How we Know God Created Nature
A quick review of Our God: Proving the existence of God by rational means.
I have very low expectations.
After many conversational turns, I eventually asked a Muslim to explain his fundamental assumption: that God created Nature:
He pointed me to a book, which he claimed contained the information I sought, and I was not even a little bit surprised to find that the closest it came was to attempt to excuse the fact that we cannot see God. I briefly began to copy the section in here, then discovered it was extremely long.
If There is a God,Why Can We Not See Him?
Page 6 claims to begin to address the question, asking “If There is a God,Why Can We Not See Him?” Apparently we assume God has a penis before we even determine it exists. The Author begins by dismissing and insulting people who dare ask such questions:
Whenever I hear people raising this question, I feel sorry for them. It is such a pity that when man stumbles and his reason becomes blunted by the veils of indifference, he starts denying even self-evident truths. When this objection was raised in the past — however absurd and baseless it was — it had the potential to deceive some ignorant people. But what surprises me is that this objection should be raised in the present age! I am truly astonished at the intellect of people who use such objections to justify their denial of God. But as it is a common objection, I will proceed to answer it, albeit briefly.
Not off to a good start. The Author, Hadrat Ahmad, starts the whole discussion off by insulting those who ask uncomfortable questions. Discouraging questions by insulting those who ask them is a warning sign of dishonesty, in my opinion. Ahmad then proceeds to perform the usual apologetics tap-dance about how there are things which cannot be seen, but are commonly known to exist. Invariably the examples presented in these sorts of dishonest attempts to excuse God’s nonexistence are all clearly observable properties of nature.
First, Ahmad sets up his strawman by describing the five senses, then says it’s not okay to use only one. So far, I agree. But Ahmad sees fit to rail against people who he believes make such silly demands. If I ever meet such a person, I shall join Ahmad in ridiculing their intellectually childish demands. He then moves on to a host of examples we cannot directly observe, but can easily observe indirectly:
- Magnetism (easily observed by the force it applies)
- Electricity
- Love (love without evidence is STALKING!)
Now he’s shifting the criteria for belief a little farther — to indirect evidence. That’s fine with me too. If I only ever accepted direct evidence of things, I’d be missing out on a lot of nature.
On page 10, he FINALLY starts to talk about God.
How then is it possible for God — who is not only Himself the most Subtle Being but is also the Creator of every subtle thing — to be seen by our physical eyes? The objection of the critics that they will not believe in God until they see Him with their eyes is, therefore, absurd.
Ugh. I think we’ve covered this already. I’ve never met any “critics” who demand visual evidence for a God. Ahmad digs this straw-man back up and continues to beat on it for a few more paragraphs. After this final rant, he begins to preach again. No additional description of reality is anywhere to be found. Just religious groveling about how great God’s “subtlety” is.
Methods of Inquiry into God’s Existence
Finally, we’re getting somewhere. I’ll admit I skipped the whole preceding section, which purports to justify the inquiry into God.
Now, I will describe briefly what methods to use in our investigation concerning [the existence of ] God;
If only that introductory sentence were true. It’s not. Instead, Ahmad prattles on about how digging a well the wrong way won’t work and it’s not God’s fault you wasted your effort. As with previous sections, this one seems to be written to make believers more comfortable with the idea that others will disagree with them. It provides a convenient way of blaming the “others” by assuming they’re simply incompetent well-diggers rather than acknowledging that God may actually not exist.
Ahmad then goes on to present a ridiculous false dichotomy. It’s so absurd that it’s worth a quick read. He believes that there are laws in religious study which parallel the laws in well-digging. These laws mean lots of people don’t discover God, but that’s a good thing because the only possible alternative is total chaos:
This set of laws is absolutely to our advantage, as without them it will be impossible for man to progress intellectually and practically. Suppose there were no laws in this world and man were to achieve anything merely by wishing it: What then would happen to this world? Would ignorance, slothfulness, indolence, and inexperience not prevail instead of knowledge, diligence, effort, and experience? Would there remain any distinction and difference between the scholarly and the ignorant, the industrious and the indolent, the hard-working and the slothful, the experienced and the novice? Would this not block the intellectual progress of man? Would it not cause irreparable damage to man’s elevated moral status? Think hard and realize that all the physical, material, academic, practical, moral, and spiritual progress that you see around you is due only to the fact that the universe is operating in accordance with a set of laws
Aaaaaaand the section is done with not a single method of inquiry having been presented. This was disappointing, but not at all unexpected.
The Role of Intention in the Field of Research
Here it comes. Like lucky underpants, a curse, or fairies, God will only exist if you first believe he exists. This method introduces confirmation bias into our conclusions. It’s a great way to find the answer you expect to find.
It’s telling that the most important aspect of the search for God is conviction and enthusiasm.
So, O my dear ones! In your search for God, never tread the path of philosophers, for you will never find God that way. The search for Him in this way is fruitless anyway because if, after finding God, we do nothing about it, then what is the point of seeking Him? Why should we spend our time, attention, and energy just to confirm whether or not God exists? This will not help us at all; rather, it will be damaging, as remaining unmindful after finding Him will make us guilty of two crimes. God will never reveal His Countenance to us as a result of this type of effort. He will only manifest Himself to us when He sees that we want to reach Him with genuine eagerness, our objective is to benefit from the blessings of His nearness, and we wish to establish a personal relationship with Him in order to attain the heights of progress — which is, after all, the purpose of human life.
The charge of a single electron is tiny. Nearly impossible to conceive of a way to test. But with a little patience, and a carefully thought-through procedure, anyone can measure it:
You don’t have to start by believing there is a quantized electron charge. You simply have to run the experiment and observe the results. The tiniest quantized unit of charge can be observed without “zest” or “zeal,” yet God cannot.
I only briefly skimmed the following section titles because their content seemed to be more preaching than describing methods for detection or demonstration that a god exists:
Two Levels of Belief in God
Now I see why he told his followers not to bother with philosophy. We’re going to use well-known fallacies in our defense of god:
Now, on the one hand we have in the Holy Quran the teaching stated above; and on the other, we see the Holy Quran directs people, time and again, to reflect upon this universe, the heavens, the earth, and other creation, and ponder whether this entire universe with its amazingly wise system could come into existence by mere chance. Certainly not!
I guess the Quran says God made it so God made it.
The second (and “better”) level of belief in God seems to have something to do with going from there “ought to be” a God to there “is” a God. To make the leap from this ought to is, one must be granted a “special insight by God.”
Therefore, logic and reasoning require 30 Our God special Divine support in order to progress from ‘should be’ to ‘is’. In other words, the limited vision of reason stops at the ‘ought to be’ stage and cannot proceed further until granted special insight by God.
IS that the method you promised me, Anjum? That God might chose to show me some sort of “special insight?!” Where are the “indirect measurements that can be observed repeatedly?”
There’s more ranting and belittling of nonbelievers and “level one believers” by Ahmad too. At this point, I get a chuckle out of his imagined “despair for atheism.”
So, concerning God, if the ‘ought to be’ stage of belief does not lead to the ‘is’ stage of belief, then the end result is nothing but despair and atheism; for, those granted with the ability to ponder will find it impossible to stop at that stage — they will either proceed further or after a while turn back in despair. However, it is a pity that there are many people in the world (nay, they are in the majority) whose eyes are covered with such veils of heedlessness that upon reaching the ‘ought to be’ stage they become content and believe they have recognised God and have achieved what they had set out to achieve. That is to say, out of their naivety, lack of awareness, and ignorance, they think it suffices to know that their ought to be a Creator of this universe; they do not determinedly explore that if there ought to be a Creator, then does He really exist or not, and if there is one, who is He, where is He, what are His attributes, how can we establish a bond with Him, and how can we know if He has any connection with us? Such people neither worry about making progress in their knowledge of God, nor turn back because of their false sense of security, till death overtakes them. They die in a state believing that they have reached their destination whereas they are still treading the path to God. Most of the people who claim to believe in God these days fall in this category.
Sorry, Ahmad. I’m not in any sort of despair for your God’s inability to manifest in reality. I’ve moved on, but I maintain an open mind that perhaps some day, a god will be found. But not by people like you whose method is to start with the answer and try to argue for it to be true despite a colossal lack of any sort of evidence.
Calling people who don’t believe your stories “naive”, “unaware”, and “ignorant” is a great way to keep your cult followers from asking hard questions though. I bet that’s working out pretty well for you.
Logical Arguments
The next section is titled “Logical Arguments for the Existence of God.” As far as I know, I’ve seen all these already so I’m not going to waste more time reading this guy’s long-winded, arrogant prattle. But here’s some particularly silly quotes I found as I skimmed it.
The Holy Quran simply states that God created man from ringing clay wrought from mud and then ordained life into him.1 This means that man is a rational animal who has been created quite distinctly from other animals to make progress with his faculty of reasoning.
Holy non-sequitur, Batman!
Therefore, no scientist can find fault with the Holy Quran as it describes the creation of man concisely and fittingly, which does not conflict with any established scientific facts, but serves as a beacon of light for science on fundamentals.
It’s amazing to me the hoops which religious nuts will jump through to try to re-interpret their holy book in light of scientific discoveries. Apparently “made of clay” is almost the same things as evolution because … reasons.
Before concluding this discussion, it is particularly necessary to add that the notorious theory of Darwin is up till today merely a theory and not an established scientific fact, and many scientists have forcefully rejected it. The obituary of a world renowned scientist, Sir John Ambrose Fleming, which was published in newspapers, mentions that while Sir John was a very renowned scientist, he did not deny miracles and regarded Darwin’s theory of evolution as a mere figment of imagination.
Therefore, raising objections about the existence of God on the basis of this theory cannot be considered reasonable.
Shocker. Ahmad doesn’t understand what a scientific theory is, and chooses to reject evolution because it contradicts the Quran.
God is uncreated
— because Ahmad says so.
Why Not Consider this Universe Itself to be Uncreated?
Watch him re-insert the universe “coming into existence” when criticizing the idea that the universe could be uncreated. Of course, he can’t do it without first insulting the naivety of people who ask questions. Shaming intellectual honesty seems to be a staple for this sect of Islam.
If pondered carefully, this question is obviously based on lack of deliberation, a conjecture of the naïve, and largely baseless. This doubt is based on the notion that because God is believed to be uncreated, it is therefore also possible for anything to come into existence by itself without the agency of a creator.
He did his homework here. Ahmad plagiarized the usual collection of misapplied scientific theories to show why the universe can’t be eternal, confusing the observable universe with the cosmos in the process.
The Holy Prophet is reported to have said: You can go on asking about everything as to who created it, but when you reach God, ask no more. A naïve person may think that he closed the door to independent research for his followers and prohibited them from asking this academic question to save them from doubts. But the Holy Prophet only meant what has been stated above; i.e. the question of being created can arise about everything except God;
More insulting the intellectually honest people who question these proclamations and an astonishingly clean example of special pleading.
Knowledge of Good and Evil as an Argument
Apparently God is necessary for there to be good and evil. In this section, we find such silly black-and-white arguments as: “Everyone, however wretched his condition may be, by nature, likes good and hates evil”
. The first thing we notice is that there is a kind of uniformity about this knowledge of good and evil, regardless of the people or the times; i.e. this understanding in its essence appears to be similar in its form and style among every people and during every age. This clearly proves that it could not be the result of experience and impact of our surroundings, but has been bestowed upon human nature by an external power which is supreme and above all.
This doesn’t show a God exists, and it’s also false. Nazis believed exterminating Jews was good because they were undermining the state. Americans thought slavery was good for a long time. There is no “uniformity about this knowledge off good and evil, regardless of the people or the times.” To say so demonstrates an astonishing ignorance of history.
Evidence of Universal Acceptance
If the first paragraph summarizes this argument, it’s just bandwagon fallacy.
It is based on the principle that worldwide acceptance of a notion or a belief that has survived throughout the ages is evidence that such a notion or belief, in its essence, is based on truth.
The Inevitable Victory of Prophets
Oh my God. Has this guy EVER thought about his claims?
Throughout the recorded history of the world, we observe that whenever those who believe in God have been defied by those who deny God (in doctrine or practically), the former have always triumphed. This demonstrates that some hidden power helps the believers.
Some prophets triumph. Others don’t. Ignore the misses and count the hits. That’s the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.
Benefits of belief in God
I don’t base my beliefs on what’s most convenient. Such a choice would be spineless and cowardly.
Refutation of Arguments Supporting Atheism
This section seems to be a collection of straw-men.
