. Okay
now we're about to take a big jump now. And now we're out of the water.
We're climbing trees.
Now we're in the world of the Apes monkeys.
And here you go. And this is
support here on the D show.
Okay, is that pretty accurate? That's like the mainstream. Yeah, I mean, this is, this is the traditional view of the tree of life and how life evolved. And stuff. However, I just want to point out some things just within the few seconds of the opening. Here's a huge, huge
state statement that was there with absolutely no evidence today, right there the so what they'll say is, okay, so in the beginning, there was the cell, right? There was the cell, and that cell came from primordial soup or whatever, right? You have all these all these different ideas that they have. Now, they call this a biogenesis. They call this from non life to life, right? Now, we need to simply ask them, What is the evidence for this?
And just by that question, you will rattle them, you will actually repeat the question then simply ask them, What is the evidence for a biogenesis? What is the evidence that life came from non life? And also what is the evidence that there was one origin of life that there was one, self replicating molecule, sell whatever? Just ask them this question? And see what their responses because, you know, you know, you can get into all sorts of
deep technical analysis of all these models that they have a great scientist to look at. This is Dr. James tall, he blows out of the water, all of these, you know, pathetic claims that they've worked out a biogenesis, they worked out how life came from non life, but you can simply ask them, okay, so you just made this claim, and this supposedly happened 4 billion years ago.
Can you explain to us what's the evidence for this
prize if they even give you an answer? Yeah, that's, that's deep. I mean, so that goes back to is it belief? Or is it fact because you have to take a big leap of faith, what they usually again, attribute to religion and God. So because so your is it synonymous? What you're saying, as if you're asking for observable testable evidence? Yep. So you know, I think this is where
it's very important for us to talk about,
it is way more than just a scientific claim. They have faith in this. This is, if you like, the atheist Genesis story. This was the origin story. They have absolutely no evidence that there was one cell, right and and 4 billion years ago, these things happened. But since they believe there is no God, then they have to come up with some sort of story. And that is the story that they actually come up with. Now I have respect for those evolutionary biologists and those philosophers who openly speak up and criticize these issues. So what we'll find is that and here, I'm going to speak about atheists and agnostics, I'm not talking about Christians, or Muslims or Jewish people, anybody with
some sort of belief in religion. So we have people like
the atheist philosopher, Thomas Nagel, who wrote the book, mind in Cosmos,
which is published by Oxford University, and he mentions this he actually mentions that, you know, the idea that life came from non life and all of this naturalistically evolved, this is not something based on scientific evidence, this is some a paradigm which they have, and it's just, you know, difficult to actually question and anybody that tries to question it is actually, you know, ridiculed. Then you get people like Jerry Fodor, who you know, when he tried to question Darwinism, he was called a secular creationist. They couldn't call him a creationist because he was an atheist. Then you get people like James Shapiro, Masatoshi Nye, Lynn Margulis, you get these biologists who
openly say that,
you know, Darwinian evolution is is essentially a religion, right? In fact, Lynn Margulis says something very interesting. She was the late wife of Carl Sagan, the famous physicist, right. So although she was an atheist, she said, you know, history will judge Neo Darwinism to be an Anglo Saxon I Anglo Saxon religion, right. So the
problem here is that there is a huge pressure in academia to suppress information which goes against Darwin's theory. And, you know, the, the, the worry about creationism and you know, these these guys coming in, there's a fantastic documentary creationist, what do you say back then when they say you're a creationist that I hit it? Is that the one? Yeah, yeah so unguided, undesigned way, the theory of evolution Excuse me. Yes. been outed life begin in the first place. Mr. Stein, you have the same question every time. Well, you never answered sir. It develops this. We are.
You know, we've been through this so many times, you haven't been an intelligent designer?
Sorry, I cut you off. But did I hit it? Right? It's like,
Is that the one? That's the one and that documentary is amazing. We didn't we didn't plan this. See. But this is an amazing documentary. What the first person you showed was actually
Dr. Jonathan wells, right.
So you find him in there, you find Stephen Meyer, you find Michael B. Paul Nelson, and some of these people Alhamdulillah they've come on to my channel. And I've actually interviewed them as well. The fact is that these are people who were academically, not given the freedom to express their views, because they were coming up with information going against, you know, Darwinian theory that the contemporary ideas that we actually have. So these are guys associated with the intelligent design movement, the movement, which is there to not just say, Okay, let's just take, you know, Darwinian evolution, throw it out, and let's just start teaching religion. No, these are people who are
saying, no, let's have a discussion. You can have your Darwinian evolution, we can have our intelligent design hypothesis. Let's have a scientific discussion, and they're being denied that. So you know, no free no intelligence allowed is the name of the documentary and right near the end of the documentary, when it comes to the origin of life. Remember, I told you, Eddie, they don't really have an answer. When Richard Dawkins was asked about the origin of life, he actually said, it's possible that life originated from aliens who sent down life on Earth. I don't know if you see, go ahead, finish. That's crazy. I always say that whenever I'm talking about the topic of atheism, I
always mentioned that they always and this is the lay person, they come out and they start talking, they won't believe in the Creator, but they'll start talking about aliens. Yeah. And you know, what's, what's interesting is, they'll try and label it in a very fancy way. So for example, the actual term for this is called panspermia, panspermia and Francis Crick, the one who discovered the double helix shape of the DNA. He's the one who proposed this idea. He was an atheist, and he couldn't explain the complexity of life. So he had this idea that life was sent to Earth via rockets from you know, extraterrestrials living some place else. And you know, when Richard Dawkins was
because, you know, obviously, he's a fan of Crick, and when he was asked by,
by the interviewer in this particular documentary near the end, okay, so if life was sent down by these aliens to Earth, where did the aliens come from? And he said, they evolved from Darwinian evolution.
But basically, it's just passing on the buck is laughable at this point. And but but it's crazy people still keep buying their books. People still keep, you know, still in line to get more of the stories. But like I said, when I showed you this clip, is a story. It's good production, and it's well funded.
Let me get into the clip. That's part of the documentary that I wanted to show you. Well, I usually don't get the opportunity. What's at stake for you personally are first of all, I love science. I think the way Darwinism corrupts the evidence distorts the evidence is bad for science. Well, the other signs would tell you to just shut up if you love science,
because you're sort of you're sort of being a bombshell or into science, that I am upsetting the applecart. And I think I think it deserves to be upset in this case. Why? Because the evidence has been distorted to prop up a theory that I think doesn't fit it was Darwin isn't really that bad. Perhaps a change of scenery would give me a fresh perspective
so that it could be correct. That's a very different question. One of the one of my prevailing doctrines about Darwinian theory is men that that thing is just a mess. It's like looking into a room full of smoke. Nothing, nothing in the theory is precise.
Clearly carefully defined and delineated. It lacks all of the rigor one expects from mathematical physics and mathematical physics lacks all the rigor one expects from mathematics. So we're talking about a gradual descent down the level of intelligibility until we reach evolutionary biology. We don't even know what a species is for heaven's sakes. So his theory is smoke, but elegant smoke. There's a certain elegance to it. But you know, I think Einstein had the appropriate remark, he preferred to leave elegance to his tailor, a room full of smoke. That certainly wasn't what I was hearing from prominent Darwinist, like Richard Dawkins, evolution is a fact. It's a fact which is
established as securely as essentially any other fact that we have in science. Richard Dawkins is so confident that evolution is a fact. And that therefore God doesn't exist, that he has devoted his entire life to spreading the evolution gospel. I'm an atheist with respect to the Judeo Christian God, because there is not a shred of evidence in favor of the Judeo Christian God. It is, it is completely right to say that since the evidence for evolution is so absolutely, totally overwhelming, nobody who looks at it could possibly doubt that if they were saying, and not stupid, so the only remaining possibility is that they're ignorant, and the most, most people who don't
believe in evolution are indeed ignorant. But the people I spoke with weren't ignorant. They were highly credentialed scientists. So there had to be something else going on here. So you think the whole theory of evolution is false, or just certain parts of it? Well, again, evolution is a slippery word, I would say minor changes within species happen.
But Darwin didn't write a book called How species how existing species change over time, he wrote a book called The Origin of Species. He purported to show how this same process I say, leads to new species, in fact, every species, and the evidence for that grand claim is, in my opinion, almost totally lacking. How does Darwin or Darwinism, say life began? What he didn't know? And in fact, nobody knows. So Darwinism strictly defined starts after the origin of life.
