Episode 5, Part 2 – How Atheism Undermines Reason and Science

How Does Atheism Undermine Reason and Science? 2

Atheism and the Denial of Self-Evident Rational Principles

We therefore say to the atheist: if self-evident rational principles do not exist, how do you explain everyone’s conviction of them, which indicates that they are firmly rooted components of their minds—and how do you explain that you and everyone else act upon them in reality?

The atheist perspective answers: since the human being emerged through Darwinian evolution, driven by natural selection and random mutations that enable an organism to live and survive, what guarantees that these mutations developed minds capable of reaching the realities of things? These minds may instead mislead us, making certain matters seem like rational axioms even though they are mere illusions, while deceiving us only to help us survive.

Atheism thus takes its adherent beyond denying rational axioms: it makes him doubt the credibility of the human mind itself. We say to the atheist: your atheism admits that your mind may mislead you and fail to discover the truth, so how can you trust it? Throughout your atheism, you claim to rely upon reason, yet atheism itself attacks reason’s credibility. It is as though you say: I believe my mind because my mind—whose credibility is under attack—tells me to believe it.

This profound problem concerning the mind’s reliability troubled Darwin himself. Expressing his confusion and unease, he said: “A terrible doubt always arises in me as to whether the convictions of the human mind, which developed from the minds of lower creatures, have any value or deserve the slightest trust.”

It is therefore extremely strange for atheists to claim that they respect reason and accuse religious people of degrading it, when atheism actually leads in the end to destroying the credibility of reason itself. The atheist criticizes our belief in the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, who was known for his truthfulness, even though we did not base our faith merely upon his statement that he was God’s Messenger but also upon external proofs of his truthfulness and prophethood. At the same time, the atheist believes his own mind—whose credibility and ability to indicate truth he doubts—merely because his mind told him: believe me.

Atheism and the Denial of Absolute Truths

How did atheism escape this predicament—the predicament of relying upon a mind that may mislead us about the realities of things? Atheism answered: who said that things possess absolute realities in the first place, from which our minds might mislead us? What does that mean? They said there is no such thing as the realities of things; there is only the human senses’ reading of them. It is as though an object has no color and nothing prevents each person from seeing it in his own color. No one can declare another mistaken, because no one can claim that another has contradicted “the truth.” Everything called truth is merely a human mental product with no absolute value independent of us.

To understand the difference between absolute and relative truth: absolute means not relative; it is that way in itself, and we need not add that it is so for a particular person. For example, when we draw a line like this [the line appears on the screen] and someone says there are two lines, we tell him he is mistaken because he has contradicted an absolute truth: it is one line. But if we ask whether this line is intelligible [writing in Japanese], the answer is not absolute. It is intelligible to a Japanese speaker and unintelligible to others.

The chain of consequences produced by denying God’s existence ended in treating everything as relative. This created the right environment for claims such as: no one possesses the truth, there is no absolute truth, and truth is relative. For them it is relative because affirming that truth is absolute and that things possess a reality entails accepting that laws exist which someone established, and that self-evident rational principles exist for which someone endowed the human being with something like programming that recognizes them. They do not want to accept any of this.

Nevertheless, some Muslims repeat the phrase “truth is relative” in the name of openness and rationality, unaware of its foundation and consequences. We say to one who repeats, “No one possesses absolute truth”: is this statement of yours true? If he says yes, he has admitted that absolute truths exist. If he says no, I regard it as true only for me, we answer: I do not regard it that way, so why do you condemn those who disagree with you and uphold absolute truths, calling that rigidity?

Atheism’s Consequences for Understanding Revelation and Science

Brothers, this lack of firm principles, nihilism, and absurdity also created the environment for the concept of the “open text”: treating the texts of revelation as having no single reality that a Muslim must strive to understand and follow, but instead claiming that understanding is relative and no one may declare another mistaken.

This reveals the consequences of atheism when it denies each of the nine key expressions in the premise of faith: God created the heavens and earth in truth, established fixed laws for them through His wisdom, and endowed the human being with a fitrah that produces necessary self-evident rational axioms, from which the human mind proceeds to discover the realities of things.

For the atheist, there is no God, therefore no creation, no wisdom, no fixed laws, no fitrah, no rational axioms, no trustworthy human mind, no truth or absolute realities, no trustworthy scientific conclusions that may be generalized and used to derive rules, and no language of shared rational discourse. The entire structure falls apart. “And do not obey one whose heart We have made heedless of Our remembrance and who follows his desire and whose affair is ever [in] neglect.” [Al-Kahf 18:28].

All of this results from consistently denying God, Most High. Those who stop at one level of this descent have merely blinded themselves to the necessary implications and consequences of their atheism and contradicted their own beliefs.

Faith in God as the Foundation of Science and Knowledge

From what preceded, brothers, it becomes clear that no truth can stand without faith in the existence of God, Most High, who possesses absolute perfection and placed within the human being absolute truths that he cannot reach independently. From here we understand the scholars’ profound statement: knowledge of God is the foundation of knowledge of everything known.

One who does not recognize the existence of God, Most High, cannot establish a coherent theory of knowledge by proof. This is the meaning of Ibn Al-Qayyim’s words, in summary: denying and rejecting the Maker of the universe in reason and the fitrah is equivalent to denying and rejecting knowledge itself, with no difference between them. Indeed, to sound, enlightened minds and healthy innate dispositions, the Creator’s indication of creation is clearer than the reverse. He means that reasoning from the Creator to creation is clearer than reasoning from creation to the Creator.

Ibn Al-Qayyim then said: I heard Shaykh Al-Islam Taqi Ad-Din Ibn Taymiyyah say, “How can you seek evidence for the One who is the evidence for everything?” He often quoted this verse of poetry: Nothing remains sound within the mind If daylight itself requires a sign.

Today’s episode also helps us answer a question from the previous one. We established that the human being innately acknowledges the Creator, but does this acknowledgment necessarily mean that the Creator exists? In today’s episode, we explained the consequences of denying the innate necessities that a person necessarily finds within himself. This also enables you to understand why the highest absolute value in Islam is truth, without which neither the heavens nor earth can stand, and to grasp deeply the meaning of these words of God, Most High: “Do you not consider those who dispute concerning the signs of Allah—how are they averted?” [Ghafir 40:69]. It is as though God, Mighty and Majestic, says: have you not seen those who obstinately reject God’s signs in creation and revelation—what destiny they reach and in what valleys of bewilderment and error they wander?

Conclusion

This was a discussion of how the innate programming of rational axioms points to the existence of God, Most High. In the coming episodes, God willing, we will discuss other innate indications. Peace and God’s mercy be upon you.