I came across this book on amazon and saw it was very popular. Let's see how intellectual these athiests are. I haven't read the book only what's shown in the amazon book preview. I havent seen anyone refute these from an Islamic perspective so I thought I'll give it a go, me a layman muslim.
Chapter 1: “Science can't explain the complexity and order of life; God must have designed it to be this way.”
God of the gaps fallacy is what he is hinting at and is a common objection to the teleological argument as put forward by William Paley. I think a better argument to use for god's existence is the fine tuning argument that there exists physical laws and properties that allow for life to exist and study these laws.
Amazon preview also shows some parts of Chapter 1:
Complexity Is Not the Marker of Design and If Complexity Requires a Creator, Who Created God?
The first point is another common criticism of Paley's argument from design. The second point however is a misunderstanding of athiests on the definition of god. Allah is uncreated because this is the essence of a necessary being. Otherwise infinite regress occurs and is a logical absurdity.
He finishes of by saying:
The complexity of the universe is something that scientists continue to explore, and we may never have all the answers. But there's nothing wrong with that. Not knowing the answer to a question is not a valid excuse for making up a fairytale to explain it.
Science can't answer metaphysical questions. By this logic, trying to do philosophy is making up fairytales. Just another example of scientism by athiests.
Chapter 2: “God's existence is proven by scripture.”
Considering the type of stuff people come up with to try and explain how the Qu'ran came to be, by Occam's razor I will take Allah as the simplest explanation.
Amazon preview shows further:
Additionally, the scriptures themselves are rife with contradictions. Ultimately, they are books that were written by fallible humans, and though there may be some grains of historical truth within them, there is also ample hyperbole, speculation and mythology.
He went out of his way in the introduction to talk about:
One concept you'll see come up repeatedly in this book is the idea of the burden of proof. During any debate, it's the job of a person making a claim to provide support, evidence and reasoning for that claim. It simply doesn't make sense to make an unfounded claim with no evidence to back it and demand that the other person to either agree with you or disprove your unfounded statement.
Seems like Mr Athiest here doesn't even follow his own rules. Another speculative claim with no evidence. Like many many people, he lumps the Qu'ran with "all the other scriptures" when it can be objectively be shown to not be the case. However, this is a lengthy topic that has been discussed elsewhere.
Chapter 3: “Some unexplained events are miraculous, and these miracles prove the existence of God.”
Never heard this argument before from a Muslim. Anyways for someone who believes in naturalism, miracles could occur in front of their eyes and they would find a natural explanation for it. Thus, naturalism doesn't even allow for miracles to exist in its philosophy.
Chapter 4: “Morality stems from God, and without God, we could not be good people.”
Everyone has some sort of moral compass as part of their innate nature (fitrah). So this is a strawman from an Islamic perspective.
Chapter 5: “Belief in God would not be so widespread if God didn’t exist.”
Again, the fitrah in every person allows them to believe in the existence of a god.
However, no one uses: it's popular therefore it must true argument. Seems like this athiest has cleverly picked the crappiest arguments to write his book on.
Chapter 6: “God answers prayers; therefore, he must be real.”
Is this even worth responding to?
Chapter 7: “I feel a personal relationship with God, so I know that he is real.”
Muslims believe in the fitrah but still this argument is something no one would use in academia or a debate.
Chapter 8: “It's safer to believe in God than be wrong and go to Hell.”
Pascal's wager I am assuming. I think this argument never works with athiests anyways and is pretty weak.
Chapter 9: “God isn’t defined. God cannot be comprehended or described. One must simply have faith.”
We know of Allah's names and attributes through what he has revealed in the Quran and through the prophets. The second sentence seems like it has been added intentionally to make thiests look bad.
Chapter 10: “There's no evidence that God doesn'texist.”
It's true, you can't empirically prove god's non-existence.
Chapter 11: “If there is no God, where did everything come from? Without God, there is no explanation.”
The universe expanded by the big bang, without god there is no explanation unless he wrote something new that I haven't heard athiests say before. If he says "we don't know" then that is also making a claim that needs justification.
Chapter 12: “My religion/God has helped me so much. How could it not be real?”
Another poor argument written to make thiests look bad.
Chapter 13: “God is love; God is energy.”
Guess he was running out of ideas.
Chapter 14: “The laws of logic prove the existence of God.”
It is not irrational to think that god exists. Common response would then be "a flying teapot orbits mars" but that is not rationally jsutifiable aka the russel's teapot argument which has been criticized many times. Google is your friend.
Chapter 15: “Believing in God provides meaning and purpose; without it, life would be meaningless.”
Yes athiests usually respond to this and say we can create our own meaning while we are alive. Since they believe in nothing after death, then even this created meaning ceases to be meaningful as everyone will die eventually. This meaning is relative and at the end of the day everything that happens is meaningless. It doesn't even matter whether you exist in the first place or not.
Additionally, combined with the lack of objective morality, people can create meaning doing evil actions and can justify it.
Chapter 16: “So many people died for God/religion. Surely, it must be real.”
Extending book length part 5.
Chapter 17: “Atheism has killed more people than religion, so it must be wrong!”
Athiesm can allow for ideologies that can cause mass killings, it doesn't make it false, but it does show athiesm is not some morally superior belief as some make it out to be
Chapter 18: “You’ll become a believer when you are desperate for God’s help.”
I disagree with this point as well, arrogant people will die in their arrogance.
Chapter 19: “Smart people and renowned scientists like X, Y and Z believe in God, so it must be true.”
Is this supposed to be the opposite of the athiest version of "most succesful scientists today are irreligious"?
Chapter 20: “How can we really know anything?
Was this athiest talking to a philosophy major?
Anyways, I think there is not much substance to this book. It doesn't really show that god doesn't exist and only shows that some thiests make bad arguments just like some athiests. It's the same old dawkins, hume, bertrand russel stuff just rehashed with worse rhetoric.
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