 والرجيم بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم والسلام على أشف الأنبياء والمرسلين سيدنا ونبينا أبل قاسم محمد الأمين وألأ أهل بيته الطيبين الطاهرين المعصومين المبنومين ولا أنا طل على داعهم أجمعين من الآن إلا قيام يوم الدين أمين يا رب الأالمين أردت الأشخاص بك for joining us once more from this your show from the holy city of Karbala back to the basics you are joining me your host you see more in which we continue and insha Allah tonight is the final episode in which we shall summarize and round off our engagement with the world view which entitles itself for has respectively been entitled by the rest of the world as atheism now of course I will define atheism by its classical meaning which has been embraced by numerous atheists themselves to mean they lack and the absence of a God as opposed to merely lacking a belief in a God so what I mean by that is I'm not discussing agnosticism tonight I'm not discussing any other world view tonight I'm discussing the atheistic world view which teaches that the universe has no creator no sustainer and takes pride in the fact that it renounces this belief now of course that is not to say that you do have some atheists who will say well look that's not my belief I believe that there's not enough evidence to suggest that there is a God at the end of the day such a person who wants to go down such a route needs to also be held accountable for their beliefs too and what I mean by that is we have seen quite prolifically over the past few sessions that when you deny the existence of God when you deny the existence of Allah when you strip this universe of agency purpose and of course a divine hand which has guided the process bears certain nasty consequences now of course if it were just nasty consequences in the likes of oh no there's no heaven anymore well whilst that is still equally as tragic for many of us these are not the consequences we're talking about we're talking about consequences on a much heavier penetrating scale which essentially render the lives that we all live on a day to day basis as useless purposeless and based upon an imaginary set of rules but we have created for ourselves whilst living in a giant matrix like scenario quite seriously and quite frankly what we have seen from our engagement with quite critical and honest and even dare I say quite daring atheist thinkers is for them to embrace the reality of the fact that really the consequences of their beliefs are quite simply that we have been deceived in many many different areas now of course since tonight is our last discussion on atheism I would like very much to round off where we have reached and in order to help the viewer remind themselves and refresh their memories about what we have come to understand about the atheist mindsets especially those consistent atheists I'll remind my viewers that we embrace the principles of the Imam from the Ahl al-Bait made a peace and blessings of Allah upon them all who state that when discussing with anyone compel them by the very principles to which they compel themselves so if someone takes a foundational principle a foundational presupposition or they take a particular belief those beliefs will naturally have consequences now it's not sufficient for you to not be willing to embrace the consequences of your beliefs and we've seen that by far the more consistent atheists have been willing to go all the way down the rabbit hole they've been willing to embrace Alice in Wonderland herself and they've been willing to embrace I'm not sure if it's a red pill or a blue pill really in this delusional like matrix and of course it is not our intention to be offensive to anyone we hope that if what I am saying is false vendor can be a reasonable dialogue and a reasonable dialogue of course is one far away from mocking far away from this kind of high school rhetoric which we commonly see from such discussions and more importantly one which embraces the principles of dialogue is let's discuss the thought let's not discuss them in such a crude manner that all we're doing is offending one another I mean one thing that we've certainly observed from many of these debates be it between theists and atheists or even theists amongst themselves in different religions and what have you is that often there's a lot of people that possess very sharp tongues and very sharp minds and it's necessary for us to keep things academic let's keep things reasonable we're not here to hate one another we're not here to ridicule one another rather we all want truth and it is sincerely my prayer by the shrine of may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him that Allah through the right of the Shaheed of the martyr of this holy city would open up the eyes of those who have so heavily deceived themselves and indeed if I am one of those who has deceived myself then I pray that my eyes are likewise opened of course in order to open people's eyes we need to do this in a very respectful manner no one's going to take you seriously if all you're going to do is offend every sentiment they have now there's a big difference between being frank and being offensive so what we have been doing on this show or what I have been doing on this show rather and may Allah forgive me for using the royal way if it's been in any arrogant way shape or form is I have attempted to discuss these issues frankly and I pray heavily that my viewers have not found anything I have said to be offensive and please forgive me if you have found anything I have said to be offensive for indeed such an approach is one that returns to me and is not necessarily one that returns to this channel and indeed I am responsible for any mistakes which have been committed on this television broadcast with the exception of the technical errors in which case they are often not my fault but nonetheless dear viewers we return back to the topic Insha'Allah what we have observed dear viewers from the very start of this discussion is that when we come back to the traditions of the Ahlul Bayt may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all they have clearly stated that one who knows himself knows his Lord and that the one who knows most about himself knows his Lord in fact we have seen that there is a plethora of traditions in this light which can be found in our books of narration allow me to quote them very quickly Insha'Allah to Allah أمير المطمنين is cited as saying a clever person is someone who knows himself and does things with sincerity knowledge of the self is the more beneficial of the two forms of knowledge أينور عارف is someone who knows himself and releases it and repels it from anything that would farther it away from Allah أزواجه the greatest of ignorance is a person's ignorance of himself the greatest of wisdom is a person's knowledge of his self people who have the most knowledge of their selves have more fear of their Lord the best of the intellect is a person's knowledge of his own self so whoever knows his self will be more knowledgeable and he who is ignorant of his self will fall astray it surprises me that someone who has lost something searches for it whilst when he has lost his self he does not look for it it surprises me that a person is ignorant of his self how can he know his Lord the goal of knowledge is for a person to know his self how can one who does not know others know his self it is sufficient in knowledge for a person to know his self it is sufficient in ignorance for a person to have ignorance of his self he who knows his self will struggle with it he who is ignorant of his self will neglect it he who knows his self knows his Lord and inshallah to Allah this shall suffice from the quotations about knowledge of the self of course dear viewers one thing we need to understand when looking at such a tradition we need to read it in light of the other traditions of the imams we need to read it in light of the totality of material that we have from the imams so one thing we know from the imams of the Ahl al-Bayt may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon them is according to that which they've taught in the world view of Islam we believe that Allah Azawajal has of course made us aware of and he is the primary one who has caused us to be aware of him it is not that we as human beings gain this awareness of him through being aware of ourselves no the royals of the Ahl al-Bayt and particularly the supplications of the Ahl al-Bayt may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all state that Allah Azawajal is the one who came and gave us this knowledge of himself by himself and this is of course the more primary level of knowledge and the معرفة that we have of Allah through a معرفة of ourselves is a more basic more general kind of knowledge but dear viewers Insha'Allah we're going to go for a very quick break and I shall explain more when we return والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته viewers thank you so much for joining us after that very short break of course before the break we were discussing the importance of the tradition about someone who knows themselves being in more of a position to of course know their Lord and I explained that this is a more general type of معرفة whereas the معرفة that we have which leads us to Allah Azawajal is a more specific type of معرفة and that is a معرفة which is what we call the معرفة فترية the معرفة given to us within the innate disposition of a human being now of course this is extremely interesting one thing we find when it comes to this concept of the فترة and for those of you who are more interested you may refer to the previous episodes of this series in which we have tried our best to explicate and demonstrate that there is what we could call contextual evidences which assist us in our understanding of the فترة and demonstrate that it is an objective understanding it is not merely something which is subject to this level of confirmation bias where I can say that atheists can't believe in God and they can tell me that I deep down don't believe in God of course it's not really that subjective I have of course to the best of my ability cited objective evidence demonstrating that we as human beings have a faculty which resonates and bears heavy similarities to the concept invoked in Islam known as the فترة and of course we mentioned that a great is that it would have good explanatory scope for the phenomenon that we see around us and so Islam certainly has great explanatory scope for the doctrine or the belief that human beings have this innate belief in God now of course how the atheists dealt with this innate belief in God they've gone down the roots many of them to suggest that this is a hoax or an illusion or a delusion placed upon us as a survival mechanism by our Darwinian devices and our essential attempts as a species to survive so there are many who actually claim that religion is merely an evolutionary byproduct that in order to allow human beings to survive further they have been endowed with this false belief that there is divine agency now of course one of the major problems with this acknowledgement is that if evolution in order to make us survive has concerned itself with injecting within human species false beliefs for the purpose of survival how would we trust any of our regular beliefs how would we know that every single thing we believe every single thing we observe is not merely a delusion which is cast upon us by our evolutionary hope to advance as a species now of course there are some atheists who are quite willing to go down this route you have Alex Rosenberg in his book The Atheist's Guide to Reality now many who are viewing this might just think that he's a particular favorite of mine because he says everything I want him to say well that might be true nonetheless he has given very good cogent reasoning for why he believes in these things and he's certainly by no means an imbecile he's no by no means an imbecile from an academic perspective and what I mean by that is he's a very educated man I'm sure his IQ is probably off the scales and he's very educated in the field he happens to be writing in if one observes his arguments which I have gone through throughout this series you would see that he makes a pretty sound and cogent case that if you were to simply believe in a materialistic physical universe there would be no such thing as a thought a thought which of course is an immaterial concept and how can immaterial concepts exist in a purely physical universe now if this is the case that immaterial concepts can't exist then you would have to summarize a thought in a physical light and in order to do that you would have to go down the route that Alex Rosenberg has that it's merely an illusion there's no such thing as thought and in doing so you invalidate the human thought process now of course what are the other consequences that we see in Alex Rosenberg's world we see another consequence is really the lack of free will now those are two what we would say is from the perspective of we who live on a daily basis in this world can you imagine changing your perception of the world to now believe that number one no one has a thought process so no one chooses to do anything they do and number two no one so no one actually thinks about what they believe because there's no such thing as thought and number two everyone's just chemically determined to do what they do imagine next time you see something on the streets that really angers you and aggravates you what's it going to feel like if you believe that that person is stripped of agency altogether that person is just a victim of cosmic material destiny where one physical event preceded the event which he now lives in and he had absolutely zero choice in the matter now of course I have mentioned that there have been certain papers written for judges in the united states of America to show a lot more leniency with criminals as a result of this line of reasoning of course the big problem with this is if the criminal if the criminal has no choice in his crime what's the point of writing a letter for the judge who likewise has no choice in their judgment and we see that this is one area where the world view of Alex Rosenberg is unlivable it's unlivable especially when we go down the next route which is that even if we are to suggest that everyone is a victim of determinism and determinism being of course that one action or one event would proceed and lead to another without that person having a choice some people might believe in determinism but yet nonetheless believe in an objective good and bad now of course Alex Rosenberg will have none of that and he's not the only one he is joined by a plethora of very intelligent atheists who acknowledge that if there is no God there is no such thing as good or bad now I want you all to consider this very very wisely whenever we discuss with an atheist what are their main objections to religion number one they'll talk about how religion causes harm suffering and evil matter and motion doesn't have a right to not go through suffering if everything is just determined by a previous physical event why do they complain about religion number two if there is no such thing as good or bad or evil or non-evil that is to say evil and good why even complain about them number three if we cannot even think and there is no way to trust our minds then why even believe in the argumentations that you have against theism if your objections against religion are all premised upon intellectual doubts or moral doubts and yet you belong to a worldview which undermines both the intellect and morality then really what we are looking at is something quite confusing and dare I say not worthy of taking one step further within the conversation and what I mean by that is it is akin to the judge who asks for evidence for the innocence of every person brought forward before him and yet the judge has no way of knowing anything to be true if the judge believes that there is no such thing as a canon of evidence that could ever convince him and yet asks for proof for the innocence of the criminal brought before him what would this lead to likewise those who can know nothing are in no position to demand evidence for the existence of God until they can firstly establish for themselves anything else to a decent and adequate level of certainty I know that this might sound confusing it's very confusing at first what I am saying is when we look at the atheist worldview no such thing as thought that's according to Alex Rosenberg's world where everything's physical and the thought process which is a non-physical process this concept of having a thought about something else is not physical you have the anti-Darwinian accounts of knowledge as well where you have Darwin himself and Patricia Churchland who we've quoted in previous episodes acknowledging if we have evolved from these relatives of ours from the same species as these relatives of ours these relatives such as chimpanzees who we believe are our cousins then essentially since we don't trust their minds to come up with scientific or mathematical truths why would we trust our own after all evolution is merely concerned with survival the four EPs fighting fleeing food and reproduction if this is the case then we can't trust anything and until and until the atheists can give a decent account for knowledge when we find that it's impossible to dialogue with them and the reviewers don't be arrogant at the difference between us and those who have accepted atheism many atheists aren't aware of these consequences many of them are far more intelligent than ourselves but it goes to show that man in his arrogance can adopt absurd positions because of this concept of self-deceit and we ask Allah to provide for us with guidance I pray that Allah keeps us all up on the straight path and indeed guides us all dear viewers please forgive me if I've said anything offensive and insha'Allah tomorrow we shall be continuing our series but moving on to a different topic والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته