Existence of God
Discussion Review: William Lane Craig and CosmicSkeptic on the Kalaam Cosmological Argument
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
I recently reviewed this great discussion between WLC and CosmicSkeptic. Below, I have posted the original video, my review, and then the notes I used when making the video.
The Logic You Need to Understand a Deductive Proof of God’s Existence – Definitions (Proof for the Existence of God Part 4)
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
With God’s help, I have been in the process of writing a proof for the existence of God – one that hopes to be very thorough, inshaAllah. It addresses every single objection that I personally have thought of or encountered. However, in the process of this laborious undertaking, I realized that in order for a general audience to follow some parts of the argument, it required an occasional foray into logic. This is not to say the logic is overly complicated, but it does help to work through the reasoning explicitly. Unfortunately, this resulted in a lengthy and somewhat messy article, whereas my original intent was to make the proof as clear and concise as possible without compromising on content. I have therefore decided, with God’s grace, to first go over some basic “not completely obvious” logic that will be used in the proof, and that I can refer readers back to in the course of the argument. I will not be explaining things like the principle of non-contradiction, which everyone is familiar with, but I will instead be explaining what a proof by cases is and other such matters. Here, we begin with the idea of definitions.
Sense Perception Alone Cannot Lead You to God (Or Virtually Any Other Knowledge) – Existence of God Part 2
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
As we stated earlier, before we can answer the question “how can I know that God exists?” we must first ask the question “how do I know anything at all.” There are multiple ways that the intellect comes to know, and these modalities (or ways) of knowing are arranged hierarchically. I will go from the lowest form of knowledge to the highest – though this may seem unintuitive to the modern mind, which has been conditioned to see certainty as ordered in precisely the opposite direction. I will sort out these modern confusions as we proceed upon each level, inshaAllah.
The lowest form of knowing, and the least certain is that of sense perception. “Huh? But I thought you had to see it to believe it?” you may ask.
Ah, but you see sense perception deceives us all the time. We readily admit that. Sometimes we see things that aren’t really there, and sometimes what we see does not reflect reality. For instance, we perceive the earth as being flat, the sun as setting upon the horizon, the stars as being small, and if I were to put my finger in a glass of water it would appear to break due to the refraction of light.
Take a look at this clip around 12:30 where Dawkins himself says that if he were to see a direct sign of God – the heavens opening up and seeing the angels – he would still disbelieve in God. Instead, he would find it more probable that he were hallucinating, that David Blaine or some magician were playing a trick on him, or that aliens with some advanced technology could manipulate reality to make him think he were seeing what he were seeing.
You can hear his own words here:
Nor is Dawkins alone in this sentiment. Here is a thread where hordes of atheists claim that they would find some other explanation even if they witnessed a grand miracle before their eyes.
Some examples:
The Quran portrays such ardent disbelief:
وَلَوْ فَتَحْنَا عَلَيْهِم بَابًا مِّنَ السَّمَاءِ فَظَلُّوا فِيهِ يَعْرُجُونَ لَقَالُوا إِنَّمَا سُكِّرَتْ أَبْصَارُنَا بَلْ نَحْنُ قَوْمٌ مَّسْحُورُونَ – 15:14-15