From the back to the front, nobody knows. But we know. It's in the Quran. It's, it's there. But we're talking about from the academic circles here. They don't know. But you have, in the beginning, he talks about the scientists are talking about it's like a room of smoke, elegant smoke. Yeah, I mean, this is where, you know, we can give people a very good solution, we can say to them, Look, when you are working within the field of science, when you're at university, or any of these things, you can accept any scientific theory, even Darwinian evolution as a valid scientific theory paradigm model. But you don't accept it to be literally true. Because the real issue here, Eddie, is that
people don't understand the philosophy of science. And nor do they understand the science itself. When it comes to evolutionary theory. They don't understand the alternatives to Darwinian evolution, like intelligent design, because intelligent design is not allowed to be taught, in fact, critics, critics, critics of Darwin, who themselves are not even Christian or Muslim, or have any faith, they themselves have also been, you know, sideline. So if a theory is, you know, so robust, then why are they afraid of a bit of criticism? Why are they afraid of actually having a dialogue like these guys that you just showed in this documentary, rather than canceling them? Was any better to actually
bring them into a room? Ask them? Where's your argument? Where's my argument? Okay, let's have a and it's a natural selection of ideas and someone wins. But we don't have that. And, you know, it's quite sad. They want to shut down the debate. I mean, they have, they have shut down the debate in academia. If you say intelligent design, like, if you try and publish a paper, if you cannot, there is no debate in academia on this right now, in a significant way, because they are canceling people left, right and center. Why people are scared of actually saying that they're planning on writing stuff on this. Wow, that is deep. If you think about it, I mean, this just takes you down to just
you know,
you can just go in so many directions here. If you think about this, now we're a freedom of speech. We're in America right? We should be able to talk ideas. Now. I think everyone should watch this documentary. You just recommended I recommended it also before expelled no intelligence at all because it shows these are academic scientists who believe in a creator and now they're being silenced. They're being black listed. They cannot come out freely and talk about this. Yeah. Why? Because it goes against what the religion of
Have
of secularism? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a there's something very important. I think this is a good point to wrap up this whole segment, let me just add one more thing. And this is what the are you this is what the Muslims are getting in Christians and everyone that they're getting exposed to they're getting and this religion is pushed on you now, scientism evolution, you know that. So, again, not denying evolution, you know, to you can go ahead and and you know, the parts that the difference between micro and macro and whatnot, you know, yeah, I mean, thing is, look, generally the idea of evolution was known before Darwin. So we're not talking about the general observation of
evolution. We're talking about Darwin's particular claims about could you call it apt adaptation? Yeah, I mean, you could call it adaptation. But the real issue here is Darwin's twin claims of universal common ancestry and all of this happening naturally. Right? Without a you know,
with Neo Darwinism today, which is obviously moved away from Darwin becoming long millet, militantly atheistic, you know how, as Richard Dawkins calls it, the Blind Watchmaker, you know, there is no God. So that's the real issue here. Now, what's very interesting is, we are not the people, Muslims or Christians or people of faith. We are not the people who said Darwinian evolution is a religion. We're not the first person to actually say that Darwinism was a religion, that evolutionary humanism is a religion is actually a Darwinist. So, Julian Huxley was a very important figure in the early 20th century. He was somebody who was a philosopher, an atheist philosopher, a biologist, he
contributed significantly to Neo Darwinism, the contemporary theory that we actually have. And he believed that Darwinism what he termed evolutionary humanism, he believed it was a religion. He actually called it a religion. Now he's written a book in the 1930s, I believe, or early 40s. And it's called religion without revelation. Religion, you can Google it right now, the book is called religion without revelation without revelation. Yeah, in this book, that religion without revelation is evolutionary humanism, in his book, new bottles for new wine, which I was just reading, just two days ago. Again, he makes claims about, you know, Darwinian evolution you can see for him is
something way more than than just that, and I just want to highlight something about Julian Huxley. Julian Huxley believed that
in the in the same way today, in his time in the 40s, nobody believed that the Earth everyone accepted that the earth was not flat, right, everyone accepted that you know that the flat theory was wrong. He said, In the same way, in the future, no one will believe in God. And he believed that evolutionary humanism should be evangelized to the entire world, He actually believed this. Now, he wasn't just a lone wolf. He went on and Edie this is really going to send some shivers up your spine. He went on to become the founding father of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO goes first guy was Julian Huxley, you can go and Google
this. And UNESCO has an influence in terms of the entire world. So we need to understand this guy was an ideologue. He believed that this renewed religion needed to be evangelized. And he had this very important political position. Now in 2016, the most well known Darwinian author in the world, the most well known Darwinian academic in the world, the atheist philosopher, Michel rousse, he wrote a book and this book, I just want you to just understand the significance of this book. This book was called Darwinism as religion, Darwinism as religion, and this is published by none other than Oxford University. Right? So you have an atheist philosopher, publishing a book by Oxford
University, how much more credible can we get from their camp? Right? And he's far more, he's far more greater and status then people are Richard Dawkins in the field of Darwinian evolution. Now, he in in that book, he basically argues from the onset till today, Darwinian evolution may be a science scientific theory, but it has been more than that. It has been a perspective beyond just a scientific theory has been a religion, right? So what I want people to understand, especially people who disagree with us is we're not the ones saying that Darwinian evolution is a religion. This is your guys.
