Defending Religion In A Time Of Atheism - part 1

Defending Religion in a Time of Atheism

Imam Zaid Shakir

Opening Prayers and Blessings

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Peace and blessings be upon you.

(بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ - bismillāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm)

All praise is due to the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger Muhammad, upon his family, and upon his companions.

(الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ، وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَى سَيِّدِ الْمُرْسَلِينَ سَيِّدِنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ وَسَلَّمَ تَسْلِيمًا كَثِيرًا - al-ḥamdu lillāhi rabbi l-ʿālamīna, wa ṣ-ṣalātu wa s-salāmu ʿalā sayyidi l-mursalīna sayyidinā muḥammadin wa ʿalā ālihi wa ṣaḥbihi wa sallama taslīman kathīran)

O Allah, expand my chest, ease my task, and untie the knot from my tongue that they may understand my speech.

"My Lord, expand for me my breast [with confidence] and ease for me my task and untie the knot from my tongue that they may understand my speech."

O Allah, bless Muhammad and his family, as You blessed Abraham and his family. O Allah, grant us understanding of the Quran.

(اللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ عَلَى مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِ مُحَمَّدٍ كَمَا صَلَّيْتَ عَلَى إِبْرَاهِيمَ وَعَلَى آلِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ - allāhumma ṣalli ʿalā muḥammadin wa ʿalā āli muḥammadin kamā ṣallayta ʿalā ibrāhīma wa ʿalā āli ibrāhīm)

O Lord, all praise is due to You as befits the majesty of Your Face and the greatness of Your authority. Glory be to You, we cannot enumerate Your praise; You are as You have praised Yourself.

(رَبَّنَا لَكَ الْحَمْدُ كَمَا يَنْبَغِي لِجَلَالِ وَجْهِكَ وَلِعَظِيمِ سُلْطَانِكَ، سُبْحَانَكَ لَا نُحْصِي ثَنَاءً عَلَيْكَ أَنْتَ كَمَا أَثْنَيْتَ عَلَىٰ نَفْسِكَ - rabbanā laka l-ḥamdu kamā yanbaghī li-jalāli wajhika wa li-ʿaẓīmi sulṭānika, subḥānaka lā nuḥṣī thanāʾan ʿalayka anta kamā athnayta ʿalā nafsika)

Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.

(السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ - as-salāmu ʿalaykum wa raḥmatu-llāhi wa barakātuh)

Introduction: The Crisis of Faith in Our Time

On behalf of the Qurtubah Institute at the Adams Center, I am very honored tonight to offer this very special program with our beloved Sheikh, Imam Zaid and Sheikh Mahdi. For the brothers and sisters who are new to the community, the Qurtubah Institute runs the adult education classes here at the Adams Center and at the branches in Ashburn and Fairfax, at the Sully Center. We have been very blessed over the last few years to have esteemed scholars as guests of our community.

In 2011, Imam Zaid was here to give a very dynamic and eye-opening talk on the issue of extremism within our community. During that time, we made it a point to say, as a community, we have to move beyond the basics. We need to start addressing the real issues that affect our community, our youth, our adults, our males, our females, our children—everyone. The issues that they are plagued with, we have to start to address them head on. We cannot just push them aside and pretend that they don't exist within our own community.

The following year, we invited Professor Muhammad Haj to give a talk on Islam and the fate of others, describing the different ranks of the people of paradise and what traditional Islamic scholarship said about non-Muslims in the afterlife. Again, addressing issues head on, moving beyond just the basics of salah and tahara, which are all important, by the way.

Today, we are here to address a subject that is perhaps one of the greatest subjects I've heard in my discussions with youth come up—the issue of the existence of Allah. The entire existence of God. And as we will see throughout this talk, it's not just about God, it's about religion, it's about secularism, it's about how we address the modern ills and the modern philosophies of today's society. Because this is what our youth are being faced with.

