 الله الرحمن الرحيم والسلام على أشف العنبياء والمرسلين سيدنا ونبينا أبن قاسم محمد الأمين وعلى أهل بيته الطيبين الطاهلين المعصومين المفلومين ولعنة الله على أدعهم أجمعين من الآن إلا قيامي ومدين آمين يا رب الأالمين شكرا لكم ورحمة لكم ورحمة لكم في حالة كتبالة ورحمة لكم في حالة كتبالة في which we'll continue to discuss some of the concepts we've been discussing over the past few weeks in this particular case we're rounding off with our topic of choice for the past several weeks namely the worldview which renounces denounces and entirely rejects the existence of a deity that is to say the worldview of atheism which is of course quite a complex worldview it's one which lacks explanatory scope for many concepts and we've been looking at some of those different issues in the analysis of applying قائدة للإلزام namely the principle that the imams of the أهل البيت may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon them have given us for those viewers who are struggling to remember what قائدة للإلزام is the imams have specifically told us that when engaging in dialogue with others a principle that must be applied is to take the very principles of that group who you are compelling the principles that they compel themselves to and to essentially use those principles in order to demonstrate the truth now how could that be done I firmly believe that for those of us who are able to understand these principles when we take them to their logical conclusion their logical necessity we would certainly see that these principles lead to either rational absurdity or internal contradiction and as we know anything which is internally contradictory hence paradoxical does not fit or befit the human intellect as a sustainable system of beliefs of course in understanding the mentality of the atheist we have stated that one of the major principles described in the books of theology in the books of قائد in the books of creed and in the general books of الملكلام by our علماء by our scholars the scholars of Shi'a Islam that is to say we would see that one of the main evidences raised for the existence of a deity which has to some degree given me the audacity to claim that the average human being at a subconscious level knows that a God exists and therefore acts in accordance to the life which would be befitting of someone that lives in the world which God created by what we call the innate disposition that innate disposition is known as within the religion of Islam the fitrah and by fitrah we mean that thing which allows us to know of the existence of God and we believe that this is the meaning of the statement found in many duas of the Ahl al-Bayt by duas of course I mean supplications where the Ahl al-Bayt have stated he who has pointed to himself by himself من دل على ذاته ب ذاته وعلى ذاته بذاته is the one who made us aware of his own existence now of course because the fitrah is such a complex discussion between ourselves and those who are not believers in the religion that we follow and indeed not believers in any God it is necessary for us to attempt to demonstrate that there does exist a fitrah and that is what I've been trying to do for the past few sessions of course I cited yesterday from the texts أصول الدين by his eminence وهيد الخرصاني who in his discussion pertaining to how one can know الله عز وجل and know that there exists a creator in what he cites as the fourth way إمام الصادق عليه الصلاة والسلام is cited in one of his discussions with a man who asks how he can be certain of Allah's existence and what is Allah and what is the nature of Allah عز وجل إمام الصادق gives the analogy of he asks the man have you ever been upon a boat and has there ever been a storm in which you find yourself in tribulation the boat turns over and there is no human help that could come and save you at such a time has your hope inside of you ever fixated upon something and allowed you to believe that there is something externally correlating to that hope who you could place your hope in and could come and save you to which the man responds of course and إمام الصادق عليه الصلاة والسلام points out all servants of Allah do you not know that this is Allah عز وجل whom your faith has been placed in so we can see that according to the imams according to the Quran and indeed according to all schools of Islamic theology where is this concept known as the fitrah أغاوهد الخرسانه he cites إمام الصادق as saying to ابن أبي الأوجاه and ابن أبي الأوجاه is of course a very famous individual for those of you who wish to know more about him it would be very interesting to look him up and indeed we might cite more of him as conversations go on in this particular area إمام الصادق عليه الصلاة والسلام may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him he states what he states to ابن أبي الأوجاه how is he hidden from you when he showed you his omnipotence in your own self he brought you into being when you did not exist his omnipotence is shown in your old age after youth in your strength after weakness and in your weakness after strength in your illness after health and your health after illness and in your pleasure after anger and your anger after pleasure in your sadness after happiness and your happiness after sadness in likening after disliking in liking after disliking rather and in disliking after liking في تعليق تخلق وفسول and تخلق في حوث After decide في الطرق after ˹إِميْن˺ and ˹إن˺ خطوة لطرق after ˹إِمي˺نَس˺ فيه في الخطوات after ˹إِمي˺ن˺ and after ˹إ�ِم˺ن˺ من الخوث after ˹إِم˺ن˺ ومن الخوث after ˹إِم˺ن˺ في奧ل stillة خروج بترغل من قريبك إبن أبي أو جا after hearing this from your mama صادق may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon your mama صادق he states he was counting to me the proofs of Allah's omnipotence in my own self which I could not reject until I started believing that Allah would appear between me and him now of course the belief of إبن أبي أو جا which was cited from this book isn't actually a hoja upon ourselves well even أبي أو جا believed we can easily pass this off as a metaphor number one but number two even if we were to assume إبن أبي أو جا literally held the fallacious belief that Allah would appear between him and his mama صادق then إمام صادق has not verified or vouched for that belief of إبن أبي أو جا and so it's not something that we have to particularly be concerned with now of course there is one concern when discussing the fitrah and what is that concern that concern is if I'm to claim that deep down the atheist is convinced of God's existence even at a subconscious level or I'm to claim that deep down he knows of Allah's existence and that human beings don't require evidence for such things then the atheist could actually argue that deep down I believe you're a closet atheist and I believe you know atheism to be true and again human beings don't need evidence to prove the non-existence of God and how would we respond to that I believe I've been attempting to demonstrate that over the past few episodes and I'm going to remind you once more of this article which of course is a prominent peer-reviewed scholarly article published and I downloaded it from the University of Helsinki's personal websites of course the University of Helsinki is where the main researcher Marjana Lindman happens to work and so they uploaded it onto their website for those of us who don't subscribe to academic journals on a regular basis of course it's a peer-reviewed journal and just to explain once more for those of you who have not caught this what a peer-reviewed journal entails is that an expert in the field and particularly in this case it would be the hard sciences which involve empiricism and systematic tests which can be applied and results can be garnered from those tests what has happened here is after taking a test on numerous samples of people what do I mean by that? I mean they took a collective group of people some being atheists, some being believers and they applied numerous tests to those collectives so not just one group but rather a second group and a third group now they tested them based upon their apparent stress levels when making certain statements now when I say apparent stress levels that doesn't mean that they sat a therapist or a psychologist in front of these atheists and they just had them read their minds and view their visible expressions no, they tied them up to equipment which was able to read these stress levels involved and with a peer-reviewed journal what will happen is a paper is written by an expert in the field that journal in order to ensure a standard of quality will take that paper and send it to a particular expert in the field or they'll send it to two experts in the field rather and those two experts will not know who wrote this paper in order to be biased in favour of a writer and they will be asked to view the results and to view the findings and say does this meet the criteria of being considered academic only after having the approval of those two blind reviewers can the offer have this paper published and so we think that when things are published in peer-reviewed papers they are slightly more reliable than the average online journal or magazine that we read dear viewers, we're going to go for a very short break and when we get back I'll continue explaining this والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته thank you dear viewers for enduring patiently with us during that very short break and most importantly I would like to remind all viewers that any background disturbances are of course a result of the city that we're based in and because this is broadcasting from the holy city of Kereballah and we are recording at a particular point what you will hear are the voices of pilgrims coming and shouting their slogans in their allegiance and their wallah to Imam al-Hussain and to the blessed shrine of Abul Fadl al-Abbas which is right behind me as we speak and so such disturbances may Allah bless the pilgrims if they're not aware that there's live channels broadcasting and even if they are then of course such a disturbance is one which is welcomed and we're not complaining anyway because we're able to concentrate in any case dear viewers we were discussing why we need to bring evidence forward and I was talking about this particular peer-reviewed journal now what this peer-reviewed journal demonstrated in its results were that the stress levels of atheists when challenged to make statements such as I dare God to do the following they would rise to such a level that they showed a demonstrable amount of stress on par with those who also believed in God and had to consider making similar statements one of the possibilities that the experts and individuals involved in conducting this research came with was to state that it apparently demonstrates that atheists who claim not to believe in God may very well not align what they say they believe in with what they actually believe in internally and that would be a sufficient dust justification for someone that wants evidence of the fitrah now of course there are other experts out there who have argued for a thing which is akin to a fitrah and really when you read the روايات of Al-Muhammad about the fitrah and compare them to what has been written by this particular expert his name is Justin Barrett you would find that there's not that much overlap between what he states about the fitrah and what the روايات state about the fitrah the fitrah is not a built-in encyclopedia giving you information about Allah as بجل rather the fitrah is something which allows us to believe in the Creator and allows us to receive truth and receive truth and acceptance it's not a built-in encyclopedia which seems to be what Justin Barrett claims is present in every human being I think he gives it the agency detection I think he calls it the AD the agency detection device and this is the term that Justin Barrett gives it so those of you who want to know more can of course refer back to the research of Justin Barrett who states these things now of course it's not just people like Justin Barrett who state these things I've demonstrated in last night's episode that what we believe about what we believe about those who claim there is no God but then how would they actually believe in a God why can't I just take such a person at their face value statement well because I do believe that the fitrah is a natural a natural occurring phenomenon with inhuman beings and I do find that once you strip God from the worldview of any human being they lack the ability to believe in many of the truths that they know to be true and live by on a daily basis but what I would say is that there are people who have concealed their belief in God due to several reasons such as just not wanting a God to exist and this is what we would call a form of cognitive dissonance they would self-deceive themselves and self-deception is of course something which psychologists are more than familiar with self-deception is this form of cognitive dissonance where we believe two entirely contradictory things yesterday I cited Thomas Nagel and I'm going to cite him again then I'm going to cite two others Thomas Nagel states I want atheism to be true and I'm made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well informed people I know are religious believers it isn't just that I believe that I don't believe in God and naturally hope that I'm right in my belief it's that I hope there is no God I don't want there to be a God he states I don't want the universe to be like that so what we see with someone like Thomas Nagel is he admits there's very good evidence for God because he admits that some of the most intelligent and well informed people do believe in God so it's just clearly a ideocratic superstition for him but rather he doesn't want there to be a God and he hopes that the world we live in isn't the kind of world that has a God this is found in Thomas Nagel's secular philosophy and the religious temperament 2005 AJ Air is quite similar to Thomas Nagel and those of you who know who AJ Air is will find this to be particularly interesting AJ Air of course is someone who was involved in these debates about naturalism and supernaturalism and particularly had a very big role in the philosophy of science he when writing about his near death experience concludes so where it is my recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death which is due fairly soon will be the end of me though I continue to hope that it will they have not weakened my conviction that there is no God so what we see here is AJ Air who believes in naturalism is now accepting that beyond this bodily death beyond brain death this might not be the end result for him there may be something beyond it but of course he wants to claim that he has not weakened his conviction that there is no God now how are you going to account for existence and life after bodily death if the only thing that exists is the physical world and how are you going to believe in metaphysics and the supernatural and the existence of a spiritual world when your worldview can't account for it these are all questions that we need to be asking ourselves now are lewonton in the new york review of books states the following our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the struggle between the real struggle between science and the supernatural we take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just so stories because we have a prior commitment to materialism it is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of a phenomenal world but on the contrary that we are forced by our prior adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations no matter how counterintuitive no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated moreover that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door so Lemonton here admits that in his and in our approach to science many scientists refuse to accept the role of God in their work and they try to prevent any ability to cite and invoke supernatural agency and of course this has its consequences as we fall from that quote Dear viewers thank you once more for joining me live in the holy city of Kerbala and insha'Allah don't forget us in your du'as I pray we hear from you again tomorrow والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته