Studying Atheism
“appears that it has very solid philosophical, scientific basis” If you dig a bit deeper, I’m certain that you will find otherwise. Atheism (conclusive denial of God) actually has no basis whatsoever, except conjecture. Scientific atheism finds its roots in an age old philosophy of materialism, according to which this universe and everything that it contains is made out material substance and that no other immaterial substance can exist. It begs the question that what evidence can anyone ever have for this claim and how can science even begin to investigate it? These days materialists generally call themselves physicalists because the claim that nothing except matter can exist has been pretty satisfactorily refuted. Still, physicalists hold that everything in this universe is physical in nature. They go as far as denying consciousness and free will because it leads to substance duality. In contrast to materialism / physicalism the opposing ideology of idealism holds that matter is just an illusion, and that the real substance of this universe is consciousness. Once again, the problem is that this is a claim that can never be conclusively verified or falsified. There are many philosophical theories out there with varying degrees of differences, including substance dualism, property dualism, epiphenomenalism, etc. Generally speaking, it’s hard to find a scientist or a philosopher who completely agrees with another one. As far as I’m concerned, the reason for this is that as humans we have an unlimited power of imagination and therefore if the basis of an argument (bina-e-istadlal) is forsaken, then any ideology can be made to look logical and coherent. If I was starting out, I would start with the “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism i.e. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett. I would also investigate the counter arguments provided by theists such as Lennox, Collins, and Meyer. Also I would make sure that I have somewhat of a decent understanding of the history of philosophy, because I believe that proper context is necessary to be able to appreciate any knowledge. However, most importantly, I would spend time in understanding Quran’s ideology and arguments in this regard which I believe that Ghamidi sahab has done a wonderful job of explaining. A key thing that I have learned from him is that we must appreciate human constraints of knowledge when investigating or responding to any existential or metaphysical questions. One last suggestion is that once you start investigating this subject, depending on your level of interest and appetite, you might find yourself in a rabbit hole because there are more ideologies out there than one can possibly consume in one lifetime. I would stick to surface level study of representative ideologies and dig deeper only in the ones that look promising.
I took a course in Farahi Theory of Knowledge with Al-Mawrid a few years back, which unfortunately is not being taught any longer. I came across this paper which is extremely condensed and I don’t think that it does justice to the subject. Ghamidi sahab’s viewpoint, which is along the lines of Farahi can be inferred from his incomplete series Zaviya-e-Ghamidi on YouTube, as well as his book and lectures of Meezan. I think the confusion regarding innate nature is due to not understanding what’s really being referred to. To understand this, please refer to the following videos of Ghamidi sahab. Discussion 30094
Metaphysics, mysticism, telepathy, hypnotism, astronomy, palmistry, magic, etc ideas, dreams etc. science is a study of natural laws – it can’t prove or disprove existence of the maker of of universal laws just like windows operating system cannot prove or disprove existence of Bill Gates. However, logic can infer existence of a maker of the universe – a maker who is not created as He is outside the causal chain. Observation is a scientific way of validating truth but relying on observation without a sanity check may be misleading.