How do you address a rationalized world of atheism? How do you address a rationalized scientism that's prevalent in the world today? How do we as Muslims look to our response? So the subject of our talk tonight is defending faith, defending religion in an age of atheism. What response do we have as people of faith, as people of belief, as people of God? What is the alternative reality, the alternative modality that we offer to others in the world today?

The Gravity of the Crisis

This topic—atheism, defending faith—is a very serious topic. All of us, I'm sure, hear almost every day, certainly weekly, definitely monthly of this or that person who's left Islam. They don't know if they believe anymore. They're having a faith crisis. And the amazing thing that I find in all of this is how little thought actually goes into that process in many instances.

So you talk to these people and say, "Well, have you read any of the theological or logical refutations of these books that are challenging your faith so much?" No. "Are you familiar with the arguments of the Muslim theologians when these issues came up hundreds or even over a thousand years ago in some instances?" No. "Have you considered some of the deeper philosophical issues, the context in which these debates and discussions that trouble you so much are taking place?" No.

And so I'm amazed that someone could let their faith go basically with such little effort in defense or without putting up a bigger fight. And so what I'd like to do is just point out some of the issues that a believer in general, a Muslim believer in specific, should be cognizant of before they sell their faith for a scanty or cheap price.

Challenge #1: Questioning the Axioms of Scientific Materialism

The first issue: when science challenges the idea of even the need for a God—a creator, a sustainer, an evolver—in many instances it proposes axioms or first principles taken as truths, as irrefutable, undeniable, intuitive truths. So in Arabic we say (بَدِيهِيَّات - badihiyyat)—that which is clear and needs no further proof or explanation. But the person of faith is not bound to accept those axioms.

The Big Bang Theory and Its Unexamined Assumptions

For example, the reigning theory of the creation of all of this—the universe and everything in it—is that it all started with the Big Bang. There was this dense, extremely hot matter in the middle of space; it exploded and is

constantly expanding outwards, and from that dense matter, everything—the billions and trillions of stars and the billions of galaxies that are constantly expanding—came from that initial dense matter.

So the axiom that we're asked to accept as an irrefutable, non-debatable truth is that that dense matter was always there. As we mentioned, that's not something that I have to hold as axiomatic. I can ask: where did it come from? I don't have to accept it was always there.

The Principle of Causality

In the sense that we can view it as something existing in our world, we know everything that comes into existence has an external cause of its existence. So if the sand is bare and suddenly we walk by, an hour later we come back and see footprints, we know those footprints weren't there before—they didn't exist before. So there had to be an external cause that imprinted them other than the sand itself.

What do we mean by an external cause? It defies reason that the sand would just formulate itself into a series of footprints. So everything we know in this world, everything our reason has taught us, is that there was an external cause that created those footprints. And so we can ask: what is the cause of that dense matter? What brought it into existence? Science has absolutely no answer whatsoever.

Where did it come from? No answer. Why did it assume the shape that it assumed? How did all the potential for those millions of galaxies become condensed into that microscopic module of almost nothing? No answer.

The Problem of Stability and Change

Another axiom is: if it's there in a stable state, what caused it to explode? Again, we know anything stable—if I have a scale with two equally balanced plates and I come back and one plate is up and one plate is down, I know that someone did what? They added weight to one of the plates. Therefore they interrupted the equilibrium. They disturbed the stable state.

If there's a swing and I walk by and the swing is perfectly still, I come back five minutes later and it's swinging, what do I know intuitively? Someone pushed it. There's no rational way for me to conceive that that swing just started swinging by itself. Either a strong breeze came by, or a child came by, or an adult even and pushed it, or there was an earthquake and the tree shook and it started swaying back and forth. But there's no logical way for me to conceive that something that's stable exited from that stable state without an external cause.

So how can we have a Big Bang without a big banger? We can't conceive this desk is sitting here and all of a sudden, bang!—and there's no big banger, there's no one to bang it. But we're asked to accept that. I would argue that's irrational. It goes against everything we've observed in our world, and that's the foundation of our rational processes—observation. That's what science tells us, right? Science is rooted in observation. So observation tells us there can be no Big Bang without a big banger.

