As you would have no doubt realised by reading this post, I am an atheist. I do not believe that there is a God. I find it hard to believe that a merciful God would kill people for not following his way. Western Atheists have for the most part studied and debunked Christianity. I would like to start a critical study of Islam. This post will be my attempt at showing flaws within Islam and it's literature. Some of this will be a rehash, or revision of previous writings.

Allah in Islam is not a man and not a "thing", and not like anything, but that which is fundamental, infinite and self-existent (Quran 112:1-4), the source of all things the source of all things including matter, energy, order, intelligence, life and consciousness. As these things exist, then we know that Allah exists just as we know that a force, say electromagnetism or gravity exists by its effects. It is a question of understanding. You cannot, therefore, argue about it or refute it. Such arguments will be irrelevant because all arguments will use concepts that are limited and refer to things created.

There are reasons, or rather causes, for why people do not want to accept the existence of God. It may be because that they do not want to accept the implications of the belief. They do not want to undertake the discipline but wish to indulge in a life of pleasure or even depravity, or wish to impress their friends and so on.

Note that Free Thought means that it is undisciplined, unconstrained either by facts or reason or any kind of training. It is speculation or fantasy and has no value except perhaps entertainment.

If you start with beliefs, then all you will be doing is trying to justify those beliefs. That is not a critical study. It is criticizing and usually known as prejudice. Your beliefs are irrelevant to the truth. As you say, you find somethings hard to believe. This merely tells us about your limitations, not about the subject under discussion. If you say, "There is no God" this would imply that you are making an objective statement. In fact, you can only state with some certainty "I do not think, or believe, that there is a God." You would have to define what you mean by "God" and you would need to know your own mind. It may be that you keep changing your mind and the statement is true only at a certain time. It may be that you do not really know your own mind and that at a deeper, more sub-conscious level you do believe but have a different name for God. What you are in fact saying is that you have no experience or awareness of God or that you do not know what the term refers to. It does not logically follow from this that other people do not know what it means or have no experience of it or that God does not exist.

The only thing you can assume from the very beginning is that Reality exists, and following this, that consciousness exists, and thirdly that the contents of consciousness exist. Otherwise there is nothing to talk about. Everything else follows from this. This is, in effect, the Islamic position. The reason for insisting that this should be realized and affirmed is that it releases you from a prison of narrow self-centered concerns and ambitions and opens your mind to a much greater Universal objective Reality. Atheists might affirm that they too believe that reality and consciousness exists. But this can be denied. They might believe that they exist and that their own consciousness exists, but even this is doubtful. It is an unconscious assumption. But even a verbal affirmation or intellectual acceptance in thought is not the same thing as the realization.

As has been pointed out several times before that which a person sees or accepts depends upon (a) his abilities (b) his motives (c) his actions since these elicit reactions which provide data.

You cannot show a colour to the colour blind, you cannot make a moron understand mathematics. If this were not true then the knowledge of an ape would be as great as that of any human being. However, people are also different. One person may have one kind of talent or intelligence which is greater than another person's who may have some other talent or intelligence which is greater than in the first person. You cannot prove God to one who is unaware. You cannot show anything to one who will not look or looks in the wrong place or closes his eyes and understanding, or has fixations and prejudices. You cannot make a person understand science if he does not perform the experiments that provide the data. You cannot make a person understand politics if he does not actually participate in political actions. You cannot understand religious ideas if you do not undertake the religious discipline.

Is it not true that a great number of people do not understand science? Or cannot understand a logical thesis in Philosophy? Is it not true that there are a great number of saints and highly intelligent people who believe in God? How can naive logical proofs account for this? The writer states that Atheists have destroyed Christianity, but this is obviously false. There is, in fact, a revival of Christianity and new sects are forming. There is a revival of most religions. Obviously, the world created by science, technology, commerce and politics lacks something that religions possess and the writer has not grasped what it is. It does not seem to have occurred to the writer that perhaps it is not something understood at the superficial intellectual level of ideas, but something felt at a much more profound level connected with life and existence.

There are three ways of proving things:-

(1) Empirically - this depends on the presence of appropriate senses and their sensitivity.

(2) Logically - this depends on the concepts used and the capacity of the intellect and the premises selected. Nothing can exist in the inference that does not exist in the premises. If you wish to reach a conclusion then all you have to do is to define your terms in appropriate ways and select appropriate premises. All debates consist of verbal wars in which each side takes up a position to defend and an opposition to attack. The aim is not to establish the truth, but to win. This is why science replaced Philosophy - experiment was to be conducted - nature was asked and had to decide what the truth was. Science depends on the recognition of a greater reality than man. The belief in the validity of logic and reason is itself a kind of faith. It is not possible to infer from a list of particular things that something is true universally (i.e. This A1 is B, this A2 is B, this A3 is B etc. does not lead to the conclusion All As are B). It is also not possible to infer something about a whole by means of parameters that describe the parts. The whole is more and different than the sum of the parts because of patterns and reciprocal interactions. This is why Science begins by collecting data and then creating a Hypothesis. This might be arrived at accidentally, or by guesswork or inspiration, and then tries to prove or disprove it by searching for facts. If these contradict the hypothesis then the hypothesis is modified until it cannot be dis-proved. The concept of Allah cannot be disproved.

(3) Insight - By the consistency within consciousness of an idea or experience with the whole system of experiences which come from the outer world as well as from within oneself. Some of this is inherent and arises from our genetic make up which has itself developed by a process of adjustment to reality over millions of years. The organism itself is made up of the materials, forces and laws that are responsible for the Universe. This depends on the state of integration of conscious. The word faith refers to this, and not to blind belief. Faith implies confidence, and that is required for every action.

Apart from this

(4) Thought is mostly verbal, as is logic. The thought or description about something is not the same thing as the experience of it, and the experience of something is not the reality of the thing itself. The experience must conform to the reality to be true and the description must conform to the experience. The words are not themselves true but point to something. The description must arouse an experience. It does so among those who have learnt the language within the same environment or experiential situation.

(5) Apart from all this you do not have free thought, though you attribute it to yourself. Free thought simply means undisciplined thought, driven by prejudices, fantasies, guesswork, reveries, rationalisations of things like self-interest, greed, pride, vanity, association of ideas set off by physiological states, illness, discomfort outside or within one's body e.g. indigestion, smells, sounds, sights, feelings, taste, the effects of crowds, the weather, its humidity, temperature and pressure, chemicals and pollen in the air; emotional states, the kind of pre-suppositions one has. We are mostly unconscious of these stimuli.

(6) The individual psychologically is a product of (i) inherent factors (ii) culturally acquired factors (iii) the kind of efforts a person makes. This last is usually ignored by Psychologists, but is of greatest importance for religion. It is by his efforts that a person can modify both the other factors. He does this by channeling inherent tendencies and by interpreting and organizing acquired data. The inherent genetic factors also depend on the selectivity of the society - the way mates are chosen and the number of children people of various characteristics have. One acquires all kinds of ideas and values from the culture of the society one lives in. These values not only channel psychological energy, but also affect selection of mates and reproduction. It is through conscious efforts that man frees himself from mechanical processes and takes control of his own fate.

(7) The world provides a great amount of influences, most of which affects us unconsciously. Nor do we live by facts alone. We interpret facts. We do so using value systems and frameworks of reference and conceptual systems. We acquire these from sub-cultures. From that of which we can be conscious we select only a little according to interest. We are not passive but active with respect to the world. We search, select, interpret, organize data according to (a) our conceptual systems (b) motives, values and goals (c) activities within an environment. These activities cause reactions from the environment and this becomes data. The aim of science is to understand and control the physical environment usually for commercial profit or political power. The purpose of religion is to improve man so that he can lead a better life in adjustment to reality. The consensus of opinion in Science depends upon the fact that the scientists have been trained in the same way, work in the same environment, in the laboratory or field, with the same instruments and interpret the experiences so gained within the same framework of reference and conceptual system. The same applies to businessmen, artists, craftsmen and politicians in their own fields. It applies also to religion.

(8) The data a person has is always limited and it changes during life. In so far as the conclusions a person comes to depend on these, it would be utterly foolish for him to rely on this. Not only may others have greater knowledge, but the Society as a whole certainly has, and the Information in the Universe is still greater and may be increasing.

(9) We have to live, and we do this by adjusting to reality. But you want to prove something intellectually and verbally. But these are only means to life and you want to make them ends. In fact whether you prove or disprove something makes not a jot of difference to life.

The Islamic conceptual system is a Unitary one concerned with the process of living and all its aspects. From the Islamic point of view the Universe has a purpose and so do all things in it. Things could not have arisen or existed otherwise. Nor could knowledge exist except for the fact that human beings seek it and were meant to seek it. Facts, meanings and values are inter-dependent. Things, including human beings, are not passive but active. It is their activity that produces facts.

According to the Quran:-

No one can believe unless Allah wills and the Quran is a revelation into the hearts of believers, and only those purified by the religious discipline can really understand the Quran. There is thus no point in arguing with disbelievers - the only thing worth doing is to tell those who are receptive about Islam.

The Quran is also a reminder of creation (81:27-29, 68:52). Both the external Universe and ourselves are a sign of the Truth of Islam - all things submit to the Laws of Allah.

There is a connection between awareness of Allah and awareness of our own souls because Allah breathed His Spirit into man (32:9). It is this that produced his soul and gave him awareness. It made him into a vicegerent (2:30)

The knowledge of Allah is built-in into our souls. That is why religion is a Universal Phenomenon. But this knowledge is lost owing to suppression caused by greed, pride, vanity and other addictions - i.e. idolatry. By denying God people deny their own souls. Conversely, those who are not aware of their own souls (their spiritual nature, the center of their consciousness, conscience and will) and do not care about it also deny God. In fact, there are no atheists. Everyone worships or subordinates himself to something because we are all a tiny dependent bit of the totality.

It is also a fundamental thesis of Islam that man, though he was made perfect, fell from this perfection. Though he had a fully integrated consciousness, this has become mostly dormant and disintegrated. This is why he has lost the awareness of God. Instead he has formed attachments to things less than God, and become a worshipper of Idols - he sub-ordinates himself and serves them. These may be objects, principles, institutions, nations, races, people such as leaders, heroes and prophets, things like logic, science, technology, or a person may worship his own ego, lusts, opinions, prejudices etc. It is, therefore, merely a question of whether a person worships a false god or the true God. There are no atheists in fact. The verbal affirmation or denial of something is not the same thing as how people actually behave.

In view of all this the writer's logical arguments are exceedingly naive. There are also logical fallacies in them. For instance, he argues: -

(1) If Allah exists, He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good.

(2) The existence of suffering is incompatible with the existence of God.

(3) Suffering exists.

(4) Therefore, Allah does not exist.

The rest of the objections can be dismissed in the same way. In order to understand something one needs a positive approach. If the same negative approach was taken to say Physics or Biology, then nothing of these subjects would be understood either.