And it's your ideologues who have been behind this sociological movement to try and evangelize the world towards a Darwinian perspective. And that goes back to what I was trying to say was now you are going into a university, and if you're not equipped knowing these things, and now you see the professor, and he's fallen His Prophet, who's Richard Dawkins? And now this is someone who is spewing beautiful, you know, what you perceive, as you know, beautiful rhetoric and you're like, Wow, you just amazed at the words he's using and you're not well grounded in your deen. First of all, you don't know many of these things that you just uncovered. This is so important that you know
these things, you know that a lot of the stuff that they go ahead and teach this stuff is baseless. It's not on evidence, like you said, you know, this is a story. It's funded very well. And then you end up end up, you know, leaving your dean because it is. Absolutely, and I would add to that, Eddie, that you have some very good professors as well. You have some people who are although they're atheists, although they are Darwinist themselves, they would not be ideologically driven in the same way people are Richard Dawkins or so. On YouTube, you will find a talk between myself and a professor at the University of Birmingham, Professor Jeremy Prichard, who is a specialist in his
field. And we go over this right, even though he's on a is in a different camp. He's an atheist, and I'm a Muslim. And he's, you know, and we're not going to agree on everything. At that discussion we had is called does evolution undermine God? And he agreed that it doesn't. And you get professors like this who are open who say, No, you know, this is not true. You know, this isn't something that undermines belief in God. And it is much more complex than that much more sophisticated than that. Much more nuanced than that. But it's people like Richard Dawkins, who wants this war in the classroom between believers and atheists, and he wants to make it look like you have to be one or
the other. And you have to be each other's throats, when we're actually trying to give a much more
academic type of discourse here. Yeah, everybody's interested, they can go watch that talk, as well, as we wrap up now. Just a couple more points. I want to ask a couple more questions. So it really at the end, it's not, the bottom line is not truth in this in these academic settings, it's the bottom line is not it should be ultimately, if it's science, and you're following science, and you want to get to the truth of the matter. But at the end of the day, if you watch this documentary, it's like, okay, everything else can possibly, you know, we can entertain it, you know, the piggybacking of on the crystals, you know, that theory, we can entertain this, but as soon as it comes to intelligent
design, no, no, even if that's the truth, we won't accept that.
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.
What we need to do as as, especially as Muslims, is, you can have a large part of the world believing something, and we know this as Muslims. But that doesn't mean that is true. So you're gonna have a large part of the world, which right after 911 believed Islam was a certain type of ideology, but all those ideas were wrong. All of those, you know, people churning out those things. They were all wrong. So just because a lot of people are saying the same thing, sometimes you even we as Muslims, we think, man, I don't want to be that, like the black sheep, you know, sticking out in a crowd? You know, I want to be, you know, I just want to be with, you know, with everybody I
want to conform. But actually, Darwin himself stood out, he was like, No, this is, you know, that he didn't agree with the people of his time. So he came up with his own theory. So there's nothing wrong with being that black sheep. There's nothing wrong with standing up and saying, No, you know, we are going to stand up to this, we're going to, I mean, look at it from this perspective. Racism, say 60 years ago, was completely acceptable by in places like America, then you had, you know, Rosa Parks, you had these people who stood up and said, No, we're not going to accept this. And you find this in other parts of the world, you find this in indigenous communities, which aren't standing up
to say they're Spanish occupiers. You get this, you get this in the Indian subcontinent as well. So you know, we shouldn't be shy of going against the grain. We shouldn't be shy, as Muslims, as believers, as people who believe that we are upon the truth of going against something that may be very popular in society. It shouldn't upset us, right shouldn't scare us. We should actually be at the forefront of this. And what I would say is credit is due to the Intelligent Design guys, and obviously women as well, were involved, that they've they've stuck to their guns, you know, that they've really had this onslaught from all across, you know, the atheist world, and they managed to
stick in there. Yeah, and it surprised me who was this person again, this is that you said he claimed this
term that this evolution is actually a religion and to go ahead and spread this all over the world and Julian Huxley, that had me thinking like, what at the end? Are you spreading? Like what moral code? What moral compass? What are you giving to the what do you have to offer at the end? You know, and then contrast that with when we talk about, you know, Islam, for instance, submission to the Creator, not the creation, you're talking about spreading justice in the world, ending injustice, you're talking about ending hunger, feeding all of humanity, you're talking about free health care, you're talking about anything, everything that's good out there, you know, you're talking about
spreading peace, your peace acquired by submitting your will to God to the Creator. I mean, everything good, pure, this is what we're talking about giving to the world.
What are they talking about spreading at the end of the day, and you've raised a very good point. So I just want to
remind everybody of something very important in terms of the history of Darwinism, after Darwin's death.
In fact, while he was alive, this movement started that is known today as social Darwinism. Now, social Darwinism is essentially the ideas of Darwin applied to society. Not today, this is ridiculed as a pseudoscience, and no one takes it seriously. However, at the time, this was the good stuff. This was the stuff that was being pumped out of, even some universities, the Nazis took it to another level. And they started exterminating the weaker segments of their society. And, you know, people that they saw as a, you know, racially inferior, so, you know, social Darwinist, they would see the, you know, the strong capitalist surviving, and the weaker, weaker ones, you know, is not
having a duty towards them, eugenics, you know,
all this stuff, this, this is historically true, to know right survive very much it's survival of the fittest. In fact, today, right now, if you walk past a hospital, that is the survival of the fittest, and you're paying for it with your tax dollars, that goes against Darwinian theory, human behavior goes against Darwin's theory. So, you know, it's so important that we need to understand ideas like The Selfish Gene, you know, they promoted this type of capitalist culture, we can't deny these things. Now, obviously, there's some evolutionary thinkers today who are saying, oh, that's got nothing to do with us. That's fine. But historically, we know these things happen. And like you
said, Islam is there to teach you. You know, I'll say something funny it right. Why are people kind to each other for survival of the fittest?
They don't have an answer. So they think, Oh, the reason why you're nice is because you expect something back, which they call reciprocal altruism, or your soul, you're nice to somebody because they're related to you, because they hold your genes, they call that kin selection. We as Muslims say, We're nice to people, because we deep down a nice, because we have a fitrah. We believe in God, right? In fact, human beings generally, right, we have a lot of good within us, we have that good, which Islam is trying to amplify, right? That's a much more beautiful idea of human nature, than The Selfish Gene or social Darwinism of sociobiology, all this stuff that they try and color us with.
All right, go ahead and leave us with something purpose. That's the theme of the D show, trying to get people to reflect to think about their purpose, why they've been created. Why are they here in this life? And where are they going when they die? So leave us with something that you can have the university student, the person who follows scientism, and now he's questioning it. Leave us with something to have people, the light bulb go on to have them think more about what is the true purpose of life? What do you leave with? Absolutely, I mean, I would contrast two different perspectives. So one perspective is that we are created to worship God, what is worship, worship is
that we have love, hope, fear in the Creator. And everything we do we do for God alone, we call upon God alone, we make our lives not just a life, in which you need to work nine to five and provide for your family, and go out with your friends and do these things. But actually, there's a higher purpose of life, having that spiritual connection with God, having that connection with other human beings and being good to them for the sake of God, you know, all of these altruistic, higher ethics that Islam teaches, this is the purpose of life and what does it What does Islam essentially teach? Nothing is greater than the remembrance of God. So in this life as Eddie we know through your story,
right, and and we know through the stories of countless people, you know, alive today that you know, you can have everything this dunya has to offer but you will not have peace, ultimate peace comes through this
submission of the Creator. Now let's contrast this beautiful perspective with what Richard Dawkins says In The Selfish Gene. He says the ultimate rationale of life is survival and reproduction. So, the fact is, Islam is there to elevate you. And from the other perspective, how different are you from a cow? Like honestly, in fact, from our perspective, cows worship Allah from that perspective, if it's vibrant reproduction, you must just go to the field like well the way I could put it, we got this has to be mandatory watching for anyone in university about to go university they need to watch this episode as a very, very important episode, and inshallah God willing, this can help save some
people who might end up you know, falling for the trap of shade done. You know, who's setting these traps and misguiding people so inshallah this can be a great benefit and thank you so much for spending the time I can go on and on. I'm really enjoyed talking with you. It was a pleasure.
Always a pleasure with the ad. Inshallah we can do it again sometime soon. Inshallah. Allah bless you does Allah Hi. Thank you so much.
Salam aleikum. Wa Alaikum salam Rahmatullah.