 Tonight's lecture is gonna be more kind of classroom, academic rather than like a sermon. So basically to begin, there are two approaches to the quote God question. There's what's known as presuppositionalism, which means to presuppose the existence of God. Here we look at revealed theology. This is actually my specialty looking at the quote on the Bible and things like that, all the New Testaments looking at the language, the context of scripture, things like that. So we presuppose God's existence here and we seek to know him more personally. So presuppositionalism, the object here is to have ma'rifah or to have divine knowledge of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, intimate knowledge of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. So like a Muslim Christian debate, a Muslim and a Christian are not going to debate does God exist because they both presuppose God, right? They both believe he exists. So that's not the topic of the debate. The topic of the debate between a Muslim and a Christian is what is the way to God? Is the Bible the word of God? Is the Quran the word of God? Is the Isa'ala Salaam God? Is the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam a messenger of God? That's one approach, presuppositionalism. The other approach is called evidentialism and this is where, and this is called natural theology, it's called philosophical theism William Craig Elaine calls it that. Here we look at evidence, we don't look at scripture. So we look at logic, we look at philosophy, these types of evidences. We look at reason and science, we employ deductive or syllogistic arguments that are not strictly theological but may have theological implications. What was that? Well, syllogistic, we'll talk about a syllogism, inshallah, we'll talk about that. I'll give you some examples of a syllogism. It's a form of argument that's attributed to Aristotle. So look at that, inshallah. So here with evidentialism, the Muslim and the Christian will join forces as it were against the atheist, right? Because they both believe in God but the question here is not, what does this God reveal about himself? The question here is, is there a God? You look at our Shahada, right? La ilaha, that's atheism, illallah, that's deism, right? Belief in a God, la ilaha illallah. You believe that there's no God but the God or Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, that's deism. God created but he may not be personal. Muhammadur Rasulullah, that's theism, God is personal. Okay, so tonight we're gonna be looking primarily at evidentialism, this approach to the God question. Now let's look at examples of syllogisms, okay? Again, this is a form of argument that's attributed to Aristotle. Simple argument, give you an example. Premise number one, all men are mortal. Premise number two, George Washington was a man. Therefore, our conclusion that follows logically and inescapably is that George Washington was a mortal, so this is an airtight, logical argument. You might even say that our premises are self-evident, they're axiomatic, they're just accepted on their face. You don't have to prove your premises, right? Unless somebody has some weird theory about George Washington was a jinn or a vampire or something like that. But most people say no, George Washington was all men are mortal, George Washington was a man. Therefore, George Washington was a mortal. So another example, premise number one, the universe is ordered, premise number two, this is either by chance or design, premise number three, this is not by chance. Therefore, our logical conclusion is it is by design. So this is a logical argument, but the problem here with this argument is that it could be potentially what's known as question begging, a question begging syllogism. What does it mean for argument to be question begging? It means that we haven't proven or demonstrated our premises. Our first premises was the universe is ordered, that may not be self-evident, you may not agree with that, it may not be axiomatic, you might want me to provide evidence of that. So even though this is a logical argument, we have some work to do by providing the data or proofs for our premises. You also have an argument that flows logically, but whose premises are axiomatically untrue or irrational. For example, premise number one, all donkeys can speak English, premise number two, Gary is my pet donkey. Therefore, Gary can speak English. It's a logical argument, the logic is airtight, but it's irrational, it's axiomatically untrue. Now if you look at the arguments of what are known as the four horsemen of Neo-Atheism, a new atheist movement. These are Christopher Hitchens, his book is called God is Not Great. They have different books, just not a lot better. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Sam Harris, and the faith Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell. If you look at their arguments against God, they primarily revolve around issues of social impact of religion. In other words, religious people are bad, therefore there is no God, right? Look at, there's Hitler, there's pedophile priests, there's suicide bombings, there's ISIS, this type of thing. So before we continue, I want to make a distinction here. Very important distinction between an atheist and a new atheist. An atheist is someone who does not believe in a God and follows no religion, right? Or someone who doesn't believe in a personal God. That's technically also an atheist. In other words, somebody believes that there's a creator, a great architect, that this God doesn't interact with humanity, he doesn't send scriptures or send messiahs or prophets, right? So the first six presidents of the United States probably were deists, right? In Washington, Adams Jefferson, Madison Monroe, John Quincy Adams were probably deists. And then the first proper Christian was Andrew Jackson. A new atheist, like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, these characters that are so prominent nowadays, these are more properly called anti-theists rather than atheists, an anti-theist. So this is someone who's opposed to the belief in the existence of God, opposed to it, and actually believes that religion must be eradicated from the face of the earth, right? So it's a more militant form of atheism. It started around the 19th century with the writings of Karl Marx. He said that religion is the opium of the people and must be abolished. Anti-theism is demonstrated by a famous statement of Christopher Hitchens, the late Christopher Hitchens who said, there is no God and I hate him, right? So these are the anti-theists, right? So, yeah, even if he did exist, right? Even if he did exist, he would continue to hate him. This is the kind of mentality we're dealing with. If we put their argument into a syllogism, it would sound something like this. Premise number one, theists say God is good. Premise number two, God created man. Premise number three, man does evil or non-good. Therefore, God does not exist. This is called a non-sequitur argument. It does not follow. This is an illogical argument. So you have people like Bill Maher and Sam Harris, right? And they're talking about ISIS and they're saying, look, Islam is an inherently evil religion because of ISIS, right? The adherents to ISIS are less than 1% of 1% of the Muslims globally. So I can use the same type of argument and say, look, five of the last 12, Nobel Peace Laureates, five of the last 12, almost half, were Muslim. Therefore, all Muslims are peaceful. They wouldn't accept that, right? And that's five out of 12, not 1% of 1%. Or what if I said something like, because Bill Maher, he's an atheist, but his mother is Jewish, so he's ethnically Jewish. Same as Sam Harris, ethnically Jewish. Christopher Hitchens, ethnically Jewish. So I said all ethnic Jews are bigoted, hate-filled ignoramuses. Would they accept that? Well, of course they wouldn't. And I wouldn't make that argument either because that's a racist argument. And it does not follow. It's a non-sequitur argument. And that's what people are listening to. These four horsemen, right? They think that if we just turn every mosque and church and synagogue into a Starbucks or a Chuck E. Cheese or a Hooters, everything's gonna be okay, right? Imagine a world without religion, as John Lennon said. Imagine and no religion to. Of course, John Lennon was a beetle. The beetles actually brought Alastor Crowley into popular culture. Alastor Crowley is the founder of the Church of Satan, the founder of the Phthalamites. He called himself the Great Therion, the Great Beast of the Book of Revelation. He put him on the cover of their lonely Hearts Club band. There's all these satanic imagery that they keep doing. But either Satanists, John Lennon used to know how to sing backwards, which is a trick that Satanists used. Allahumma Anum, anyway. The classical atheists now, the classical atheists, what I call the original gangsters of atheism. These are Freud, who said God is dad. Nietzsche, God is dead. And Bertrand Russell. These people were at least smart enough to know that if you take God out of the equation, the world would fall into this nihilistic quagmire, utter social and moral depravity. So they understood that it was primarily religion that moralized people. And that the purpose of religion was to make one a more compassionate or better human being. As Voltaire said, if God did not exist, we would have to invent him. As Dostoevsky said, if there is no God, then all is permitted. If there is no God, then all is permitted. In other words, if there is no moral authority, there is no higher moral authority. You don't have a moral anchor. It's my morality, as I perceive it to be, against yours, then what's gonna happen in the world? What's gonna be our guiding moral principle? Survival of the fittest? So I can kill you and say, well, that's the law of nature, survival of the fittest. Or is it the Crowley and Luciferian, do it thou wilt? Do whatever you want, right? What's that? I quote it, why didn't I include Darwin? Well, I'll get to, I'll get to Darwin, inshallah. I'll get to him, yeah. Well, we'll talk, we'll definitely talk about Darwin. We can't leave out the man. Darwin, yes. Of course we'll talk about him. Okay. So the moral anchor of Abrahamic tradition, what is the moral anchor of Abrahamic tradition? If the moral anchor of, or if the chief axiom of atheism is survival of the fittest, and the moral anchor or a credo of Satanism, which has grown in popularity, is do whatever you want, what is the moral anchor of Abrahamic tradition? So this is answered in several sources. A second century rabbi named Hillel was asked, what is the Torah in a nutshell? And he quoted three verses, Deuteronomy 6.4, 6.5, Leviticus 19.18. So this is the essence of the Torah. He said everything else is commentary. What does it say? 6.4 Deuteronomy, God is one. Deuteronomy 6.5, love the Lord thy God with all a heart, soul, and strength. Leviticus 19.18. Love your neighbor, meaning your fellow man, meaning fellow human, as yourself. Love of God, love of humanity. Interestingly, in a Christian source, the Gospel of Mark, a scribe comes to Esalaam according to this source, and says to him, what is the greatest commandment? And Esalaam, he quotes these three verses, verbatim from the Torah. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, Musad yi qalima bayna yadaya minat Torah, and at Esalaam, Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, he simply confirmed the theology of the Torah. It's a God is one, love God, and love your neighbor. Now the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he says in a famous hadith, hadith rahma, the hadith of mercy. And this, in traditional Islamic curriculums, was the first hadith that children were taught at five years old. I think there's a microphone. There you go. The first hadith that they were taught at five years old. Ar-Rahimuni ar-Rahimu humur rahman, ir-Rahimu man fil ard, yir-Rahimu kum man fissamah, rawahu ahmad, awkuma qala alaihi salatu wa salam. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, he said, the most merciful shows mercy to those who show mercy. Show mercy to those on earth, and the one in heaven will show you mercy. How many times did he mention rahma? Five or six times, because this is very important to ingrain or inculcate into the child's mind, this virtue of rahma, to his entire, the basis of his entire Islamic education, is mercy. He said, sallallahu alaihi salam, la tadkulu jannah ta hatta tu'minu wa la tu'minu hatta tahabbu, none of you will enter paradise until you truly believe, and none of you will truly believe until you love one another. Shall I tell you something that will increase your love? And they said, yes, he's afshus salama baynakum, spread peace amongst yourselves. Love God and love of humanity, fakhru dina razi, he said, al-Islam al-ibadatu l-il-khalik wa rahmatu l-il-khalq. He said, Islam can be summed up in one statement. Worship of the creator and mercy towards his creation. This is our moral anchor as Abrahamic theists. We're in the millah of Ibrahimah Hanifa. This is, and we have different opinion, obviously, with our Christian friends and neighbors and relatives and our Jewish friends and neighbors and relatives. We have theological differences, we have different types of differences. There's no doubt about it, but the essence of the religion is the same. Now without this essential understanding of religion, without religion, morality then becomes something relative. Human beings are little more than cattle, chunks of flesh and blood. They become soulless, easily slaughtered, dispensable. Atheism is material reductionism. Thus, speaking of social impact, no one has more blood on their hands than atheists. So think about the big four, right? Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot and Mussolini. Confirmed atheists over 100 million lives, over. I mean, that's the low end estimate. Over 100 million lives, that's 17 Hitlers. Because I mean, you don't believe there's a God, there's no day of judgment, you're not gonna be taking account for anything, there's no objective morality, no one has anything incorruptible about them. There's no Ruh, there's no soul, there's nothing that survives death. Well then your axiom becomes survival of the fittest, and hey, that's natural selection. Now in Sharia, in Islamic law, there are certain rules of engagement. Women and children are never targeted in war. And this is called a tradition that is Tawatur. Tawatur means, multiply attested, there's no doubt about it. It is simply wrong. Even in pre-Islamic rules of engagement, women and children were not targeted. Pre-Islamic, even the man who wanted to kill the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam on the day of Uhud, when he had killed the Musa'ab ibn Umair and had his sword out and was charging towards the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he stopped dead in his tracks because a woman named Nusayb ibn Tuhqab was standing in front of his horse. He dare not strike a woman on the battlefield. This is pre-Islamic rules of engagement, right? The pre-Islamic Arabs did not kill people who were sleeping. The man who came to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and Du'athur, the chief of the Buharrib, he actually woke up the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam before he was going to attack him. And we know the story of what happened to him. So, but if your rules of engagement are determined by what you feel benefits you and your people the most at a particular time, then that's real politic. That's American foreign policy. So the national interest is your guiding principle. And this lack of principled morality, this lack of consistent objective morality gives birth to things like false flag operations where the government will act, will do something, will do an act of terror and then blame innocent people for what they've done because national interest is the law of the land. And this is something that oppressors have done for thousands of years. Nero, who was a Roman emperor at the time of the apostles, the Hawari'un of Isalli Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he set half of Rome on fire and sat back playing his little fiddle and he blamed the Christians for it. And then they made street lamps out of Christians. They would dip them alive into wax, put them on poles and light them on fire while they were still alive. All up and down the streets of Rome, false flag operation. But Hitler did. Hitler burned the Reichstag, right? The German buildings of parliament. And then he said, these were the communists. So now you have this country-wide inquisition of anyone who had communist ties or suspected to have communist ties. And then he would attack his own military bases and blame other countries. Oh, that was the Polish. So now you get the people on your side, right? And you can do whatever you want now because you're guided by national interest. There's many types of false flag operations that are confirmed, declassified, Gulf of Tonkin that got us into Vietnam, the false flag operation, never happened, right? Many, many examples of this. The USS Maine that got us into the Spanish-American War never happened. How many millions of people died because of these lies that were blamed on others? And there are other things as well, other events that we can think of as well. This lack of principled morality, lack of consistent objective morality, it leads to little boy and fat man. Those are the terms that Truman used for the atomic bombs that were dropped on innocent civilians in Japan. 200,000 people on impact killed, on impact. But hey, it's good for us, right? It's good for our nation. And by the way, these bombs were totally unnecessary. The Japanese economy was in shambles after the oil embargo that was placed on them by FDR a couple of years earlier. Harry Truman actually writes in his diary that once the Russians get involved, the Japs are done, that's a direct quote. So this was just a testing ground for their nuclear arsenal. That's what it was, human guinea pigs, right? Because why? They're not guided by divine principles. If you look at the all of the battles of the Prophet Sallaladhi Sallam, right? Over 20 marazi, military expeditions, what are the numbers of casualties in all of the battles of the Prophet Sallaladhi Sallam? In two bombs dropped in Japan, over 200,000 people on impact. In 23 years, what are the number of dead people that people killed in all of the military campaigns of the Prophet Sallaladhi Sallam? What do you think the number is? 1,018, according to Abu Hassan and Nadoe, 1,018 in battle, these were soldiers, about 700 enemy and about 300 Muslim shuhada, the companions of the Prophet Sallaladhi Sallam. 1,018, okay? And the way that the Prophet Sallaladhi Sallam sometimes depicted is as primarily as a warrior. We shouldn't study Sira like that. We don't start with Kitab al-Maghazi, the book of the military expedition. Start with the Shama'il of the Prophet Sallaladhi Sallam, the outward and inward manifestations of him Sallaladhi Sallam. This is the best way to start study about him, wallahu adham. But here's an interesting thing, is that the Quran does not even accept atheism, is that everyone worships something, at least my understanding of the Quran. So most people worship their hawaa, their caprice. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran, arayta man ittaqadha ilaha hu hawaa. Do you see the one who takes his caprice, his desires, his emotions, his ego, as his God, right? He's all about himself, right? Nefsi, nefsi, selfie, selfie. So he's putting selfies up. How many followers do I have? This is interesting. How many people are following me? How many followers do I have? Everyone has lying dormant in their hearts. The seed of the claim of the Pharaoh, Anna rabbukum wa l'a'la, I am your Lord most high. They're there, lay dormant. This claim to deity, right? People worship their aqa, their intellect, they worship money. There's an interesting book if you want, a reference, John Hot, H-A-U-G-H-T. He's a Jesuit. He wrote a book called God and the New Atheism. It says something interesting. He says atheists are guilty of what he calls explanatory monism, explanatory monism. Where he says they say that science is the only answer to everything. Science is the only answer to everything. So for example, I walk into a kitchen and my mother is making tea for me, but I don't know what she's doing. So I say, what are you doing? She says, I am expanding molecules. That's true. That's scientifically what's happening. But does it answer my question? No, what are you doing? I'm heating up water and expanding molecules. That's great. But why? Because I'm making you tea because I love you. Ah, this is the answer I'm looking for. You see, why is a much more profound question than what? Science can never give you the why. It can give you how and possibly what, but not why. Another example used by William Chittick in his book, Science in the Cosmos. He says, imagine there's a painting, let's say it's the Mona Lisa, and you put a scientist in front of the painting and you say to the scientist, tell me about this painting. So on the principle of explanatory monism, the scientist will say, okay, let me do some tests. So he does some radiocarbon 14 testing on the canvas. It dates to 15, whatever, from Florence. The paint is acrylic and this is what it's made of and so on and so on. All this information, pages and pages, and you're thinking that's great. It doesn't help me at all. And then he put a child in front of the painting. He said, tell me about the painting and the child looks at Mona Lisa and says, what is she thinking? I wonder what she's thinking. Which one of these two has greater insight into the mind of the painter, the scientist or the child? The answer is the child, because the child is asking a more profound question. Why? Why the painting? Why the universe? Not what the universe? We'll talk more about this, but why, right? I would argue that we all have transcendental curiosity. All of us, this is a human condition. John Hart calls it a silent calling, an invitation from God, a silent invitation. It's our fitrah. Istajibu lillahi lima da'akum lima yuhiikum O you who believe, O humanity, answer the invitation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala when he calls you to that which gives you life. Everyone has a transcendental curiosity and everyone fills in that void with something. Most people do it with religion. Some people do it with sex, with drugs, with rock and roll, with Satanism, and Christopher Hitchens, an atheist, but he was a total full-blown alcoholic, even after a debate he had with Chris Hedges one time. Right on stage, he saw him take out a little vodka and start hitting the bottle, raging alcoholic. Why? Because he wanted to enter into these altered states of consciousness. He has a transcendental curiosity. Everybody has this, everybody. However, the Quran says only with the zikr, only with the zikr of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, our hearts made a tranquil. Okay, so this lack of principal morality, this lack of consistent objective morality, it leads to things like this, invasions of countries under false pretenses, the theft of natural resources. In an October 2006 article in The Washington Post, this is in 2006, the author of the article claimed that 650,000 civilians were killed in Iraq, civilians. And that was in 2006. So this number is up in the millions, millions. This is genocide. Any way you slice it is genocide. So do brown lives matter? Those are men, women, and children. Entire families taken off the planet. Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics at MIT, he says, we have to put ourselves in another person's shoes and then we can understand what terrorism is. He says, imagine Saddam Hussein goes on international television and says, Mr. Bush, you have 48 hours to leave the White House, to leave your country, you and your entire family, 48 hours or else we're gonna attack America. And if you stay, we're attacking. And we're doing this because we have evidence that we're not going to show you. Chomsky says, that is sheer terrorism. That is terrorism. Any way you slice it. But this is what happens when we don't have divine commandments guiding our conduct, when it's real politic, when it's national interest, and bend things because it's in our national interest. We don't have objective morality, things that are right and wrong, period. It doesn't matter the circumstances. And this leads me to my first argument. When should I stop speaking that way? Keep going. Ha ha ha. First argument for the existence of God is called the moral argument, the moral argument. Here's the thesis of the moral argument. In the absence of God, there would be no objective, meaning universal moral values. No higher moral authority. There would only be sociocultural relativism. Right and wrong would be determined by the dominant group. It would be totally subjective, and thus extremely violent. So if my society feels that our morals and values perpetuate our group, why should we listen to your morals and values? Richard Dawkins said, quote, there is no good nor evil. We are machines to propagate DNA. There is no good nor evil. We are machines to propagate DNA. You see on atheism, you can't be immoral. You can't be immoral. Atheism, science does not deal with morality. It is fundamentally non-moral. There's no right, no real right or wrong, just societal constructs. And science can't prove everything. What I call the religion of scientism, where the akal is worshiped and science is the only answer, explanatory monism. Science cannot prove morality. Science cannot prove through the scientific method that murder is wrong. Can you prove it through the scientific method that murder is wrong? No, science cannot prove metaphysical events like did Washington cross the Delaware? Did Caesar cross the Rubicon? Can it prove these things through the scientific method? No, because in order to do that, you have to go back in time or reproduce that event, which is impossible. Science cannot prove metaphysical events. Science cannot prove love. It cannot prove that I love someone. You can hook me up to some machine and test my heart rate if I'm sweating and things like that. What is it love? It might be hate, it might be envy. What's my specific emotion? Science can't prove it. Science can't prove math. It presupposes math to claim that science can prove math is to argue in a circle. And what is consciousness? Science still doesn't know. Scientists still don't know. Oh, it's chemicals mixing in your brain. How do you get from chemicals mixing to thought and memory and imagination? So science cannot give us morality. It is fundamentally non-moral. I'm not saying that atheists are immoral. Their atheists are extremely moral people. What I'm saying is that there's nothing in science that compels anyone to be moral. There's nothing in science that compels anyone to be moral. Because you become the highest authority. There's no God, you become the highest authority. And then you start inventing your own morality. This is human nature. So you start playing God. Like Richard Dawkins said, if you find out your child has Down syndrome, just abort it. Try again. Just abort it. I read this today on Facebook. Just today, I read that there was an Armenian couple and they had a healthy baby boy, but he had Down syndrome. The wife said to the husband, give it up for adoption, or else I'm divorcing you. The husband said, no, it's a human being. This is Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala created and we have been close to Adam, who is the one who created you in the womb of your mother. It is he who formed you in the wombs of your mothers as he willed. There's no God but Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. He said, no, you have to give it up for adoption. If it was a month earlier, they would have killed the child. Giving it up for adoption. Apparently if you kill it now, it's murder, but a month earlier, it's fine. It's called abortion. And that's the trick of the shaitan. Shaitan plays with words. Edward Said in his book Orientalism. And George Orwell talked about this, linguistic colonization. When the oppressor takes your words in your tradition and gives them a new meaning, redefines words. So like Taqiyah and Sharia and Jihad, they're redefining these terms and Muslims are buying into it. Jihad, unmitigated, perpetual warfare against unbelievers. Really? Well in the Quran it talks about Jihad, I can't be Muslim then. Because I can't get down with that. But that's their definition. We have to define our own terms. And that's what shaitan does. Shaitan's tricky. He calls things by different names. Paulo Freire, this is a book that everyone should read. Pedagogy of the oppressed. So the oppressor uses bread and circus, food and entertainment to anesthetize the intellects of the masses. And then he uses the antiseptic language of the oppressor. And repeats it and repeats it over and over again, 24 hour news cycle. So you don't even know what you're saying anymore. Collateral damage in the theater of operation. What does that mean? There was a lot of collateral damage in the theater of operation. That means a lot of innocent men, women and children were slaughtered in their own country. That's what that means. But we're using antiseptic language. So there's no empathy there. Empathy, we're not human beings. That's our humanity. Okay. So you cannot extract the virtue of charity or virtue or justice or selflessness or compassion from a double helix, a chromosome or a test tube. We get these things. We extract these things from scripture. On atheism, we're just animals. Just a slightly more evolved primate, second cousin to the chimp. Animals don't have moral duties. So why do we? Most atheists agree that if you see a man drowning in a river, it's your duty to help him. But why? Why is it your duty? You could ask an atheist. Is it part of our evolution to put ourselves in harm's way? Why put yourself in harm's way? Where does this altruism come from? Show me the gene. All right. And speaking of evolution, now we're gonna talk about Darwin. A criticism. To go from a primeval ape to a human being requires trillions of transitional forms and mutations. Trillions, not hundreds, not thousands, not millions, not billions. To go from a cow to a whale, a T-rex to a swan, takes trillions, trillions of transitional forms. And of course, Darwin says in the Bible of the atheist, the origin of species, 1863, that eventually we'll dig up the earth and we'll find all of these fossils. But we've dug up the earth. We haven't found anything. Found oil and gold. Found a few things. How many skeletons of scientists discovered that they believed to be missing links? Is it in the trillions? Is it in the billions? Is it in the millions? Is it in the thousands? Is it in the hundreds? Is it in the dozens? You can count them on two hands. And they're probably fragments of extinct apes. And they say, oh, these are the missing links. There need to be trillions of transitional forms in the earth. That's just for human beings. And of course, there's Darwin's doubt. No one knows what Darwin's doubt. Darwin, who once said, well, if I truly believed that my brain evolved from the brain of a primeval ape, then why would I even trust my intellect? Should I even trust my intellect to give me the right answer? How do I know that in 10,000 years, my descendants are not gonna look back at me in 2015 and say, look how stupid those people were back then. Just like the way we look at chimpanzees in a zoo and say, look how stupid these chimps are, throwing their feces. Why should I even trust my intellect if I believe that my intellect evolved from a primeval ape and is still in a state of macro evolution? Another argument they make is chimpanzees and human beings are 98% identical in their DNA. As a rabbi once said, a jellyfish and a watermelon are also 98% identical. I'm not going to eat a jellyfish. What's in that 2% is intellectus. Intellectus, right? This is our differential to use Aristotelian nomenclature. What makes us different than any other species is the ability to reason. I like to see a chimpanzee play a violin or build a skyscraper or do some trigonometry. But it's not all about the intellect either. Ultimately it comes down to being a moral person, an ethical person. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, innama burith dulyutammima makariman akhlaak. I was only sent to perfect your character and part of having good character is believing in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Now somebody might say, well, there's different ways of looking at this. Some of the modern day Ulema, they might say, well, you can believe in micro evolution because there's no definitive answer on this issue except on one part of it. So for us to say evolution is a total farce, I think that's a dangerous position to take because then people are gonna think that you're someone like Sarah Palin who says dinosaurs are, they were around 5,000 years ago and all of this radiocarbon 14 dating, that's all a conspiracy from Satan. If you go to Ohio, they have the Creation Museum in Ohio, the Creation Museum, somewhere in Ohio, built by evangelical Christians. You go in and you see children playing on stegosauruses, animatronic dinosaurs. That's called the Flintstones, that's not science. So when you say there's no such thing as evolution, they're gonna put you in that category. So it's important for us to understand that not everything they say is completely out there or false. In fact, a lot of what evolution is saying is totally compatible with Islamic theology, micro evolution. This is something you can prove. If you put frogs in a certain environment and mess around with the temperature and things like that, you're gonna see them starting to change and adapt to their environment. Why do Middle Eastern men have big noses and long eyelashes? Is you gotta keep the sand out of your face. You need to be able to breathe in the desert, right? Micro evolution. However, we take strong exception to this idea that we evolved from primeval monkeys, right? Now, what's also interesting here is that if you look at when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala created Adam, alaihi salam, and created him, formed him, right? He's lying in state as it were. He had not breathed into him of his Ruhr. The angels had an interesting complaint. They said, are you going to create one who's going to shed blood on earth? Why would they say this? Are you gonna create someone who's gonna shed blood on earth? Why would they say it? Because something's happening on the earth. Blood is being shed on the earth, right? There are creatures on earth that are shedding blood and the angels saying, well, this is going to be similar to that. And what are they talking about? Animals on earth? Animals killing each other is not necessarily considered evil. That's their instinct. That's nature. They don't, there's no tech leaf. They're not judged on the day of judgment. So it could be that the angels are referring to some sort of humanoid creature on earth, possibly the Neanderthal, Allahu Alam, that look somewhat similar to Adam and saying, look, they're killing each other. Are you gonna create something similar that's going to kill each other as well? And then Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la says, I know what you know not. What's the difference between Adam, Alayhi Salam and the Neanderthal, a homo sapien and then the Neanderthal is the ability to reason and articulate. This is what makes Adam, this is what gives him the Khilafah. This is what gives him the vice regency of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la on earth. The Neanderthal did not have a developed larynx. It just makes simple sounds, not complex speech. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la says, Wa Al-Lama Adam Al-Asmaa Kulla Haa. We taught Adam the names of everything. Al-Rahman Al-Laman Quran, Khalaq Al-Insan, Al-Lamahu Al-Bayan. Al-Rahman, the most gracious. The teacher of the Quran. He created humanity and taught human beings how to speak, how to articulate. So it's not necessarily our physical bodies that make us different than the rest of the animal kingdom. As philosophers said, as a philosopher said, an eagle can spot a fish under water from a mile up in the air. I can't do that. Put me in a room with a lion, I'm going to lose, right? But what makes us special? What gives us the khilafa of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is our ability to reason and submit and have good character and comportment and believe in Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. And this is where we're judged on the Yom Al-Qiyamah. Okay. So good and evil has no referent if God doesn't exist. Unless we redefine good and say that it means something that makes your life more pleasurable, right? But that's dangerous because your pleasure might be someone's torture. What if someone takes pleasure in killing children and burying them in his backyard, right? On atheism, that is not immoral, nor wrong. Atheism does not deal with morality. It's fundamentally non-moral. It's just not socially acceptable, right? Like breaking wind in public or burping out loud. So what if it was socially acceptable? On what grounds does Richard Dawkins condemn child exploitation, child rape if that society finds it acceptable and conducive to their perpetuation? You see, it's revelation that gives us the Ten Commandments, the Noah Hiddic laws, the moral imperatives of the Quran which are called al-ma'ruf, al-ma'ruf, ta'muruna bil-ma'ruf. You call to that which is good. Ma'ruf literally means things that are known. We know these things. We know them, they're axiomatic. How do we know them? They're either taught to us directly from revelation given by prophets or they're infused as Aquinas said upon our very souls by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Either way, they come from the divine presence. Our moral objectives, our objective moral values don't murder, don't steal, don't commit adultery, respect parents, don't oppress, speak the truth. In ancient Athens, peteresty was very common. Peteresty is grown men having relationships with boys. These are married men. In fact, Socrates says that once he walked into the gymnasium, the word gymnasium in Greek means a place of naked boys. So I walked in, I saw them wrestling naked, I wasn't even aroused. This is what he says. This is the ethos, the culture of ancient Athens. Simply what most people were doing. But in Sparta, another city-state, that is a capital offense to do something like that. Another Greek city-state. Now if a Jew wandered into Athens in fifth century before the common era and he saw what was happening there as far as this type of thing, he would be able to condemn it because he has objective, principled morality. He believes in his scripture. But an atheist could say, well, that's their culture. They abuse little boys. That's their culture. He could say that. Because he doesn't deal with morality. He doesn't believe in scripture. Or he'd say, it's wrong. Why is it wrong? It's just wrong. Why? It's just wrong. Show me the gene. Why is it wrong? It's wrong because it eventually leads to the downfall of their society. That's why it's wrong. No, it's wrong, period. It's morally wrong. It's just wrong, period. Weakest they are that because we believe in a higher morality, a moral anchor that's above human intellect. So just as theists have the problem of evil, all right, it's called theodicy, William Dempsky, he talks about the problem of good with atheists. The problem of good. I'll give you an example. Something simple. I'll give my seat to an old woman on the bar train. Atheists say for two reasons. To prolong your species or for reciprocal advantage, I scratch my back, you scratch yours, because we're all apes at the end of the day, apparently. But is that why I give my seat to this lady? Do I wanna prolong my species? Do I want her to tip me or something? No. Why would I give blood? Do I wanna, why would I do that? They say, well, it makes you feel good. Atheism is an extremely cynical way of looking at the world, extremely cynical. You help people because it makes you feel good. That's why you're doing everything. So why do it? Mother Teresa is a atheistic moral enigma. This is someone who used to hug lepers, a model of sacrifice and charity and altruism. And of course she came under attack by Hitchens. He wrote a book about her saying she was all about money. She didn't really believe in anything, this type of thing. Can't answer, why would somebody do something like that? Why would they give their lives in the service of others? So in conclusion on the moral argument, if there is no God, there is no moral anchor. If we don't have a moral anchor, then everything becomes relative morally. If everything becomes morally relative, then something like national interest will replace God's law, which advocates objective morality. If national interest takes over, it's gonna lead to a whole lot of violence. And that's what we're seeing right now. A whole lot of violence. Yeah, our leaders, they feign Christianity. They're not Christian. Christians don't worship owls. Check out the Bohemian Grove. If you haven't heard about it, you should learn about it. Bohemian Grove, just Google it. Okay, this next argument is called the Cosmological Argument. This is espoused by Abu Hamal al-Ghazali in his T'hafat al-Falassif of Incoherence of the Philosophers and advocated by contemporary scholar William Lane Craig his book called Kalam Cosmological Argument. It's a book that I highly recommend the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It's based on a Ghazali text. So here's the basic syllogism, premise number one. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. Premise number two, the universe began to exist therefore the universe has a cause. This is not strictly theological but has theological implications because then we have to ask what can create a universe? Now the rule of classical metaphysics is ex nihilo nihil fit in Latin, which means from nothing comes nothing. Now most atheists agree, whether they're cosmologists or physicists or biologists, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krause, Quentin Smith, Daniel Dennett, Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking, they all say that the universe, the cosmos came from nothing, nothing. This is now the standard model of the universe. Universe came from absolutely nothing and this is true. As theists, we believe that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala created the universe, ex nihilo out of nothing. But atheists say no, it's uncaused, it's unprovoked, it just popped into existence from literary note from literally nowhere. Quentin Smith says, he's at the University of West Michigan, atheist. He says, quote, the universe came from nothing, by nothing, for nothing. That's a metaphysical claim. That doesn't sound like a naturalist. That's a metaphysical claim. Daniel Dennett, he says, the universe picked itself up by its own bootstraps. Imagine you're wearing boots. Can you pick yourself off the ground by picking up your bootstraps? That's a metaphysical statement. That's a religious statement. How can something come from nothing uncaused? Is that science? Theist Frank Turek, he said, he wrote a book called I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Just to believe a universe can come from nothing is worse than magic. Is in magic, I take my hat off, I pull a rabbit out of my hat. That's going from something to something. Empty space is something, it's not nothing. But a universe out of nothing is a great leap of faith. Requires a lot of iman, a whole lot. You gotta be a mukman, big time, to believe in something like that. I don't have enough faith to believe in something like that. So what is nothing? Stephen Hawking says, the universe can spontaneously create itself out of nothing. Again, that's not naturalism. That's a suprarational statement, a religious statement. What is nothing? Aristotle said, nothing is what stones dream about. What does a stone dream about? Absolutely nothing. It's not simply empty space. Like I play a trick on my kids and I say, is there anything in my hand? And they say, in my hands they say, no. And I go like this. Aha, there's a finger in there, right? No, even if I went like that, there's nothing. There's something there. Empty space is certainly something. Or like that show, let's make a deal. Door number one or door number two? Door number one, they open it, oh, there's nothing. No, there's certainly something. From a scientific standpoint, there's a lot of things there, right? So Stephen Hawking, this is something interesting. He says, look, at the subatomic level, subatomic level in the quantum vacuum, and no one really understands quantum physics and mechanics, anyway. He says, in the quantum vacuum you have the photon coming in and out of existence. And he says, look, this is evidence that something can come from nothing. In the quantum vacuum, you have the photon coming in and out of existence. The problem is that the quantum vacuum is a sea of fluctuating energy, highly volatile and unstable. It is certainly something. The latest from Hawking, and they made a movie about this recently, The Theory of Everything, is what he says. If you extrapolate the universe backwards, because the universe is expanding, right? It's expanding, right? And it's expanding isotropically, which means evenly. And there's something that has proven scientifically. The red shift of the planets and galaxies is called Hubble's law, right? Which means the universe is actually expanding, not constricting. If it was constricting, the planets, the color would appear blue according to the Doppler effect. So it's definitely expanding, right? I mean, Einstein called it in 1917, Einstein sitting at his desk with a pencil. And this is something interesting, something amazing about the universe. The uncanny accuracy of mathematics. That the universe, you can work things out at your desk with a pencil because the universe is ordered. And that's evidence of design. Well, Einstein said, look, my calculations say, either the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, or is collapsing upon itself. And this can't be right, because at his time, the dominant theory in the scientific community is the steady state model of the universe, right? That the universe is eternal in the past, and it's not growing or expanding. So he put in the lambda, the cosmological constant in his equations, to ensure the steady state model of the universe. And he called it the biggest blunder of his life. He was actually correct, the universe is expanding. Also MBR, microwave background radiation discovered in 1965 by two men, Penzius and Wilson, proves the universe is expanding. This is called the Hartle Hawking Standard Model of the universe. It's also called the Friedman-Lamattre Standard Model or Big Bang Cosmology. Anyway, Stephen Hawking says, if you extrapolate the universe backwards, you get to the point where there's an infinitesimally small black hole, okay? And this is how he sidesteps infinite regression, because in the black hole, there's no time. What is infinite regression? If I say, what came first, the chicken or the egg? So the egg came first. The egg came out of a chicken, though. Okay, the chicken came first. But the chicken came out of an egg. Okay, the egg came first. But the egg came out of a chicken, though. Okay, the chicken came first. But the chicken came out of an egg. We go back at infinitim. It's called infinite regress, infinite regression. So how does he solve it? He's looking, the black hole, there's no time. There's nothing before that, because there's no time. Therefore, we've conquered infinite regression. The problem with that is that a black hole is not an initial condition of anything. It is a resultive state. It is a secondary state of a solar explosion. It is matter, and matter requires motion, and motion requires time. So we may ask, what was before the black hole? Right, because a black hole is not nothing, right? Where did the singularity come from? Reminds me of a joke, that a group of atheists are speaking, and God is listening to their conversation. And then the atheists are saying, okay, there was, and God tells them, how did it come about? And the atheists, okay, there was this black hole, and then God says, hey, get your own black hole. Lawrence Krauss, foremost cosmologist, Arizona State University, wrote a book called A Universe Out of Nothing, Big Atheist. He says, we can date the universe to four decimal places, 13.7256 billion years, to four decimal places. He can date the universe. He says, the nexus of space-time came into being at the Big Bang. In fact, space-time and matter came into being. This is called Cosmo Genesis. But how? He says, by itself, by itself, it created itself. This is a faith claim. This is a metaphysical claim. It's like if I say to you, I created myself. Would you believe me? No, unless you believe that I have supernatural qualities. So you see, the only way to avoid infinite regress is to go metaphysical, to go supernatural, to go theological, only a non-contingent being. In other words, one who is not subject to infinite regress, one who is eternal, and one who is necessarily spaceless, because space came into being, and timeless, because time came into being, and immaterial, because matter came into being, extremely powerful and intelligent, because a universe came from that entity, only such an entity can bring a universe out of nothing. But then the atheist will say, then who caused God? It is God's very nature to be pre-eternal. The first premise of the Kalam cosmological argument says, whatever begins to exist has a cause. God did not begin to exist. In fact, to ask this question is to question the very existence of the universe itself. I'll give you an example. I use this example a lot. Let's say I'm standing in a line, and there's a brother standing in front of me, and I say to the brother, hey brother, can I give you a hug? And this brother says, you have to ask the guy behind you for permission. So hey, can I give him a hug? And this brother says, ask the guy behind me for permission. Hey, can I give him a hug? Ask the guy behind me for permission. Hey, can I give him a hug? Ask the guy behind me for, and this goes on ad infinitum. Will I ever hug the brother? No, the hugging of the brother represents the creation of the universe. So if these are gods behind me, a god to create another god, to create another god, to create another god, this does not solve infinite regress. Infinite regress dies at the door of the eternal. Infinite regress dies at the door of the eternal. And you cannot traverse an actual infinitude, an actual infinite number of events. You could never traverse that. You could never complete that. In other words, if the universe is eternal in the past and God created another god who was created by another god, we never get to today, we never get to the creation of the universe. An infinite and actual infinitude cannot be traversed. So George Cantor is a theoretical mathematician, modern day set theory and things like that. He distinguishes two types of infinitudes. This is the first type. He calls it an actual infinitude and it's represented in math by the Hebrew letter alif. What is the actual infinitude? A number that transcends and contains all natural numbers and cannot be increased by one. A number that contains and transcends all natural numbers and cannot be increased by one unit. It does not exist in nature. It cannot exist in nature. Abou Yusuf al-Kindi, he gives an example. Abou Yusuf al-Kindi, he says in his analogy, he says, imagine you have in space somewhere a huge blob and this blob is made of an actual infinite number of particles. Then you take 10 of those particles and you put it on the side. Is this blob still an actual infinitude? You say, yes, it's still an actual infinitude. So then there are two actual infinitudes, infinity and infinity minus 10. So that's illogical. So now it's a finite number of particles. Okay, what about if we put this 10, also finite, back into the blob? A finite plus a finite only gives you a finite. You can never get to an actual infinite number. What we do have, however, is a theoretical infinitude. The lazy eight, a theoretical infinitude. And a theoretical infinitude can be traversed in finite space. We do it all the time. My hand is above my notebook, right? How many times can I cut this distance in half? In theory, an infinite number of times. But I'll never actually get to an actual infinitude. But what if I do this? Does that mean that I've traversed an actual infinitude? No, because I've set parameters. This is 0.0 and this is 1.0, right? But when we're dealing with the universe, if it's pre-eternal in the past and God was created by another God, it was created by another God, it was created by another God, we don't have 0.0. We'll be stuck forever in the infinite past. We never get to the actual creation of the universe. An actual infinitude cannot be traversed. Suppose someone comes up to us, comes into this musket and says, I've been counting from negative infinity, from negative infinity and now I'm about to, I'm about to get to 0. Negative 3, negative 2, negative 1, 0. That took so long. We laugh in his face, wouldn't we? We laugh in his face. So, if the universe is eternal in the past, or if we dare to ask the question, who created God then, then we're denying the very existence of the universe itself, which is here and we know it is. Infinite regress dies at the door of the eternal. Who is the eternal? Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. 2130 of the Qur'an. I quote this verse to an atheist as an undergraduate. Do not the unbelievers, the atheists, the agnostics, do they not see that the heavens and the earth, and the heavens and the earth is a euphemism for the cosmos in the Qur'an. That the cosmos, the universe was a single unit of matter. And then we clothe them asunder. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. Fafataqat. We clothe them asunder. I quoted this verse to an atheist. He said, I said, this is a verse from scripture. He said that verse is not in the Bible. I said, I didn't say that it was in the Bible. I said it's in scripture. He said, what's scripture? I said the Qur'an. And I showed it to him and he looked at it. And he said, who wrote this? I said, this is a revelation. It's 1400 years old. He said, I don't believe it. You wrote this. This is what he told me. You must have written this. He said, no, this is 1400 years old. You're translating it wrong. He said, no, I know Arabic. This is what it says. Basically, what it's saying. No, no, you wrote this. He refused to actually acknowledge it. Subhanallah. Wa-sama'a banaynaha bi-aidin wa-inna lamu-si'un. Very interesting verse. The firmament, the heavens, right? We created them with skill and we are expanding them. Wa-inna lamu-si'un from wa-sa'a. This is active participle. We are actively expanding the universe, right? Is a surah 51, verse 47. Fater is samawati wal-ar. Fater, Allah is fater is samawati wal-ar. What does fatar mean? To split or break something apart. The splitter of the heavens and the earth, of the cosmos. Badi or samawati wal-ar in al-baqarah. Badi means the originator, the one who creates out of nothing the originator of the heavens and the earth. ذاركم الله ربكم لا إله إلاه خاليكم كل شيء. That is your Lord. There is no God but He. He's the creator of everything. Space, time, matter, energy, everything. ليس لكم مثله الشيء. This is why God could not be in space, time and matter because there's nothing like God whatsoever. There's nothing like Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala whatsoever. So many might say, what about other gods? We're all atheists. You don't believe in Thor and in Baal and in Dionysus and Zeus. What about these other gods? But Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the God of Abraham, stays relevant and will stay relevant because His qualities adequately explain the origins of the universe. His qualities adequately explain the origins of the universe. He's transcendent of space, time, materiality, pre and post eternal. This will always stay relevant because this answers the question of the answers, the enigma of infinite regress. In Isa alaihi s-salam, His worship is being phased out. Christians are an Abrahamic tradition but many of them are leaving trinitarian Christianity and this began in the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation and the development of the printing press or Christians are reading the Bible in their own vernacular and rejecting the text. They have major issues with the text. So a very fast growing movement nowadays, the Sokinian Unitarian Christianity was very similar to our theology. Unitarian Christianity. Okay. Almost done. The last argument I wanna talk about and it will be done inshallah to Allah. It's called the teleological argument. We cover the moral argument, we cover the Kalam-Kazmological argument. This is called the teleological argument. So there's two versions of it, the traditional version of the teleological argument argues for biological complexity. So look at the human eye. Is it by chance that it's incredible, the human brain, the systems in the body, the bodies of insects and the architect of the Eiffel Tower looked at the bodies of insects. The architects of airplanes looked at the wings of birds. The human cell, Anthony Flu, was a big atheist at the University of Cambridge. For 50 years, he debated big time scholars, theistic scholars, he was a total atheist. After 50 years, he said, you know what? I think there's a God. After 50 years of debating theists, he said, I can't account for the human cell. I can't account for it. How all of this information can be in a cell. This can't be chance, it's not evolution. This is design, right? I mean, the two greatest scientists of all time, according to scientists, believe in God. Newton and Einstein, not only do they believe in God, they were Unitarian, they were Unitarian deists. And Newton had to keep his Unitarian belief in the closet, as it were. Because at that time in England, there was no separation of church and state and professing Unitarian beliefs was seen as kufur or blasphemy and the penalty was death. Later in his writings, in his diary, in his journal, we see that he was in fact a Unitarian Christian. The Enlightenment thinkers, Voltaire, David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, all of them believed in God. They had issues with aspects of Christianity, but none of them were atheists. Okay, so that's the traditional sort of teleological. Now the cutting edge, what's known as the cutting edge teleological argument, argues for cosmic design due to fine tuning of the universe. This is also called the anthropic principle. So we know the Watchmaker analogy, right? And this is attributed to William Paley in 1802, right? And actually, Ghazali said something similar. It actually goes back to Cicero, but Europeans usually get the credit for everything, right? Like the printing press, they give the Gutenberg, but in China, hundreds of years they had actually paper and printing press, you know, Pascal's wager, something said almost identical by Seyna Ali, right? Anyway, they can take the credit for whatever they want. Okay, so anyway, you're walking on the beach, you see a watch, you pick it up, you notice that it's obviously designed, right? So you say, oh, this is just chance. You know, the atoms formed itself to make this beautiful, precise work of art. It was chance, right? Or if you, you know, you're on the moon, you know, the dark side of the moon and you see this massive piece of machinery there. Machinery. So you can conclude three things. Either this machinery has to be there, it's by necessity, which scientists do not agree with, the moon functions without the machinery. It's not necessary to be there. Or it's thereby chance, meaning the atoms sort of just fell into the right places. Or it's design. Now you say, okay, it's design. Then who designed it? You don't need to have an explanation for design to be the best explanation. You don't have to have an explanation for the designer for design to be the best explanation. It's still the best explanation. So you look at the earth, for example, the distance from the sun. If the earth was a little bit closer or farther, there's no life on the planet. If the moon was a little bit closer or farther, there's no life on the planet. The earth is actually in something scientists called the Goldilocks zone, the Goldilocks zone. It's not too far, it's not too close, it's just right. And that's a very, very thin zone, a life-permitting zone around the sun. Days are 24 hours. If they're longer or shorter, we either die from heat, we burn, or we freeze to death. The axis, 23.5 degrees. So it would turn a little bit, there's no life on the planet. The atmosphere of our planet swallows up these solar flares that are being thrown at us from the sun. If we didn't have an atmosphere, we'd be dead in a nanosecond from solar flares that are protecting our planet from solar flares. The planet Jupiter, because of its gravity, is pulling all of these asteroids and comets away from the earth, and basically being like this huge cosmic vacuum cleaner, protecting our planet. Right? Protons are exactly 1,836 times larger than neutrons. If they're 1,837 times larger, there's no life on the planet. If they're 1,835 times bigger, there's no life on the planet. This type of precision, right? The solar system itself is like a watch. So Newton, Sir Isaac Newton, he noticed that the planets were on the same plane and they orbited in the same direction. And he said, this is design. And now the atheist, he says, look, this is what the theist does. The theist, you know, he says that when we don't know why something's happening, he fills in that gap of ignorance with God. This is called the God of the gaps argument. This is what theists are alleged to do by atheists. When a theist doesn't know something, he says, oh, that's just design. That's God, God of the gaps. However, we understand how a watch works. It doesn't negate a designer. We know what causes a solar eclipse. We can predict them. We can predict floods and earthquakes. This doesn't negate that they're esbab or their means by which God works in the world, right? There's a movie that just came out called Exodus where he tries to present scientific explanations. The Nile turned red because there are some crocodile attacks. Okay, but what does that mean? That's what happened, but what does that mean? What does that mean in reality? And that's where the theist looks to. The frogs came out because there's blood in the water. Okay, but these are the 10 plagues of Egypt. Why did Allah SWT wheel that to happen? What's the purpose behind it? Why do we have these destruction stories in the Quran? The ad, the Thamud, the people of Noah. He said, oh, those are just earthquakes and tsunamis. Yeah, that's what they were, but why? Why did that happen? Our actions affect our physical environments. This is why we make Dua for rain, right? I would say that the atheists are guilty of the dark of the gaps argument, the dark of the gaps. So here's what the atheist says. The atheist, you know, this is a recent, relatively recent discovery that they said, you know, Jupiter doesn't have enough gravity to keep itself in its orbit around the sun. It should be flying off into space somewhere. What's pulling Jupiter towards the sun? Dark matter. What's dark matter? Well, we don't know, but it's dark matter. We're gonna fill in the gap of that ignorance with a dark matter. But what is it? Well, it's the greatest mystery in all the physics. That's a direct quote from Lawrence Krauss. The universe is expanding and getting faster, accelerating, you would think it would slow down, right? You know, the second law of thermodynamic, it's gonna slow down, reach equilibrium. No, it's getting faster. Why is it faster? Atheists have no idea. Something is pushing it out. We're in na la moosey urn. Verily, we are expanding it. But what's the answer from the atheist? Dark energy. What's dark energy? We don't know. You're gonna fill in the gaps of that ignorance with a dark, dark energy. And they say, oh, you guys have God of the gaps. It's illogical. Just because we know how something happens doesn't deny that it has a designer. If you took a cell phone back in Marty McFly's Time Machine to 1950, they'll say, oh, this is magic. It's magic. And then you go forward and tell, oh, we know how this works now. So just because you know how something works doesn't negate the idea that it had a designer. All right. Okay. Now, almost all scientists conclude that the universe is fine-tuned, all of them, for the existence of intelligent life. Fine-tuned is a neutral term. It's not strictly theological. How is it fine-tuned? You have these things called constants and quantities. Constants and quantities and the four fundamental forces of nature. They have to fall within an incredibly narrow range in order to permit life in the universe. The four fundamental forces of nature are gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force. All of these found in the point of singularity at the Big Bang. So here's the syllogism, premise number one. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, it just has to be like that, and all atheists by Ijma'a of the kufar. By Ijma'a, they say that's not the reason why. It doesn't have to be like that. Number two, it's by chance. And almost by Ijma'a, they say yes, that's what it is. It's just chance or it's design. Premise number two. If it's not due to physical necessity or chance, then it's due to design. Therefore it is due to design. Specified complexity, the universe is specified, it is created, it's tailored with unimaginable intelligence and pinpoint exquisite precision. I'll give you an example. First a quote from William Lane Craig. He says there are 50 such constants and quantities present in the Big Bang that must be fine-tuned in this way. And the ratios to one another must also be fine-tuned to allow to a life-forbidding universe. He says the numbers become absolutely incomprehensible. I'll give you an example now. The number of seconds in the history of the universe is 10 to the 17th. 10 with 17 zeros after it. The number of seconds in the history of the universe. The number of sub-atomic particles in the universe. Sub-atomic particles in the universe is 10 to the 80, according to William Demsky. 10 to the 80. Okay, atomic weak force which operates in the nucleus of the atom. In alteration of the atomic weak force and an alteration of one part out of 10 to the 100 would render life unsustainable in the universe. So imagine you're given one dart and out there in space there's 10 to the 100 targets. 10 to the 100. That's more than there are seconds in history in the history of the universe. That's more than there are sub-atomic particles in the universe. You have 10 to the 100 targets. You're given one dart. So you have to hit the right dart or there's no life in the universe. And you just, ah. Oh, mashallah. And this happens over 50 times. 50 times in a row. Another example. If gravity changed, one part out of 10 to the 40, there's no life in the universe. Atheists say, this is just chance. We got lucky. The constants and quantities fell within the life permitting range. Let me give you another analogy. The lottery analogy. Imagine somebody comes up to you and says, there's this huge cosmic hat. And in this hat, there are 10 to the 40 number of index cards. 10 to the 40. 10 with 40 zeros. Index cards. On all of these, there's nothing written on any of these index cards. Nothing, except one. And that's your initials. We're gonna put them in this big cosmic hat. And then we're gonna pull one out at random. If we pull out a blank card, nothing will happen. Nothing happens. Nothing. But if we pull out the card with your initials on it, we kill you. We're gonna kill you. 10 to the 40. Okay, I'm feeling, I mean, it's not gonna happen. Less than 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of 1. It's infinitesimally small. It's just not going to happen. It's basically impossible. So it's, okay, here we go. Ready? Ah! Your initials. What's the initial thought in your head? This is rigged, right? This was designed. This is rigged. This is a conspiracy, right? That's just gravity. There's 50 such constants and quantities that have to line up with such exquisite precision to even allow life to be in the universe. So we have what's known as a cosmic landscape. Possible universes. There are 10 to the 500 possible universes within different values of the constants and quantities consistent with the laws of nature. The portion of these universes that can permit life is infinitesimally small. The range is incredibly minuscule. What is life? An organism's ability to take in food, process it, grow and develop and reproduce after its kind. Alvin Platinga, he's a professor at University of Notre Dame. He says, imagine you have these large dials, like combination lock dials. He says there's a million of them. One million. And each dial goes up to a thousand. And you have one shot to figure out the combination. And if you do, we give you a billion dollars. A billion dollars. That is more likely than a life permitting universe. That is more likely than a life permitting universe. Conclusion is, Allahumma jude. Allah exists. JazakAllah khairan. I guess we can, we'll probably pray whatever you guys want to do. As-salallahu alayhi wa sallam, Muhammad alayhi wa sallam. So, don't have a question. Please don't give us another two. I'm saying, you got a question, you get asked. And I'm going to see how to say this right in the hand. You want to make sure to say it right, everybody who has a question right in the hand. Wa alaikum, salamu alaikum. Allahu Akbar. Yeah, yeah, you can. You can ask, you can ask, you can ask that question. I'm writing on the slide. Oh, okay. That'll work, you can show them. That's okay. Yeah, I'm not a scientist. This is sort of something I fell into out of necessity. My actual specialty is in the New Testament. Yes, sir? Go ahead, brother. Wa alaikum, salamu alaikum. Yeah, I think it's, they have morality. But the theological answer is that there is an opinion amongst theologians that every human being, by virtue of being a human being knows the ma'ruf. The ma'ruf means they know the basic objective moral laws and prohibitions. So like the Noah Hiddok laws, seven of the 10 commandments. Everybody knows instinctively not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, to believe in God. Everyone knows that. So that's just a manifestation of their fitrah. There's still something there. That's one explanation. Another explanation is that no, you're born clean. There's a clean slate, right? It's more ash'ari, virtue, command theory, theology from our tradition. But we're socialized. So these atheists, they don't know it, but they're actually been socialized by Judeo-Christian Islamic morals and ethics, even though they want to deny that. So yes, atheists, I know some atheists are extremely moral people, very charitable people, right? And that's great. The problem is when you don't have a moral anchor, right? You don't have a higher morality than who determines your morality. If Hitler won the war and he makes everyone join his cause, then he becomes the moral anchor on earth. Everything becomes relative. There needs to be someone to stand up and say, this is just simply wrong because Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, my scripture, a transcendental being that is above us, says it's wrong or right. Wonderful. Yeah. So I would say that that's an argument that atheists make. And I think it's, from a theistic standpoint, from an Islamic standpoint, it's sort of a short-sighted way of looking at existence. That we believe that the dunya, this is where these things happen in the dunya. This is not a surprise. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala tells us that that's the nature of the dunya. Dunya means the low world. Right? So I think it's important for us to explain these things to people that this is a period of testing, a period of tribulation, a period in which Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says, We are not going to be afraid of anything and fear and fear and fear and fear and fear and fear and fear and fear and fear and fear and fear and fear and fear and fear and fear where certainly we will test you. Certainly. Well, the Nabluwanakum, I mean, there's double emphasis in Arabic here. Very much emphasize. Certainly we will test you with something from loss, from hunger and loss of possessions, loss of life, oppression, things like that. Wa Bashirah Saab-e-Din. But we know as Muslims, and this is how we have to explain it to people, is that Wa Al-Akhiratu Khairun Wa Abaqa, that the afterlife is better and it's eternal. And that Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, I mean, some people just looking at the world, it can become very, very cynical, as you know, just looking at what's going on in the world. And some people just from that will say, there must be a day of judgment then. There has to be a day of judgment. These people are just going to get away with all of this type of thing, right? That's just instinctively. They're not, might not even be raised in a religious tradition. But we know as Muslims that the afterlife is forever, right? So what happens here, it fails or pales in comparison. That doesn't mean that we don't do anything because the word Muslim is an active participle. We're not a quote unquote messianic tradition where we kind of, we believe in the Messiah obviously, but we don't sit back and have someone come and solve our problems. A Muslim, you know, not Muslim, active, not passive is someone who is actively creating peace on the earth and submitted to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. So we have work to do on the planet, right? But ultimately we know that there's going to be, you know, what George Bush tried to call infinite justice, but was changed to some other title. Infinite justice only happens on Yomul Qiyamah, right? And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said that the most depraved person in the dunya who was a believer, when he enters Jannah, imagine the most depraved believer on earth. He has no arms, no legs. He's in the street. People are spitting on him. They're cursing him. He says, when this person enters in the Jannah, he will be asked, did you suffer in the dunya? He said, I don't remember, because he's in Jannah. And now the Maqam of Jannah is realized, the Maqam of the Yomul Qiyamah. In this world, a mother will willingly give her life to save her child. No question whatsoever. On the Yomul Qiyamah, يوم يفر المرء من أخي و أمه و أبي people will run from their family members because they understand the Maqam of the Yomul Qiyamah. Prophets are on their knees shaking. أنا خليلك إبراهيم عليه الصلاة. I'm your friend, I'm your friend. إبراهيم عليه الصلاة. خليل الله is in this state. Where's our state? So this is part of, this is part of, well تسمعون من الذين أوتوا الكتاب من قبلكم. Certainly you're going to hear a lot of white noise from people in the book and from atheists and from mushrikin. And I consider the atheists to actually be mushrikin because atheists say the universe created itself. That's a divine attribute or the universe is pre-eternal in the past. That's a divine attribute. That's شرق. That's not atheism. They're mushrikin, right? So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala tells us these things in scripture. إِسَاَلَيْسَلَمْ says according to the gospel of Matthew, blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and say all things against you falsely, rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven, for the persecuted, the prophets that came before you. This is what happens in the dunya. And we believe these one million, two million people that are killed by the American military industrial complex in the Middle East, we believe, inshallah, these people are shohadah and they're in jannah. That doesn't mean we don't do any, oh, I was shohadah, let's sit back and relax and enjoy our lattes. No, we have to speak up. It's very important. We have to speak up. أَفْتُلُ الْجِهَادْ مَنْقَالَ كَرِيمَتَ حَقْتِ اِنْدَ الْسُلْطَانَنْ جَائِرْ أَوْكَمَا قَالَ عَلَيْهِ سَلَاتِ بَسْلَامَ The greatest jihad is a word of truth in the face of a tyrant. So it's important for us to engage, we don't disengage from the dunya. It's not our tradition. We don't go out, live in the deserts and whatnot. You can do that for a weekend, for a dean intensive as it were and shock your nuffs out of its complacency. So it'll find an i'atidale balance from the extreme positions. We don't live that type of lifestyle. We engage with the world. We try to rectify the world, islah, we try to make reconciliation in the world. And jannah is forever. So at the end of the day, people who are killed, people who are oppressed, people who have tribulations and are sick and dying, they're the lucky ones. When you really think about it, they were the lucky ones because al-akhira khayrun wa abaqa. It's better and it's perpetual. Wa alaikum assalamu alaikum. I don't know if I can talk about it very well. I know it's kind of the time of the third year, because you said that you were just not going to be able to do that house time. So I don't know if you know that smile. So it's great about it. And I need to do this for you to be there. But once that happened, when I was developing my friendship with you, I found out that you should be doing it. It's called a very good period. You know, it's the same stuff and it was born to testify to you. It was you to testify to that. It's really close to the Bible and the state of the world. It's really close to you. So are you going to be able to tell your life or are you going to continue it in that particular public of this place? Yeah, inshallah. Three big questions. Oh, do our best, inshallah. I've already forgot your first question. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so the neo-Atheists, you know, there's significantly later than Darwin. But yeah, I probably should have included Darwin and what I call the original gangsters of atheism. I think I'll throw him in there now with Floyd and Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell. So we'll add to Charles Darwin as well. As far as relativism goes, we believe as Muslims that there are certain immutables in Sharia, things that never change over time. And there are very few actually, but they include major prescriptions and prohibitions that are good for all time until the Yom al-Qiyama. So it's important to stay within those basic universal ideals. There's also in our Sharia, mutagayarat, things that are variable, things that change according to context. You know, people hear the word sharia, they think it's some draconian law code or penal code that's 1400 years old and Muslims are trying to cut off hands in the streets and publicly flog people. And that's one aspect, the penal code of Islamic law, which many modern day scholars actually propose a moratorium to be pronounced over those types of things because the essence of the law is not being realized. But there are immutables, right? Thalabit in our tradition. And I think the problem with aspects of Adid Kitab is that they lost even their thalabit, right? They lost their immutables in tradition. So everything becomes relative. Also, the way that science interacts with Christianity, for example, I would say for the most part has been antagonistic throughout its history. Whereas we don't have that baggage, it's a completely different paradigm for us. So even though we are Muslims and we believe in absolute truths, that doesn't necessarily mean that we're gonna have the same sort of reaction that Christians had and Christendom, for example, and Christian Europe, which was a disaster for all intents and purposes. If you look at our history, we have a history of scientific development and also a tolerance and compassion for other religions. I mean, Adid Kitab. The Quran mentions Adid Kitab. And Muslims in the second century came to realize that there are a lot more religions out there other than Judaism and Christianity. What do we do with these Buddhists and these Hindus and so on and so forth? So through Ijtihad, that definition was expanded to include any religion that professes belief in some sort of scripture. So the Buddhists are Adid Kitab. Hindus are Adid Kitab. And this is the nature of Islamic Ijtihad is that it's rooted in the Quran. It makes absolute truth claims, but it also recognizes that there are other truths in the world that deserve respect, especially the life of human beings, the sacrosanct. And I think that's extremely important for contemporary Muslims to realize that also during the colonial period, after the Ottomans were dismantled, France and England and America and Italy carving up North Africa and bringing their literalist interpretation of scripture to those peoples and also nationalism. So now there's one way of reading the scripture my way or the highway, where does that come from? That's not in our tradition. The question was never, is there a metaphorical reading of the Quran? The question was always, how many levels of metaphorical reading are there in the Quran? Obviously there's a literal reading. No one denies it. No one has denied it. Zahiran. Wollil Qurani. Zahiran mubatan. Imam Ghazali says on Nishkatul Anwar, that there's an exoteric aspect and an esoteric aspect. But what we took from the colonialists in the Middle East and the North Africa is one way of reading the text. And that's a violent way because it's my way or the highway. That's not in our tradition. That's something we took from others. Anyway, hopefully that answers your question a little bit. The third question was about Jews for Jesus. Yeah, I saw this guy at UC Berkeley years ago. He's wearing a shirt that said Yehshua, right? Which is the name of Isadeh Salaam and Aramaic. And he was passing this thing out and he gave me this thing and it said the end of the world is something like, I don't know, May something, 2010. This was years ago. And I said, what if it doesn't happen? And he was from Jews for Jesus. I said, I guarantee you it's going to happen. I guarantee it, I guarantee it. Like May 22nd, the day after I come up to him, say, you know what I say, it didn't happen. He said, yes, I forgot the verse of that day no with no man, I forgot it. Satan tricked me. Yeah, it's a, you know, I always went into these types of people, you know, this lady one time ambushed me in a coffee shop and she said, you just went on this diet tribe about Palestine and so on and so forth. So I asked her, you know, she was a Christian. I said, is Jesus God? He said, yeah, she said, yeah, Jesus is God. I said, really? She said, yeah. I said, Jesus is the God of the Old Testament? She said, yes. Jesus is the God who commanded Moses and Joshua and the prophets? She said, yes. I said, when is it morally justifiable for Jesus to kill children? And she went. What? Well, in the Old Testament, the Lord commands Moses to go into 31 city-states and utterly decimate the entire population, men, women and children, animals burn down the city, loot the city. And she said, oh, that was the Old Testament, right? And you can't have your cake, it needed to. There's either two gods. And Jesus is another God and that's another God. And that was a Marcianite position, an early Christian position that was quite popular in Rome by theistic position. But no, she's not a Marcianite. So I said, look, either it's a different God or, you know, God changed his mind. He has multiple personalities, you know, things like that. And that leads to a lot of different types of theological issues. And then she said, well, what about ISIS? I said, look, I condemn ISIS, right? A lot of these Israeli officers in Palestine, they take these stories literally in the Old Testament. They take them literally. There's actually a large community, most academics, they're even Orthodox Jews. They don't take those stories literally. They said they're hyperbole, they're exaggerated. They were meant to scare the enemies of Israel. They're not real. But there are some who believe that they're actually literally history. So a lot of them are officers of the Israeli army and they quote these verses that justify genocide of indigenous Palestinian people. So I said, do you believe, do you agree with what Israel is doing? She said, yes. I said, then you are a terrorist because I do not agree with ISIS, but you agree with Israel's policy. When is it morally justifiable to kill women and children? No answer. You know. I mean, Genesis 15 says that that land between the two rivers and the Israeli flag has two blue lines, right? And that's the Nile and the Euphrates. So Gaza is nothing. They want half of Egypt. They want all of Iraq. That's greater Israel. That's Haaretz Israel. That's called the land of Israel, greater Israel. That's what they're trying to go for, right? At least the fundamentalist amongst them, the hardcore Zionist, that's considered major, greater Israel. In Genesis 15, it says, God says to Abraham, I'll give that land to your seed, right? And if you look at that land, start at the Nile River and just go north until you get to the Euphrates. Every town you pass by, they're making the Adhan and saying, Muhammadur Rasulullah. That's the seed of Abraham. The covenant was fulfilled. That's what it was. So, and we have to also draw distinctions, which is very, very important. The majority of Jews are non-Zionists. The majority of Zionists are evangelical Christians. The majority of them are evangelical Christians. The majority of Orthodox Jews are completely against the state of Israel, completely against it. If you go to like, stand outside the Israeli embassy in San Francisco, half of the crowd are Orthodox Jews. They put on these huge conferences that are never on TV condemning Israel because they say, look, we're a wandering people and only the Messiah can come back and gather the disperse from diaspora and set up the kingdom with justice. Cannot be done through political means. That's their akhita, that's their belief, that's their interpretation. That's the majority opinion amongst the Jews. But oftentimes what happens is that the fringe elements are the ones that are prevalent because they make for good TV ratings. And that's what we always hear about. That's what we're gonna hear about. We don't hear about the Orthodox position, the majority position, because you're not just boring, who cares? What are these nut jobs doing out here on the fringe? That's why I was at a church one time and I was a Unitarian, universalist church. So I'm thinking, okay, they don't believe in a Trinity. So it's gonna be kind of easy. It was the hardest, most difficult, battering I've ever taken. One of them, she said, she said, you know, older Caucasian lady, maybe in her like eighties, she stood up and she said, what's up with Joe Harzanayev? So wow, I said, how did you learn that name? We hear it all the time. Joe Harzan, that's a difficult name, isn't it? She said, yeah, it is quite difficult. So how do you know about the name? I don't know. So wow, you're probably hearing it all the time. She said, yeah, it's on a 24 hour news cycle, right? I said, have you heard of Wade Michael Page? Much easier name, Wade Michael Page. Just call him Wade Page. Have you heard, never heard of him? Really, this is a man who's an Aryan nation, former Marine, wearing fatigues, goes into a Gurdwara Temple, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, blows 12 people away, right? And thinking they were Muslim. No one's heard of him. Have you heard of Eric Rudolph? Never heard of him. You didn't hear about the man who blew up a bomb at the 96 Atlanta Games? You never heard of him? Never heard of him. Eric Rudolph, Christian terrorist, right? Zionist, blew up Centennial Park in 1996, blows up gay nightclubs, blows up abortion clinics, killing doctors and nurses. No one's heard of him, right? Why? Why don't we hear about these people? Somebody's being miseducated, right? So have you heard of the Hutari movement? Hutari, what is that? You never heard of the Hutaris? You heard of al-Qaeda? Oh yeah, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda, of course, al-Qaeda. Hutaris, a group of militant Christians in the Midwest that tried to take over the United States government. They have training camps. According to FBI, there are dozens of such Christian groups in Texas alone, dozens, terrorist groups trying to take over the country. Have you heard of any of them? The army of the Lord, the Lord's arm, the lambs of God, the Ku Klux Klan. 1945, not that long, people remember this, 50,000 clansmen marched on Washington. They had membership of four million people in 1945. That's more than American Jews. These people just disintegrate? What happened to them? No, they're still around. They integrated into the police force, into the Republican party. They're still around. They don't just disintegrate. Democratic party? Yeah, they don't fall off the face of the earth, right? But people, you know, think about these things. They don't even hear about these things. It's very strange, anyway. That was my spiel to use a Yiddish word. You guys heard of Robert Bales? That was the last one I mentioned, Robert Bales. You ever heard of him? Bob Bales, easy, huh? Bobby Bales. Bobby Bales goes into Kandahar, Afghanistan, and he kills 16 people, nine of them are children, burning them, burning them. He's an American military man. Who's heard of him? Who cares? No one's heard of him. You know, ISIS burns one man alive, and obviously we condemn it. La yan baghi an yu'adhiba bin nar illa rabbu al-nar. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, is not becoming of anyone to punish or torture with fire, except the Lord of Fire, except Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. We condemn it completely. But who's heard of Bobby Bales? You know what happened in 1963 at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama? Does anyone remember that? Bombing Ham, that's what he used to call it. So we don't study history. We start pointing the fingers at people. But why is this group in Iraq? Why are they there? You have 24 years of American aggression and invasion, depleted uranium, hundreds of thousands of children are dying for 24 years. You have sanctions put on that country, invasion under false pretenses. What do you expect to happen? People are going to lay down and die for you? What do you expect? Obviously, we condemn ISIS. Obviously. But why is it happening? What's going on? Anyway, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, that's my, I think that's right on. I mean, because right now it's, yeah, there's a Hadith of the Prophet, Sallallahu alayhi sallam, where he says, there's going to be a time where there's so much confusion in the world. The best thing you can do is take some of your sheeps and goats and just go live up in the mountains and just get away from all of that type of thing. And I think those are times that are rapidly approaching upon us. That we need to safeguard our deans. Because it's very, very, you know, people go surfing online and things like that and want to know what's going on. No one really knows what's going on. And you can sit there for hours and hours and hours, watch video, YouTube after YouTube after YouTube and just be obsessed and be depressed and become cynical. But the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam, he said, if you're planting a seed and the hour comes upon you, the day of judgment, finish planting your seed, you're never going to see that seed grow, right? Because the hour, but finish planting, I mean, we have to keep working. Just keep working. The point is to keep moving, right? And if need be, just turn all these things off. My advice is, and I have to, you know, I have to do research and things like that sometimes just to be able to be able to, you know, answer some of these claims that are being made. But, you know, my best moments are just me and my subhan or my Quran memorizing, just reading a nice text, you know, turning off gadgets and things like that. You can become obsessed with it and it can really affect the deen. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of apostasy happening right now. These people are trying to figure these things out. They keep digging and digging and digging. Most of the information on the internet is probably wrong anyway or biased. So Muslims are falling into this quagmire of confusion. So then they go to their parents who are immigrants to the country. Dad, is there really a God? Astaghfirullah, go make wudu. How dare you ask this question? Yeah, but I wanna know, astaghfirullah. Go pray, ask Allah to give you the answer. And that's not gonna work for them because their crisis is not of orthopraxis, it's of orthodoxy. Why do I believe this? So then they go to a university professor who's got a PhD in philosophy but he's an anti-Muslim polemicist. Said, Mr. Professor, yes. What do you think about Islam? Oh, come to my office hour. And Allah, he walks out, kafir, murtad, walking out of his office. And then, I know a lot of Muslim youth like, they're feigning in front of their parents. They come to Juma, they read their mushaf. They're atheist. They don't even believe in it. I'm just, you know, I'm going through the motions. My dad, I can't wait to move out so I can be my own man and it's what happening. You can take that literally, go up, whatever. Or you can say, you know what? I'm going to detach myself from all this type of fitna, protect my flock, my limbs, my family members, my faculties, just protect it, completely cut it off from all of that madness and fitna and confusion and just do the best I can with the people around me, inshallah, and don't underestimate any type of educational opportunity even if it's one person. You know, every good idea started with one person, right? I never know who you're going to talk to, who you're going to influence. So, yes, sir? Walaikum. My question is like two parts. It sounds like you're with your fans, like the immorality of the issue of them is sort of forced or like conditioned or it's your own like belief system. Yeah. So in order to believe that you have to, you can just, the first part of the question is that, from what you know from the eight years perspective, what is that belief system come from? That there's a difference in that immorality? What is that come from? And then so the second part is that, if, for example, you're making problems, you're just out of it, right? So if you have to be conditioned to believe this or adopt this ideology, do what you will, then what is he going to aspire to that? Something that he was probably that was inherent. So where did that come from? So then what is both part of the spectrum from the eight years perspective, where did it come from? What is the immorality come from? And then where did the morality come from that you're inherent to be warned of? Yeah, that's a good question. Because definitely atheists, they take moral stances and most atheists will say that they believe in objective morality, but it comes from their understanding of the world and their experiences, but it's totally relative and that's the problem with it. In most, most of the time, I think they get it right. You don't see atheists on the street killing each other and stealing things and things like that. I mean, they follow the laws of the country that they live in and they're generally good people. So I think that's also, there's some conditioning that goes there as far as the society goes. And that's been my question, is where do they get their morality from? That's always been my question, right? And the atheists will say, well, look, this is what happened, we were apes back in the day and the apes that killed each other, they didn't survive and the apes that sort of learned to work with each other. So they learned it through that type of conditioning, right? And that's sort of their answer, but I don't know. I mean, your question is a question that I've been asking for years. So that's a good question. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, judgment is the prerogative of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. So I can't comment on that. What I can say is that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he, according to Ibn Taymiyyah, he prophesized the Neo-Khawarij, right? People who are going to come from time to time with that same type of mentality that believe that they have the truth and that everyone else is on falsehood and they make takfir of anybody and they don't discriminate in their takfir. They make takfir of Ali Atayi all the way up to Ali ibn Abi Talib. Whoever doesn't agree with me, they're a kafir. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he described them and he said that they pass through the religion like an arrow passes through its target, meaning they deviate very quickly. And then he said that they are the worst of creation. He said they recite the Qur'an but it doesn't go below their throat. They make supplication that doesn't rise above their head. Right after he mentioned that they recite the Qur'an, he said they're the worst of creation. So the Ulema said, wait a minute, they're Muslim. How can they be the worst of creation? So the Ulema said they're the worst of creation because not only do they hinder people away from the path of Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam but they defame the name of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. They're guilty of defamation of character against the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, right? So judgment is for Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. I mean, according to Orthodox Islam, normative Asha Ali Maturidi, this is not, you know, as one of my teachers said, this is not our California creed. You know, Imam Ghazali says that if someone was given a distorted form of Islam, they were told their whole lives. Muslims are crazy, they're terrorists, they're abusive, they worship the moon god, whatever they're being told. And they die, that person is safe from the fire. That Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam manifests divine amnesty for that person on the Yom Al-Qayyama because a requisite of taqlif, taqlif means responsibility or burden to become Muslim is that you were reached by a sound prophetic summons, a prophetic summons that was sound. So obviously there's been a lot of good people in the world that weren't Muslim. And this is something to think about. You go around the world to these ancient Christian monasteries, Trinitarian monasteries, they have open-air tombs, open-air, there's a monk, he's out in the open, he's not decomposing. Why? I thought he was a kathir. He believes in the trinity, what happened? Something to think about, you know? This is the form of Christianity this man was reached with, Trinitarian Christianity. And he was a muqlis in that tradition and he loved Isa A.S. And Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam were not ones to judge, right? So it's very difficult for me to, you know, what happens at this point? Allah Who A'lam. I don't know, I can only tell you what I've seen in my experiences and what the Quran tells us. A kathir will go to Jehannam Khalidan Fiha, a kathir. The question is, what is a kathir? What is a kathir? So any non-Muslim is a kathir, is black and white? I mean, there's an opinion like that. But the majority opinion is, a kathir is someone that Allah describes in Al-Baqarah, wa taqtumu al-haqqa wa antum ta'lamun. Do not clothe truth with falsehood, nor conceal the truth while you have knowledge of the truth. So who can we actually say is a kathir? Who can we actually say? Abu Lahab, Abu Jahal, Fir'aun, Haman, Qarun, a handful of people, everybody else, Allah Who A'lam. I'm not Allah. And for me to judge people, you're gonna go to hell? That's shirk, because I'm putting myself in a position as it were of Allah SWT, and I've committed shirk, if I did that. So, and that's something, we shouldn't give up on people either. I mean, I was in a musket one time, and there was a Holocaust, a Christian brother was there, and the Christian brother was asking really tough questions, but he was being respectful. Uncle walks into the musket, he listens for two minutes, and he goes, you wasted your time with Yusuf A'lam. Allah has sealed their hearts. They are blind, and they are deaf, they are stupid. Wasted their time on kathir. I said, you gave him two minutes of your time. The Prophet SAW gave 20 years to Abu Sufyan, a man who's trying to kill him. And he didn't give up on him, and eventually became Muslim. And that's the best da'i. Wa da'iyan ila Allahi bi-Izni, wa sirajah munirah. The best da'i could not convert a man in 20 years, but you come into the musket two minutes and try to convert it, and he doesn't. He's kathir. Oh, yes, wa alaikum salam. The Book of Treasury. Take a trip. Oh, I haven't heard of it. Interesting. You know, I recommend a book when atheism becomes religion by Chris Hedges. Really good book. You should get that book. Awesome book, Chris Hedges. When atheism becomes religion. Also God and the new atheism by John Hart. Excellent book. Yeah. Yeah, so agnostic is more humbler. And agnostic, you know, A is the alpha privative, which means to negate, is the negating alpha. So in other words, in agnostic says, I don't know. I don't, I'm open to be persuaded. Right? So that's a better position than an atheist who said, no, there's no God. And khalas, you can't, that's, you can't persuade me, right? Although a lot of atheists are really agnostic, and they say, well, I don't know if there's, there's no God, but I'm open to a conversation. But the anti-theists are these people we're dealing with, that just, yanny, oppose religion completely and believe that it's just a poison that needs to be eradicated from the earth. So yeah, agnostic literally means someone who doesn't know. And we're all to a certain degree agnostic, all of us, even if we're believers. Obviously we have faith convictions, but to a certain degree, we all, obviously you don't know certain things. And the prophets of Allah the Almighty have said that when we are resurrected on the Yom al-Qiyamah, we're going to see things much more clearly and think that this was a dream, right? Just like when we're dreaming, we're thinking, and I do this sometimes when I'm dreaming, I'm thinking, is this a dream? No! Right? Inside the dream, but it is. Right? So, here. This is how to look at it.