Atheism and IslamFiled Under: Religion

Atheism and Islam have a rather odd relationship. According to the Quran, the punishment for atheists is quite clear and obvious:

4:18 The forgiveness is not for those who do ill-deeds until, when death attendeth upon one of them, he saith: Lo! I repent now; nor yet for those who die while they are disbelievers. For such We have prepared a painful doom.”

But according to a Muslim “scholar” it is easier to convert an Atheist than it is to convert a theist of another god/religion. Dr. Zakir Naik apparently must not know that if you post things on the Internet, everyone can see them, and thus anyone can refute them. At the Islam 101 website, Dr. Naik has submitted an article which he titles “Proving the Existence of Allah to an Atheist.” This is a very tall order, and something that his third-rate intellectual ability does not even come close to succeeding at. His article is at this link. Now let us begin to disect his article from the top, and expose such a fake intellectual.

Normally, when I meet an atheist, the first thing I like to do is to congratulate him and say, ” My special congratulations to you”, because most of the people who believe in God are doing blind belief - he is a Christian, because his father is a Christian; he is a Hindu, because his father is a Hindu; the majority of the people in the world are blindly following the religion of their fathers.

He begins with how arrogant he is in his belief…and how condescending he is. With regards to the blind belief, why does not the same apply to Islam? Why are only other religions blindly following their religion? Does he articulate that? (do I even need an answer to that?)…

My Muslim brothers may question me, “Zakir, why are you congratulating an atheist?” The reason that I am congratulating an atheist is because he agrees with the first part of the Shahada i.e. the Islamic Creed, ‘La ilaaha’ - meaning ‘there is no God’. So half my job is already done; now the only part left is ‘il lallah’ i.e. ‘BUT ALLAH’ which I shall do Insha Allah. With others (who are not atheists) I have to first remove from their minds the wrong concept of God they may have and then put the correct concept of one true God.

Oddly enough, I believe the the Islamic creed is exactly two words too long.

My first question to the atheist will be: “What is the definition of God?” For a person to say there is no God, he should know what is the meaning of God. If I hold a book and say that ‘this is a pen’, for the opposite person to say, ‘it is not a pen’, he should know what is the definition of a pen, even if he does not know nor is able to recognise or identify the object I am holding in my hand. For him to say this is not a pen, he should at least know what a pen means. Similarly for an atheist to say ‘there is no God’, he should at least know the concept of God. His concept of God would be derived from the surroundings in which he lives. The god that a large number of people worship has got human qualities - therefore he does not believe in such a god. Similarly a Muslim too does not and should not believe in such false gods.

What if one is a former Muslim and denies the concept and existence of allah?

Many atheists demand a scientific proof for the existence of God. I agree that today is the age of science and technology. Let us use scientific knowledge to kill two birds with one stone, i.e. to prove the existence of God and simultaneously prove that the Qur’an is a revelation of God.

Is he saying that current scientific knowledge can prove the existence of god AND that this god authored a few books a few centuries back?

If a new object or a machine, which no one in the world has ever seen or heard of before, is shown to an atheist or any person and then a question is asked, ” Who is the first person who will be able to provide details of the mechanism of this unknown object? After little bit of thinking, he will reply, ‘the creator of that object.’ Some may say ‘the producer’ while others may say ‘the manufacturer.’ What ever answer the person gives, keep it in your mind, the answer will always be either the creator, the producer, the manufacturer or some what of the same meaning, i.e. the person who has made it or created it. Don’t grapple with words, whatever answer he gives, the meaning will be same, therefore accept it.

I suppose this is all white noise…but I assume he is talking about the world and a creator. If he is, surely he should be aware of Evolution by Natural Selection.

At the time when the Qur’an was revealed, people thought the world was flat, there are several other options for the shape of the earth. It could be triangular, it could be quadrangular, pentagonal, hexagonal, heptagonal, octagonal, spherical, etc. Lets assume there are about 30 different options for the shape of the earth. The Qur’an rightly says it is spherical, if it was a guess the chances of the guess being correct is 1/30.

