Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Reasoning the non-existence of God - a challenge to iERA

Here's our favourite philosopher-guru cum logic-chopper, Abdur Raheem Green of the iERA, telling us to use our common sense and logic (stop sniggering at the back there!) to reach the unavoidable conclusion that God exists.


 For Muslims, he says, faith is not mysterious, but rational and based upon evidence. He continues, appealing to our rationality and logic:
"Our universal human experience tells us that where we see order, something working according to patterns, then something or someone has ordered it."

I have a question (in fact I have many, but let's stick to the ones which leap up and shout, "Hey - ask the patronising idiot this one!")
Who ordered the pattern below, Abdur? According to your "common sense", the regular patterns we see here are either a mirage (they don't really exist) or the product of a conscious "creator wind".



Or how about this? Did a conscious "creator volcano" produce the basalt outcrops that form the famous Giants' Causeway in County Antrim on the North East coast of Northern Ireland? Or perhaps you believe the legend that tells of an Irish warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn MacCool), who built the causeway? Because according to your rational islam, when we see patterns "we know someone ordered it."
I can understand how uneducated, superstitious men might have wondered about such things and made up stories to explain the seemingly inexplicable. But how can someone with the benefit of a modern education still labour under such misapprehensions? How can the clowns at iERA receive the benefits of charitable status when their "education" is of such a level?

And it's not just static patterns that defy Abdur's and the miracle seekers' faulty reasoning. Here's an example from a famous set of  experiments called "The Game of Life" used by scientists to show how complex patterns can emerge from the unlikeliest of sources: in this case a basic set of rules along the lines of if an adjacent cell is empty move, if three cells surrounding an empty cell are "live", that cell comes to life etc etc. Press play to see how a totally unpredictable but regular and ordered pattern emerges.


6 comments:

  1. Please read the Qur'an my friend. It's full of wondrous wisdom. Let Allah guide you to the right path

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  2. The irony I see is that those who have actually studied philosophy, even on an undergraduate level, would realize that there are rarely any definitive cut-throat arguments for just about anything at all!

    I mean, here is what the 'father of modern philosophy', Renee Descartes, had to say about philosophy,;

    "Of philosophy I will say nothing, except that when I saw that it had been cultivated for many ages by the most distinguished men, and that yet there is not a single matter within its sphere which is not still in dispute, and nothing, therefore, which is above doubt..." (Discourse on the Method)

    Usually, the trend in philosophy is that a person comes up with an argument and even if it is the most sensible argument ever made, there will be at least one weirdo somewhere on the planet who manages to find a flaw or propose a counter-argument!

    Just for example, one of the professor's in my college's dept. of Philosophy is Peter Klein and apparently he is pretty the only one in the world (there is probably few others) who is defending the idea of 'INFINITISM" i.e. an infinite regress can exist.

    Yet, here comes these pseudo-philosophers, whether it be Billy Craig or the copy-cats like Hammy Tortise or Adumb Ding or 'another white convert pretending to be an intellectual' etc etc; and they think that these arguments that have been contended for centuries can now be passed of some "rational, logical magic bean"!

    Of course, the job of these self proclaimed "philosophers" is NOT to encourage their audience to think BUT to stop them from thinking more than they are told to!

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  3. I'm not a Christian but if I were I'd be pretty insulted by their "advanced dawah" course on "How to deal with Christians".
    Yet more infantile witterings dressed up as theology.

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  4. Come on Spinoza - you're picking easy targets with these Roasts of yours: even Muslims cringe at this lot and roll their eyes when they speak.
    How about taking down a bigger opponent like Edip Yuksel or something?

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    1. I take your point, Jasmine but these guys are hugely influential - especially in universities where they seem to be the go-to group for any generic Islamic opinion/debate.
      Their dawah initiatives may seem laughable and trite to sophisticated souls like yourself but they are depressingly effective among gullible young westerners. Their message needs to be countered.
      I shall certainly look at Edip Yuksel though.

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