So the question I am led to ask: who was the big banger? Who caused that state of equilibrium to become disrupted? I would say Allah. If that theory even holds—it's just a theory. It's just a theory based on: if the universe is constantly expanding, then it's expanding from a particular point. So we're just working backwards. That's a theory. There are things in the universe that don't conform to normal laws of physics—the braided rings of Saturn, for example.

Our Right to Challenge Atheistic Assumptions

So this is one thing we should consider: we don't have to accept the axioms that are foisted upon us. We can challenge them. Just as the atheist challenges the theist, we should challenge the atheist. Tell me where it comes from and give me a scientific definitive answer. Tell me how this stable state became disrupted without any external agent acting on it. So this is the first point we want to make.

Challenge #2: The Necessity of a First Cause

The second point is the idea of a first cause being necessary. As we said, if you see an effect, you know there was a cause of it. This world is an effect. And there are rational steps we can take to prove it that have been proven beyond the scope of this talk. That being the case, there has to be an external cause to bring about the effect that we see.

Addressing the "Who Created God?" Question

Now the response usually is: "Okay, if that external cause is God, who created God?" In other words, how can you identify a first cause? And we say there has to be a first cause because if we can accept that any effect has an external cause, and then if we say, "Well, what caused that cause?"—in other words, how can we get to a first cause unless we accept that there is a first cause in terms of bringing about creation?—then we enter into an infinite regress.

In other words, if God created the world, who created God? Or if there is another god who created that God, who created that god? And we just go on forever. But if we go on forever, this infinite regress would preclude the creation of anything. Because we say whatever was created needed something to create it, and that needed something to create it, and that needed something to create it. Nothing would be created, but creation is here. So there has to be a first cause, an initial cause. And we say that initial cause is God—Almighty God, Allah.

Challenge #3: The Materialist Reduction of Human Dignity

The next point is what atheists do: they materialize the human creation. Allah says concerning the human creation:

"We have ennobled the human being."

The materialists say, "You're just like this podium. You're just a collection of atoms and molecules. You're just like this podium." Interesting argument. "This is your atoms, your molecules, that's it."

The Podium Argument: Design Requires a Designer

The immediate question—there are two issues. Number one, we cannot envision this podium without a purposeful designer. We talked about this yesterday. We can't envision that a tree—assuming this is real wood, some kind of wood, it might be compressed wood from the sawdust—but we can't envision that the tree is just standing there in the forest, minding its own business, and there's no external agent that looks at that tree and says, "That would make a nice podium," and gets out the saw and cuts the tree down and chisels it up and gets

the hammers and the nails and the glue and the circular saw to make the podium. There's no way we can envision that rationally.

So we know the carpenter, with a purpose, possibly with a blueprint or a design, made this. Imagine he bought it at Ikea or Office Depot and he took out the instructions and put it together after someone shaped it, cut the tree down, made other wood products, took the sawdust, compressed it, shaped it, put a plastic strip on the edge, painted it, and now we have the podium.

But we're told that this world, this universe, which is infinitely more complex than this podium, occurred by the natural—the random, rather—interactions of molecules and atoms. Forget where they came from. Just randomly interacting with each other, they brought about this world and all of this complexity that we see around us. So if we accept that, then we accept this podium made itself. There was no external designer. There was no external planner. It just made itself.

The Greater Leap of Faith

Again, that's irrational. But it's even more than that. In terms of the atheist accusing the theist of accepting things on faith, that's an incredible leap of faith—that all these atoms are out there in the universe and somehow they just randomly came together, and somehow we accept it, and then the world came about. No external planner, no external designer, no purpose—just all random. That's a leap of faith. But it's a greater leap of faith than the theist is taking. So this is, again, something we should think about as we begin to entertain these arguments.

Challenge #4: The Origin of Consciousness and Intellect

The second thing: assuming that we can somehow trace physical evolution, how do we get from this physical reality to intellect and consciousness? In other words, if we can somehow trace the physical evolution of things—not just life itself, not just human beings—and we go back to the fish or whatever they say we came from, physical reality, how did it evolve to this complexity, this degree of complexity? We know how—it was just random, they say. It happened. Random accident. Life happened. Random selection. Human beings happened. Random selection. It's all random, random, random.

But it gives us an explanation for this physical reality and this physical reality. How did intellect and consciousness evolve from this? Ask your friends. Ask your atheist buddies who messed your head up: how did intellect and consciousness evolve from this? I guarantee you won't get an answer. You might get an answer—it won't make any sense.

The Divine Gift of Consciousness

Allah said He breathed consciousness into the human:

"Then He proportioned him and breathed into him from His spirit and made for you hearing and vision and hearts."

All of this should lead us to praise and glorify Allah, to thank Allah for blessing us with this mind, for blessing us with an awareness that there is something greater than ourselves in this universe, with an awareness that there is a purpose behind all of this.

"Our Lord, You did not create this aimlessly; exalted are You. So protect us from the punishment of the Fire."

"Did you think that We created you uselessly?"

The Crisis of Meaning and Purpose

And this is the crisis of a godless world—the crisis of meaning and purpose. Why is this here? Science endeavors to tell us how, but it makes no attempt because it has no foundation to tell us why. It has no foundation to explain purpose. There is absolutely no foundation. And that's why Allah sent prophets and revealed scriptures—so we can answer the question of why.

"I have only created the jinn and humans to worship Me."

That's why. And all of these are signs to orient us and to direct us towards the worship of Allah. So as a human being, I'm more than this. Not only that, I'm more than a monkey.

Challenge #5: The Evolutionary vs. Revolutionary Gap

"We evolved from monkeys." There's a lot of explaining to do. Namely, evolution implies slow, gradual, painstakingly slow change. The distance between us and the monkeys is not an evolutionary difference—it's a revolutionary difference.

The Primate Paradox

Another question immediately comes up: why are all the monkeys so close in terms of their mental capability? Which we're still looking for the answer as to how they even got the ability to think. How did that evolve? So we attempt to say we can explain their physical evolution. How do we explain physical stuff getting the ability to think at some level?

They're all close—rhesus monkey, spider monkey, orangutan, chimpanzee, gorilla, mandrill, baboon. Tool-using capacity, same range. They could get a stick and pick the meat out of the nut. Human beings can make nano-instruments. Is that evolution or revolution? Why us? Why only us? Why only us?

How do we get so incomparably separated from our rhesus and spider and orangutan, chimpanzee, gorilla, mandrill, baboon ancestors? Because Allah, He honored us and He blessed us, and He gave us this capability, and He gave us the ability to know Him independently. That's how. Ask your friends again—the ones who messed your head up. How do you explain that based on evolution? They're all in the same range, very little

deviation from a norm that exists amongst all of them. And we're over there in an entirely different galaxy. In fact, we're looking at different galaxies through our atomic telescopes, and we're looking down with our atomic microscopes, and they're still working on getting the meat out of the coconut.

"Is there any god along with Allah?"

Reflecting on the Answers Scripture Provides

Brothers and sisters, these are the issues that we should be reflecting on. These are the issues that scripture provides an answer for—the purpose. Scripture provides an answer. The uniqueness of the human being—scripture provides an answer. We exist to worship Allah. The world and everything in it exists to orient us and direct us towards the worship of Allah.

We can accept that or we can reject it. We can accept that our multifaceted existence—physical, spiritual, mental—can all be reduced to the physical. So our mental capacities and all their variations, our spiritual potential, can all be reduced to neurological functions. All of it can be rooted in the physical. Hence, as we said, we're essentially no different.

Again, just as in those other realms, what we observe and what our experience with reality has taught us argues against that and argues towards another conclusion. And every conclusion argues and points us towards Allah.

The Divine Purpose: Human Vicegerency

In conclusion, again, we come back to this question: why us? Why have human beings been given this way, these incredible potentials? Because Allah intended for us to be His vicegerents on this earth.

"And when your Lord said to the angels, 'Indeed, I will make upon the earth a vicegerent.' "

And He's instilled us and He's given us responsibilities. We can abdicate those responsibilities or we can embrace them. He's given us a way to know Him. We can accept that way or we can reject it. If we reject it, there are consequences—dire consequences. And again, those consequences transcend physicality. Those consequences involve moral and ethical systems.

The Moral Foundation: Religion as the Basis of Ethics

Recently, some of you might have seen this, where a major atheist was praying that people don't give up their religion in some of the poorest parts of the world because he couldn't envision any way they would be able to maintain their sanity and not devolve into a savage war of all against all with no religion. Why? Because religion has been the foundation of the overarching ethical systems that have allowed us to refine ourselves and to civilize ourselves as human beings. You eliminate religion, you eliminate the overarching systems.

The Danger of Moral Relativism

What am I talking about? As opposed to some objective standard certainly when we as humans interpret it, there's subjectivity involved—but generally speaking, that we can all accept, it becomes totally subjective. So Hitler's morality and the ethical reasoning that led to the elimination of over twenty million Russians, six million Jews, almost equal number of Poles and gypsies and others—it becomes perfectly rational to him and those who adopted the system of thought and the ensuing moral system. It becomes perfectly logical, and they'll give you a rational argument.

Last week was the 1994 Rwandan genocide—twenty years, a sad memorial the last couple weeks when this slaughter began. It's perfectly logical, moral, and ethically sound in the reasoning of those who turned on their neighbors and their schoolmates and, by and large, their fellow Christians. Not that we don't have enough Muslims out there killing their fellow Muslims. Their reasoning was perfectly logical. Their ethics were perfectly sound. But they didn't conform to the high moral and ethical systems bequeathed to us by the prophets from Almighty God.

The Cost of Abandoning Religion

And so when we give up our religion, we're on the path of giving up our humanity—literally. First of all, we surrender our humanity when we reduce ourselves to just compilations of molecules and atoms. So the whole idea of the Ruh (spirit) that humanized us—it goes. The whole idea of the connection to the Divine through prophets and scriptures as an integral part of what it means to be human—it goes. Systems of high morality that transcend any individual human interest in terms of their origin—they can be used and distorted, but in terms of their origin and therefore their ability to check the behavior of millions of people on the face of this earth—it goes.

The Power of Religious Moral Standards

Recently I was teaching a course at Zaytuna College and we were looking at modern contemporary Muslim thought and the whole idea of interest-free finance. Despite all of the breakdown, all of the decay, the neo-colonial condition of many Muslim countries, the destruction of indigenous institutions of education—Muslim education, traditional institutions with deep histories—their dismantling during colonization and the secular regimes that followed in most countries, despite that, seventy-two percent of Muslims on the face of this earth don't engage or involve themselves in any interest-bearing financial transactions.

That wouldn't be possible if there wasn't a higher standard of morality to create that wide acceptance of certain norms of behavior amongst the Muslims. That's what we give up. And then all of the exploitation, all of the harm, all of the damage—social, psychological damage—that's rooted in usurious transactions become standardized and normalized in our society. That's what we give up.

Hold Fast to Your Faith

So brothers and sisters, hold on, fight for your faith, because number one, it makes sense. Study I'm going to recommend some books for those of you who want to pursue this issue or some of these issues further.

Recommended Reading

First, there are two very scathing and deep and strong refutations of Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion.

The first is David Berlinski, Dr. David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretenses. One of the focuses of his work is to show that on issue after issue, to accept the claims of the atheist requires a greater leap of faith than to accept the claims of the theist.

Another book: John Lennox (L-E-N-N-O-X), God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried Religion? Again, a lot of what he says is directed to Dawkins.

A book that looks at something we alluded to here, the Kalam Cosmological Argument—this is the contribution of Muslim theologians and their refutation of atheism—The Kalam Cosmological Argument by William Lane Craig. What Craig does: he looks at the Muslim formulation by a traditional Jewish scholar who adopted the reasoning of the Muslims that was refined by Imam Al-Ghazali, started with Al-Kindi from a more philosophical perspective, refined by Imam Al-Ghazali from a theological perspective, and then adopted by Christians—St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas—and Jews. He examines that trajectory and then he looks at some modern arguments against the Kalam Cosmological Argument and then modern refutations of those arguments. This is a very important book that I encourage all of you to read: The Kalam Cosmological Argument by William Lane Craig.

Those three books for starters. To look at just some of the socio-political implications of ethics, something we tried to allude to in the end, is a book by Chris Hedges. I think he changed the title. When I read it, it was called I Don't Believe in Atheists—a very clever title by the popular writer Chris Hedges, I Don't Believe in Atheists.

So those are some books you might start with.

The Spiritual Pathway to Knowing God

I'd like to say, alhamdulillah, that we're Muslim. Alhamdulillah that we're Muslim, and may all of us be blessed. This is something I wanted to touch on—I'm glad you brought it up—and that is when we take away the spiritual part of our being and reduce it to the physical, we take away the greatest means Allah has given us to know God.

The Historical Quest for God

Historically, when people went on a quest for God, they didn't go to a library and start reading books. They went into a quiet place and started praying and meditating. They tried to get in touch with that aspect of their being that's closest to God. They tried to open their heart and to cultivate their heart and to enrich and strengthen their heart so it would be more receptive to the reality of God.

And so what science—not in and of itself, but the misuse of science by some human beings—has done is denied us the greatest pathway to God and then says the processes and methods that we use to understand the composition of this are challenged to lead us to understand God. And then so we search using those rational

scientific formulas and methodologies that allow us to know the physical composition of this, and we come up empty, and we say, "Well, God must not exist."

Reason Opens the Heart, Spirit Knows God

But ultimately, reason only opens our hearts up to render them more receptive to the reality of God. But we know God through that being, that aspect of our being that's closest to God, and that's through our spirit and through our soul, not through our flesh. So we take the processes that allow us to understand what does a molecule of skin look like under a microscope, what does a blood cell look like, what does a skin cell look like—what does God look like? We're using the wrong tools and we're going down the wrong street. We're never going to reach our destination.

The Faith of the Old Lady

And at the end of the day, this is why when someone pointed out to the old lady, they said, "Oh, that's Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. He has a hundred proofs for God's existence," and she looked at him and said, "I'm not impressed. If he didn't have a hundred doubts, he wouldn't need a hundred proofs."

And then it's related Imam Razi says, "Ya'ni, give us the faith of the old ladies" (أَعْطُونَا عَقِيدَةَ الْعَجَائِزِ - a'tuna aqidata al-aja'iz). Well, that old lady, she knew God through her heart. She knew God from years of praying and reading Quran and doing charity for people and the light growing in her heart.

Imam Al-Ghazali said, "Faith is a light that God casts into the heart of the believers" (الْإِيمَانُ نُورٌ يَقْذِفُهُ اللهُ فِي قَلْبِ الْمُؤْمِنِ - al-iman nurun yaqdhifuhu Allahu fi qalbi al-mu'min).

Two Separate Realms

So we eliminate the pathway. Allah mentioned:

"Unquestionably, His is the creation and the command."

The physical creation and the divine command—these are two separate things. This has its realm, this has its methodology. This has its realm, this has its methodology. There are points where there's overlap, but that overlap only reinforces the scientist. The true scientist becomes a greater believer—like Galileo, who was a believer, and Kepler, who was a believer. These were believers. Science reinforced their faith.

Science Increases Faith for the Believer

When a believer looks at science—Lennox is a scientist—and they see the intricacy, they only—they're Christians—they say hallelujah, praise the Lord. The Muslim scientist says, "Subhanallah." And the faith is increased, and then the desire to discover and to know more of God's creation, because this is showing me the power of God, this is showing me the wisdom of God—not the opposite. It's not taking God from my heart.

So these realms ideally are mutually reinforcing. Science says no, this realm has no place based on our narrow criteria. That's a very cheap deal to make.

May Allah strengthen us in our faith, grant us understanding, and make us among those who worship Him with sincerity and knowledge. Ameen.