This is probably a highlight of the entire article…he actually thinks he is using real probability to prove his points. He provides not a single source of where it says the Earth is spherical. Secondly, how is at all scientific to make up a random number at 30? And really, who thought that the world was “quadrangular, pentagonal, hexagonal, heptagonal, octagonal…” Honestly was there ever a single person who thought of those choices? And, the theory of the spherical Earth is nearly a thousand years older than Islam. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth

The light of the moon can be its own light or a reflected light. The Qur’an rightly says it is a reflected light. If it is a guess, the chances that it will be correct is 1/2 and the probability that both the guesses i.e the earth is spherical and the light of the moon is reflected light is 1/30 x 1/2 = 1/60.

Again with this nonsense, he provides no sources for his claim about the Quran. Secondly…we have already dismissed this 1/30 nonsense.

Further, the Qur’an also mentions every living thing is made of water. Every living thing can be made up of either wood, stone, copper, aluminum, steel, silver, gold, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, oil, water, cement, concrete, etc. The options are say about 10,000. The Qur’an rightly says that everything is made up of water. If it is a guess, the chances that it will be correct is 1/10,000 and the probability of all the three guesses i.e. the earth is spherical, light of moon is reflected light and everything is created from water being correct is 1/30 x 1/2 x 1/10,000 = 1/60,000 which is equal to about .0017%.

The Qur’an speaks about hundreds of things that were not known to men at the time of its revelation. Only in three options the result is .0017%. I leave it upto you, to work out the probability if all the hundreds of the unknown facts were guesses, the chances of all of them being correct guesses simultaneously and there being not a single wrong guess. It is beyond human capacity to make all correct guesses without a single mistake, which itself is sufficient to prove to a logical person that the origin of the Qur’an is Divine.

More with this probability nonsense, I can’t believe this guy is actually serious and even found a publisher to publish his book.

The only logical answer to the question as to who could have mentioned all these scientific facts 1400 years ago before they were discovered, is exactly the same answer initially given by the atheist or any person, to the question who will be the first person who will be able to tell the mechanism of the unknown object. It is the ‘CREATOR’, the producer, the Manufacturer of the whole universe and its contents. In the English language He is ‘God’, or more appropriate in the Arabic language, ‘ALLAH’.

His entire claim relies on the probability that is probably one of the absolute worst arguments I have ever read. Thus, the this statement he makes is null and void as it rests on data that is worthless.

Let me remind you that the Qur’an is not a book of Science, ‘S-C-I-E-N-C-E’ but a book of Signs ‘S-I-G-N-S’ i.e. a book of ayaats. The Qur’an contains more than 6,000 ayaats, i.e. ‘signs’, out of which more than a thousand speak about Science. I am not trying to prove that the Qur’an is the word of God using scientific knowledge as a yard stick because any yardstick is supposed to be more superior than what is being checked or verified. For us Muslims the Qur’an is the Furqan i.e. criteria to judge right from wrong and the ultimate yardstick which is more superior to scientific knowledge.

We know the first part, and he first said the he could prove that god exists and god authored the Quran, and now he is saying he can’t. And the same book that claims this god can’t be proof of the god itself.

But for an educated man who is an atheist, scientific knowledge is the ultimate test which he believes in. We do know that science many a times takes ‘U’ turns, therefore I have restricted the examples only to scientific facts which have sufficient proof and evidence and not scientific theories based on assumptions. Using the ultimate yardstick of the atheist, I am trying to prove to him that the Qur’an is the word of God and it contains the scientific knowledge which is his yardstick which was discovered recently, while the Qur’an was revealed 1400 year ago. At the end of the discussion, we both come to the same conclusion that God though superior to science, is not incompatible with it.

He is essentially arguing that because the Quran is old, that is therefore more likely to be true. Does this mean that Greek mythology is even more true than the Quran…(and likewise for older religions)

We have thus disected and anihilated his entire article. This man is a supposed scholar and respect by millions of people yet he can’t even put togeather a coherant article about god and atheism.

Tags: Atheism, god, islam, Religion