 عو بالله من الشيطان العين الرجيم بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم والصلاة والسلام على أشوف الأنبياء والمرسلين سيدنا ونبينا أب القاسم محمد الأمين وعلى أهل بيته الطيبين الطاهرين المعصومين المفلومين ولعنا طلع لعداءهم أجمعين من الآن لقيام يوم الدين أمين يا رب العالمين أردت المجردين. شكرا لكم لكم لتروننا once more from the holy city of Karbala ترونني بكسر حواليك يا سي مور في which we are discussing on our usual daily show which broadcast you daily with the exceptional Friday back to the basics in which we are coming up with a framework صلاة حواليية one which is respectful to our belief system and to the belief systems of others in which we discuss the big questions pertaining to our differences with others and a more sustainable way of reaching what could be summarized as a potential common ground of course not everyone shares a common ground and what we're trying to do is reach that common ground in order that we might be able to understand ourselves why we adopt certain positions and more importantly the flaws with the beliefs of others just for our own understanding and our own benefit and an articulate way to describe our own reasoning to others too we have for those of you who are tuning in for the first time been engaging with the very dynamic vibrant and quite to quote one of its major proponents breathtaking worldview known as the worldview of scientism or as he framed it science now of course this is an overgrowth of what we would call the worldview of atheism and of course this is why I'm taking the court directly from the book the atheists guide to reality by professor Alex Rosenberg a professor of the philosophy of science at Duke University a very prominent school and very decent and renowned one in the United States of America I'm not by any means straw manning him caricaturing his position nor attempting to defame the atheist position without elaborately citing my reasonings for the beliefs I put forward tonight as being consequences of the worldview of atheism and more importantly dismantling their worldview according to their own acknowledgments now we are talking about bigger questions here we're not talking about small fundamental ones such as how an atheist could justify for example trusting one scientist over another no we're talking about much more fundamental concepts and over the past few nights we have been discussing something of the utmost importance for indeed when you hear anyone object to the concept of religion the object to the concept of your religion as a monotheistic believer it's always going to be one of two sorts it will be an intellectual objection which of course will be difficult now that we've shown that Alex Rosenberg does not believe we can trust our thought process because everything's physical and the thought as a non physical concepts would not be very easily explained in a physicalist universe and now the second type of objection which is leveled against the concept of monotheism and God in particular is that our religions are barbaric our cake and their morality is quite frankly stagnant and unadaptable for the modern world and of course those who believe that this is a sustainable objection against religion would of course have to believe in a fabit or stable form of morality which we've been showing according to the admissions of Professor Alex Rosenberg does not exist under the worldview of atheism but is it merely Alex Rosenberg who acknowledges it which is this absolutely not allow me to go through our reservoir of quotations once more to analyze what atheists have stated about their consistent form of atheism and whether or not it accommodates for the concept of morality جون بول ساتر في existentialist he states the following when we speak of abandonment a favorite word of Heidegger we only mean to say that God does not exist and it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end namely we have to take that major answer we give to that major question does God exist and we have to take all the consequences of that answer we don't want to be like lightweight like these new atheists who claim that no it's merely a rejection and God no we want to embrace it to its full extent something similar to what Alex Rosenberg states in his book he states the existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism a moralism which is based on secularity which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense namely when you remove God from the picture but it has a minimal cost he wants to avoid that why because towards 1880 when the French professors in devil to formulate a secular morality they said nothing will be changed if God does not exist we shall rediscover the same norms of honesty progress and humanity and we shall have disposed of God as an out of date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself the existentialist on the contrary finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist for there disappears with him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven there can be no longer any good a priori a priori means to start off with since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it it is nowhere written that the good exists that one must be honest or must not lie since we are now upon the plane where there are only men namely now that we've removed non man as great as a kind of concept from this universe we live in Dostoevsky the great Russian novelist once wrote if God did not exist everything would be permitted and that for his existentialism is the starting point everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist and man is in consequence for Lorne for he cannot find to depend upon either himself within or without himself outside himself forever I'm sorry for slightly butering that quote Paul Kurtz likewise states the central question about moral and ethical principles concerns their ontological foundation by ontological foundation we mean again where does this find its existential value where do we ground this belief in morality if they are neither derived from God nor anchored in some transcendent grounds they are purely ephemeral that is to say if we believe in this physicalist naturalist scientist universe where nothing exists other than the physical compounds of different objects then where do we derive this non physical property of morality from very prominent British philosopher popular writer on science still alive today Julian Bagini he says the following if there is no single moral authority we have to in some sense create values for ourselves by moral authority he would mean one that transcends man a supernatural being a God and that means that moral claims are not true or false you may disagree with me but you cannot say I have made a factual error that is because without the concept of a God everything becomes arbitrary it becomes subjective Richard Dawkins needs no introduction the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design no purpose and no God no evil no good nothing but pitiless indifference Dawkins thereafter concedes it is pretty hard to defend absolutist morals on grounds other than religious ones now again just to elaborate slightly further we need to point out that we are not stating by any means that atheists cannot be moral people there are far more many atheists who are moral than there are believers at times and this is quite frankly disgusting and shameful that we as a religious community do not always adopt the values which are part and parcel of our worldview but that being said we are not talking about whether or not an atheist can through imitating the religious and moral values he finds in others be moral we are talking about whether or not if there is no God we can find the concept of morality I've already stated that the atheist who says to me well what you mean there is morality I'm a good moral person of course you're a good and moral person because you live in the real world you live in the world that God created and that God inhabits in his all-powerful knowledge you see we are not talking about merely a theoretical concept we are talking about something much more important when discussing a worldview one of the great making properties of a worldview is its ability to provide explanatory power for what we see around us what we experience in life our thoughts and the nature of our experiences with other human beings you see if I would go outside and I would see that the floor was wet but it's a completely sunny day I might come to believe that someone had either utilized a hose pipe and wet the floor or there had been a pipe burst which made water come out onto the floor or it had been raining previously but if my neighbor had stated no none of the above and when I asked him to provide an explanation for why water came on the floor he would say what you mean water is just on the floor and I would say to him no I understand water is on the floor but you're telling me nothing caused the water to be on the floor and he would say yeah but what you mean there is water on the floor this is not providing an explanatory scope for phenomenon that we view in front of us so the atheists can not merely appeal to the fact that human beings have morality this does not provide an explanatory scope for morality and of course this leads us to something which is a lot more problematic the concept of where morality comes from and whether or not it can be accounted for by atheism allow us to run through the argument once more in order for us to understand the nature of the arguments again we are talking about ontological grounding where someone provides the account for the origin of morality and not merely whether or not we can observe morality and people can be moral if an atheist strips the universe down to merely evolution and the evolved species that have come to be human beings as well as other species in this bottomless pityless universe as Richard Dawkins described it where does the concept of morality come from other than a subjective whim of the human being to wish to survive now there is one root the atheists can take and this root doesn't help them very often it's the same root they take to explain away the common phenomenon of human beings believing in God what do they state in order to deal with this they state that the notion of religious belief is a coping mechanism and it seems to be what motivates the evolutionary psychoanalysis they state that the reason that vast proportions of humanity believe things are patently untrue and even ridiculous is because we have this genetic evolutionary device functioning in us that helps us believe in this as a coping mechanism because reality is so sour now a great problem with this is the atheist in trying to explain away the phenomenon of religious belief has ended up shooting themselves in the foot because if they want to explain away people's religiosity as a natural basic belief due to evolutionary coping mechanisms and devices which evolution has programmed into mankind in order for them to survive then if evolution is able to program into me false beliefs in order to survive and these false beliefs motivate me in my life how do I know which other false beliefs evolution hasn't programmed into me Alex Rosenberg already believes that there's no such thing as thought should I believe that thought is merely an evolutionary coping device which biology has programmed into me in order to survive more importantly let's look at some of the beliefs which could be merely useful fictions according to our biology if evolution has installed in us these useful fictions what else could it have installed in us as false but useful fictions in order to make us survive dear viewers let's answer that question right after the break please bear with me peace be upon you there are plenty of other beliefs dear viewers as we were saying prior to the break that evolution may have installed into us as useful but false fictions in order to allow us to survive if we think genuinely about the concept that the atheist is trying to tell us when they state that many people believe in the concept of God and God's as a useful surviving coping mechanism installed into the human by evolution what else would this entail if I can't trust my beliefs anymore if I can't trust my thoughts anymore because it installs into me useful fictional devices in order to make me survive and cope what else could be a useful fictional belief but I need to empirically test the belief that the future will always be like the past and that we can assume normality and function could just be a useful fiction which evolution has instilled in me the belief that the laws of physics will hold in the same way everywhere could also just be a useful fiction the belief that human beings have some kind of value both collectively and as individuals could likewise be a useful fiction and the belief that the physical world actually exists externally as I believe it to could be a useful fiction in fact the belief that other minds exist and that this isn't all just an illusion in which I'm a brain in a vat what we call solipsism could also be a useful fictional belief how do I know that evolution hasn't just caused me to believe these things in order for me to survive the cold and harsh reality that I'm the only mind now someone could say to me well, another mind can engage with yours and it can come and slap you that's true but how do I know that wouldn't be a computer feeding computer waves into my brain to make me believe that you see when you open up this can of worms of biologically programmed useful fictions you really don't have anywhere to go and so what we see is that it would also open up another can of worms which is what it would open up the can of worms that we shouldn't trust anything including the belief in morality so let's look at three different reasons for why atheists should actually reject disregard and completely discard morality in its entirety as a religious useful fiction which humanity has outgrown number one we have no obligations to evolution what I mean by that is whilst it is indeed true that most people share a strong sense that we should not torture for example children for fun we know that this is just an evolved instinct that promotes survival if we want to look at it from an evolutionist perspective it is no different in principle from the instinct to prefer certain tastes and taste buds and sensations over others or to avoid for example sleeping in the ocean so it's ridiculous to think that we have an obligation to what evolution has programmed us to believe if I believe something so strongly but I know that evolution might have tricked me into believing that then why should I hold on to it I don't have an obligation to prefer certain tastes over others as evolution has programmed my body to do nor do I have an obligation to prefer not to sleep in the ocean many of us might even prefer to follow that due to what evolution has done to ourselves and our taste buds and our thought process but it's certainly not wrong or morally morally condemnable to go against evolution so this language and this way of thinking is merely an outgrowth of the concept of religious obligation which I don't necessarily have to follow and because I don't owe evolution anything why should I believe in morality that's the first reason that an atheist probably should reject the concept of morality number two evolution often selects for false beliefs and what do I mean by evolution often selects false beliefs evolution as we've seen in previous episodes as is cited by people like Patricia Churchland is concerned with what it's not concerned with truth making properties it's not concerned with discovering reality it's concerned with what v4f's fighting fleeing food and reproduction now she states that word the 4f's this is not my term I want to make that very clear this is not my term we can call it triple FR fighting fleeing food and reproduction it's not concerned with anything else it's not concerned with finding truth it's not concerned with philosophical problems as Charles Darwin himself stated he struggles to believe whether or not he should trust his own mind because would we ever trust the whims and reasoning of a monkey now for some atheists that might be watching this but they're not saying that we've evolved from monkeys I'm saying that we share a common ancestor as the fury states so if we wouldn't trust the reasoning and wisdom of a monkey if there indeed is any as Charles Darwin states why is this it's because again evolution has programmed them to concern themselves with triple FR fighting fleeing food and reproduction it's not concerned them with thinking about truth and if we don't concern ourselves with truth then what would be the point why would I trust for example a device designed to calculate the location of water under the ground in order to guide me to the nearest airport if the device wasn't designed to act as a GPS it probably wouldn't function very well as a GPS likewise if evolution has programmed my body to concern itself with the triple FR fighting fleeing food and reproduction it probably hasn't really worked it out for me to concern myself with discovering patterns of truth and the reality of the universe one especially that reality could be extremely brutal for me so that's the second reason why according to atheism there's probably a good reason to not trust our sense of morality thirdly obligation is not a property of particles that is to say since we are nothing but a series of particles and matter in motion and it is absurd to think that matter can have obligations to other matter simply by virtue of its being structured in a particular way it is therefore just as absurd to think that a human being can have obligations to other human beings as to think that a beaker of acid can have obligations to another beaker of acid but a book can have obligations to another book this is the third reason for why evolution and the atheist belief in evolution probably should lead us to cast doubt in the concept of morality but do we really want to go down the rabbit hole and embrace Alice in Wonderland as some of these people would have us do dear viewers we'll continue this analysis tomorrow insha'Allah thank you once more for joining us and please do not forget us in your du'as والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته