 أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم والصلاة والسلام على أشف الأنبياء والمرسلين السيدنا ونبينا أبل قاسم محمد الأمين وعلى أحلبيتها الطيبين والطاهرين المعصومين المبلومين ولانة الله على أداءهم أجمعين من الآن لقيام يوم الدين أمين يا رب العالمين شكرا لكم وشكرا once more for joining us live from the holy city of Karbala and this is your live show from the holy city of Karbala back to the basics in which are your hosts I'm going through some of the topics which affect us and are related to an engagement of ourselves with those who happen to believe in different systems of belief and happen to differ with us on our major core beliefs of course for those of you who have been tuning in we are continuing with our analysis and this is of course a continuation of our concept of the introduction to the concept of the world view the world view is of course a it's a systematic way of portraying how one ought to analyze and understand the concept of a creed or the concept of anakeda and indeed the concept of a religion for indeed a world view is not merely an isolated set of beliefs but rather a theological aspect of one's world view but rather it encompasses everything how one acts, how one ought to behave morally how one ought to view things ethically and so the whole concept of a world view encompasses and it is through understanding this concept of a world view that we've been able to draw some interesting comparisons and enlighten some of the viewers in regards to what ways they can have more fruitful conversations with those who believe in other religions or other sects or even believe in no religion it is through the concept of a world view that we have been able to largely understand our own position in regards to what ourakeda is and again understand where we can begin with others so throughout the past say 3 episodes now we have put forward the concept of the necessary big question of whether or not Allah Azuzajal or the concept of a deity exists and we've stated that if one were to reject the concept of Allah Azuzajal this is not merely a small negation of one isolated belief but rather this belief has massive implications massive shortcomings and massive shortfalls which must be accounted for indeed such a claim is a claim which would end up resulting in other dare I say deficient and puzzling answers about the world's major questions these are not merely the claims put forward by myself I understand that many of the viewers might be thinking well you are at the end of the day someone who studies in the religious seminar you are on a religious TV channel and therefore you have a particular bias it's not like you're going to be representing the atheist view very accurately but I've already stated that this is not merely my own conclusion this is not the conclusion of a Christian philosopher this is not the conclusion of someone who has an agenda against atheism rather these very arguments have been put forward by some of the greatest minds who believe that atheism is one of the most sustainable and well thoroughly demonstrated belief systems in the world today I've started by citing one of the most prominent atheist philosophers his name is of course for those of you who have been tuning in Dr. Alex Rosenberg and in his very important book The Atheist's Guide to Reality he introduces the atheist concept of a worldview and what he believes is much more than just a set of knock down arguments against the existence of Allah or the existence of God Alex Rosenberg fully embraces and accepts that we ought to embrace entirely this product which is brought about as a result of negating the existence of Allah and where has that led us according to the worldview put forward by Alex Rosenberg he states again that some of the major questions in life would be as follows is there a God no what is the meaning of life there is none why am I here just blind luck does prayer work of course not is there a soul is it immortal is there free will not a chance what happens when we die everything pretty much goes on as before except us what is the difference between right and wrong good and bad there is no moral difference between them why should I be moral because it makes you feel better than being immoral and the questions we're all of very significant existence questions of our purpose in life questions of our ethics questions of moral theory and so what this has generally led us to understand is that when you remove the existence of a God or God or Allah as a وجل from the framework of your worldview from the framework of your universe there would be necessary complications and necessary consequences as a result of doing so for those of you who tuned into the previous episode I gave several examples of how this is not merely something we would just explain as taking place with those who disbelieve in God rather those who believe in God as well would be accountable for believing in several consequences of that belief in a God but what's interesting about Alex Rosenberg's argument is just how far he's willing to go down the rabbit hole now I refer to it as the rabbit hole because sometimes when you read these beliefs it really does feel like you're in a fictional novel it does feel like you're reading someone that is writing fiction as opposed to describing the real world, the world that you and I happen to co-inhabit and live in because sometimes it would seem to us that such beliefs are really absurd now of course I don't want to place those aspects into our hands where it's merely myself judging this as a subjective human being of course I recognize that we as human beings we all have a level of subjectivity I might have certain preferences, a preference for a certain color, a preference for a certain type of weather, a preference for a certain temperature but if someone might radically differ with me in such preferences I may have a preference in terms of which fictional novels I like to read, which literature I find to be the more attractive forms of literature or the most exciting and engaging forms of literature but certainly what I find here is that there are certain things that we as human beings will objectively say that no there happens to be a degree of objectivity here which is not merely my subjective desire as an individual calling into question what is being said but rather it is something that every rational human being would say now of course that really doesn't seem to matter at times because one thing we were discussing yesterday which was the point we concluded the episode at is the point that some of these new atheists are quite willing to go as far as to deny the human aspect known as intentionality now what is intentionality intentionality as I explained it is a basic function of the human mind I deliberately used the term human mind because I wish to separate between the physical human brain and the human mind the reason I do so is if we reduce the human mind to the brain although it has become a very popular thing to do in today's world we may very well fall into the same consequences as someone like professor and Dr. Alex Rosenberg but if we maintain that distinction which philosophers and some other individuals who work in the field have a tendency to do then we would see that we can make a distinguishment and we would not necessarily reduce the mind to the physical human brain but the feature known as intentionality which I was discussing in last night's episode before we drew to a close was the fact that we as human beings are able to conceive of things through our thought process I can conceptualize right now that I can conceptualize for example the city of London or I can conceptualize Scotland or I can conceptualize for example the holy city of Mecca and in doing so an image comes to my mind and a thought exists in my mind that thought possesses the function we know as intentionality about something there is an aboutness to it as I've stated we don't normally find physical matter in the universe which is about something else this table whilst it might be carrying my papers at the current period of time for the usage of this television show which we are broadcasting live from the holy city of Kerbala it is not about my papers this table composed of glass and the other materials utilized to construct this table there is no aboutness when it comes to my papers this table is not about Yahya Seymour they might even write Yahya Seymour on a table but that table would still not be about Yahya Seymour there would be no intentionality involved in the process of the construction of that table and so it is very difficult according to the worldview of Alex Rosenberg with this physicalist materialist worldview in which everything is merely described according to its physical compounds and makeup to explain away the concept of intentionality but dear viewers we will be explaining this more thoroughly after a short break please join me after that والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته dear viewers thank you for enduring with that very short break before the break we were of course discussing the concept known as intentionality and we were describing most briefly I understand it's very frustrating many of us have probably never heard that word intentionality before and even if we have we may have heard it in a very different usage from the philosophical definition of intentionality or its usage in the realm of cognitive science but that word intentionality of course was to describe the aboutness of something how my thoughts can be about Paris my thoughts can be about Scotland and yet we don't have physical objects being about something else that camera which is currently recording me and broadcasting myself to the viewers of this channel may Allah bless you all it is not about me it just happens to be focused on me at this particular time but a thought is very different from a camera a thought is a non materialistic object but how do you explain away that non materialistic object in light of a world view in light of a philosophy which claims that the only substances are material ones and that the only things which exist are those which are naturalistically observable according to the five senses it is this issue which has landed of course the world view of people such as Dr. Alex Rosenberg and others who likewise recognize this problem and recognize that a strict physicalist materialistic atheistic world view would exclude these items and exclude these processes from a legitimate explanatory scope it is this issue which has landed their world view under the lens and criticism of other very like minded capable philosophers this particular article has been named could intentionality be an illusion a note on Rosenberg he asks the question could intentionality be an illusion of course not but seemingly intelligent people think otherwise he states is still single photograph doesn't convey movement the way a motion picture does that is to say a photograph is very different from a film watching a sequence of slightly different photos one photo per hour or per minute or even one every six seconds won't do it either but looking at the right sequence of still pictures succeeding each other every 120th of a second produces the illusion that the images in each still photo are moving increasing the rate enhances the illusion though beyond a certain rate the illusion gets no better for creatures like us but it's still an illusion there is nothing to it but the succession of still pictures now you might be wondering what's going on for those of you who tuned into last night's episode you would know that Dr. Alex Rosenberg likened the concept of intentionality the concept of the human thought process the concept of me having a thought about something else to a photograph and how that photograph can be about something else as well that's how movies perpetuate their illusion the large set of still pictures is organized together in a way that produces in creatures like us the illusion that the images are moving in creatures with different brains and eyes ones that work faster the trick might not work in ones that work slower changing the still pictures at a rate of one every hour could work but there is no movement of any of the images in any of the pictures nor does anything move from one photo onto the next of course the projector is still moving and the photons are moving and the actors were moving but all the movement that the movie Watcher detects is in the eye of the beholder that is why the movement is illusory the notion that thoughts are about stuff is illusory in roughly the same way this is the argument of Dr. Alex Rosenberg and I'm quoting from it directly the notion that thoughts are about stuff is illusory in roughly the same way so Alex Rosenberg likened our thought process the ability to have a thought about something else to the ability for a viewer to watch a movie and be deceived that something is actually going on think of each input output neural circuit as a single still photo now put together a huge number of input output circuits in the right way none of them is about anything each is just an input output circuit firing or not but when they act together they project the illusion that they are thoughts about stuff they do that through the behavior and the conscious experience if any that they produce now this is a quote from Alex Rosenberg the atheist guy to reality enjoying life without illusions what's interesting about that particular title is it reminds me very much of the concepts which I've introduced in right near the start of this series those individuals that you might meet on the streets who are slightly socially disadvantageous who might have been downtrodden by society who come to you largely intoxicated or intoxicated is the best word to use I believe in either a hyper way or a more calmed down way for a lack of better terms such individuals who have their perceptions of reality distorted through whatever method of intoxication they have been using when such an individual comes to you and tells you that look it's all an illusion man it's all a big game you don't really know the truth they're hiding it from us man they're telling us lies and I can see I know the truth generally we don't trust such an individual because he's basically claiming that everyone has been duped everyone around him no one can see through reality no one has an accurate perception of what's really going on we can't trust our senses we can't trust our mind but we can trust this individual who happens to get it right it's no different from the concept of that movie that came out roughly probably approximately 15 years ago now the matrix in which he finds themselves in a world where it's all just a giant computer simulation and there's no reality beyond the motion senses which are put into the human body being fed via a computer into his mind when Alex Rosenberg writes a book called the atheist guy to reality enjoying life without illusions he's basically making a similar claim especially when he claims that there's no such concept as intentionality that we cannot trust our thought processes and indeed there's no such thing as a thought but rather a thought is but an illusion this philosopher known as the maverick philosopher a very popular online blogging philosopher he writes the following Rosenberg is not saying as an emergentist might that the synergy of sufficiently many neural circuits gives rise to genuine object directed thoughts he is saying something far worse something literally nonsensical namely that the object directed intentionality thought that thoughts are object directed is an illusion so the very thought we have the very thought that we can now have by even thinking about thoughts is an illusion the absurdity of Rosenberg's position can be seen as follows so this is where we would apply again this famous let's see where Rosenberg's word stands when we apply his very claims as to what principles he adopts to his own argument one either of the words the notion that thoughts are about stuff is a losery namely that is to say the very thought or the very concept of thoughts being about something being intentional is an illusion express a thought the thoughts that there are no such thing as thoughts or they do not 2 if the latter is true that is to say they do not represent a thought or a concept then the words are meaningless but 3 they represent a thought that is to say if the very claim that Rosenberg is making is something which possesses the concept of intentionality if the former then the thought is either true or false but number 4 if the thought is true then the words are no object directed thoughts including the one expressed by Rosenberg are true and the words are once again meaningless if a thought is false then there are objects directed thoughts and Rosenberg's claim is false that is to say when Rosenberg makes a claim but there is no such thing as a concept of intentionality and that the whole notion of a thought being something which is actually thought about is just an illusion then in trying to teach us this very principle he has essentially come forward with a thought either that statement made by Rosenberg is something that we can have intentionality about either it's something true or it's not if it's true then the very thought that Rosenberg came with is false and if Rosenberg's statement is false then there is such a thing as thought and this is where the problem lies in trying to claim that there is no such thing as human thought Rosenberg has essentially shot himself in the foot and this is the price that the new atheists are willing to go down the atheist philosophers are willing to embrace this reality in order to escape the concept of God as I've stated it's like playing Russian roulette with all six bullets loaded so our viewers thank you for joining us once more from the holy city of Kerbala and I pray that you can join us again tomorrow in which we continue to analyze this particular worldview the atheist worldview والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته