Dawkins Delusion

Anyone following my Twitter account for example would be aware, that I find this discussion very needed and Muslims have to engage more in this intellectual field. Even the last few weeks I've been almost obsessed with this topic and consumpted a lot of material regarding it out there. That's why I really appreciate your posts and find them incredible inspiring. May Allah ta'ala enable me also to contribute to this cause in soon future...[/quote]

Jazakallah Akhi for your kind words.
Indeed posts like yours are the most endearing ones for me.
Of necessity there can not be many posts like this and hence I do wait for these.
Occasionally a brother or sister will come up with such kind words and that is when I feel that it has been more than an intellectual cud chewing on my part.
Of course there are several brothers and sisters who make it a pleasure to be on these fora.
So I thank you from the core of my heart and I fecilitate you and other brothers and sisters with similar concerns.

Personally I would like to see the dawn of that day when we Muslims have taken back our social, cultiral, theological, scientific, technological, business, industrial, economic, financial, military and political spaces back from those people who have encroached upon it.

Being a person with limited intellectual capabilities I can to tackle all of these topics alone.
Ours is a big Ummah and hence it is not necessary that all of these things should be done by a single person. Unfortunately number of people accepting the intellectual challenge in any one of above fields is nearly cipher except for the theological matters. Even in that field there is a dearth of people when we look at the number of opponents.

You will remember I was impressed by brother Abdul1234 on SF in psychological matters. But he simply disappeared.

Of course Muadh Khan works persistently on matters related to applications of scientific notions for the service of Deen.

There are many people who address the questions in the field of commerce and business and to some extent industry. But we should have been the leaders there for our beloved Prophet (PBUH) himself was a trader in the beginning of his life. So was Imam Abu Hanifa (RA).

Anyway this thread is about battling atheists and I am absolutely thrilled that you are focussing on it.
The way we are so happy to have brother Tripoli-Sunni to deal with the Shia trouble makers I would have left the atheist issue to you for i have limited time, energy, capabilities and capacity. Even then I have some burden on my head that I have to off load. For quite some time I was part of that environment where Dawkins was a way of life and hence I had the ring side view of the things and hence I am duty bound to put my finger on those points that I can. Thus I shall spend some time in deconstructing the book Selfish Gene by him and overview the response to his book God Delusion.

But I am happy to the hilt that you have your eyes set upon these matters. Without pushing you into vanity I am asserting that Lord Most High willing your contributions will be even better than brother Hamza, no offence to that very smart, brave and enthusistic brother. Please do pay attention to what Craig and Lennox have been saying for theistic arguments have a universality and it against Sunnah to re-invent the wheel.

Wow!
Completely impressed.
Two most important ideas from first half:
(1) The whole argument from atheisti point of view is designed to make us lose.
(2) Qur'an does not address atheism per say - it does address doubt.

This second point is just mind blowing.
I knew similar things for long and was very perplexed.
May Allah (SWT) give brother Nouman enormous Jaza for destroying a gigantic idol for me.

Basically the point he has chanced upon is the following.
We know darkness is merely absence of light.
So there is nothing to discuss about darkness.
Discuss light for that is present, positive and fruitful.
There is nothing to discuss about darkness that is simply absence of a real, positive and beneficial thing.
Same is true about faith and atheism.
Atheism is absence of faith and hence there is nothing to discuss about it.
Hence that is not the subject matter of the Noble Qur'an.

Sub-han Allah.


In the second part he makes another useful suggestion.

Our belief in Allah Azz wa Jall has two dimensions, at least.
Spiritual and intellectual.



The Noble Qur'an is a miracle is more ways than we can understand and appreciate in a life time.
So rather than confining the utility of this book into a list of fixed number of miracles use a different phraseology. Say that I find the Noble Qur'an miraculous in this, this and this matter and I am already overwhelmed.


Finally NAK is against debate.
But that corner is anyway covered by successors of of Rahmatullah Kairanvi, Vazeer Khan and Ahmed Deedat. I mean Zakir Naik, Shabbir Ali and Ali Ataie.

[quote]In terms of understanding Neo-Atheism and counter-arguments this lecture of Sidi Ali Ataie was very helpful:


Also Mufti Muhammad Saeed Khan (hafizahullah) in his series of 'Aqidah lectures has a few nice ones on the classical and more Quranic approach to establishing the existence of Allah ta'ala: www.seerat.net/Audio/Audio.aspx?catid=88

During the past thirty years, people from all the civilized countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. … Among all my patients in the second half of life — to say, over thirty‑five — there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.[/quote]
Sigmund Freud wrote in a letter to Carl Jung, dated January 17, 1909, “The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.” In his essay on war & death, he wrote, “Religion is an illusion, and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses.”

Both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were psychologists of great repute. So, are we to believe in ‘Psychological man” of Freud or the “Religious man’ of Carl Jung?


According to Encyclopedia Britannica:
[quote] “As a boy Jung had remarkably striking dreams and powerful fantasies that had developed with unusual intensity. After his break with Freud, he deliberately allowed this aspect of himself to function again and gave the irrational side of his nature free expression. At the same time, he studied it scientifically by keeping detailed notes of his strange experiences. He later developed the theory that these experiences came from an area of the mind that he called the collective unconscious, which he held was shared by everyone. This much-contested conception was combined with a theory of archetypes that Jung held as fundamental to the study of the psychology of religion. In Jung’s terms, archetypes are instinctive patterns, have a universal character, and are expressed in behavior and images.
… Jung devoted the rest of his life to developing his ideas, especially those on the relation between psychology and religion. In his view, obscure and often neglected texts of writers in the past shed unexpected light not only on Jung’s own dreams and fantasies but also on those of his patients; he thought it necessary for the successful practice of their art that psychotherapists become familiar with writings of the old masters.”