Debate with Malik Usman Part I

islami@consultant.com

 Hi,

 Mr Ali, 

after reading the article, [What Religion to Follow]I have got more confused then ever before. First I took you as my solution, but now I am so confused that I don't know what to even say.... Ali, at the end of the article you said, that their is nothing in religion and you will feel "God" when you work for humanity. Right?? Now first of all why do you say about feeling God when you previously said you don't believe on one? Also everything we know today about "God" has all transfered through some religion, without them (I consider a religion as Philosophy, and which can be sometime just built on illusions) we don't even have a clue about the God, God's presence, creation etc....

I hope you understand what I mean, this is just too much confusing to even write...

               Malik Usman

 Dear Usman. 

Thank you for reading the article. Now I will answer your questions without referring you to another article because your questions are new. :-) 

You wrote, “First I took you as my solution, but now I am so confused that I don't know what to even say....” 

The whole purpose of my writing is to make people think on their own and do not follow another person as their solutions, guru, imam, prophet or marja’e taqleed. If someone after going through all my writings decides that I am intelligent and sharp to the extent that he can trust whatever I write, follow me or look unto me as his solution, then I have failed.  

The whole idea behind this exercise is to stimulate people to become freethinkers. Freethinkers are independent thinkers. Freethinkers listen to the words said but not to the person who says it. If a person according to you is right in almost everything; that does not mean that he is right in ALL things. My message is: Do not follow another person, become a skeptic and accept only what makes sense to YOU. Re-analyze everything that you were taught as a child and believed to be true. You believed those things because you trusted the medium. That medium that could have been your own loving parent could have been honestly wrong. People do not teach their kids, falsehood deliberately. They educate them to the best of their ability, yet since they themselves are misinformed, they pass that misinformation to their children and perpetuate the cycle of ignorance. Thus we have the children of the Jews becoming Jews, the children of the Christians becoming Christians and the children of the Muslims turning Muslims, and so on so forth.  

My hope is that after reading my writings people start to doubt everything and find their own lights. Please read the words of Krishnamurti 'Truth is a pathless land' once more.

Now as for your question about God:

Actually I did not say I do not believe in any God. In the same article that you read I wrote: 

“I do not discard the Divine reality. Just like Galileo who did not reject the Earth but people’s understanding of it, I do not reject God but people’s understanding of it”.

This subject is covered in detail in the Origin Of God. 

Usman:
In first Para, you mentioned that we should not follow any human being, and we must choose our own way. Don’t you think that these humans who claims to be prophets and so on, have spent their whole life in search of the truth. Don’t you think it is good if we choose one among them and follow his words and then build our life on this foundation! For example determining and studying religion is a full time job, people spend their whole life solely in this. Now if Humans have to study it only, then who will advance in other fields; like of science and so on.

Sina:
I do not think those who claim to be Prophet actually are. It is our responsibility to find the truth on our own and never rely on another person for that. Even if you want to follow someone blindly, trusting his or her decisions, you have to make sure that this person is a true guide and not a charlatan. People fail to do that. They simply rely on the guru of their parents. Naturally since truth cannot be more than one, from among thousands of ways, philosophies and religions at most only one can be true and the rest are wrong. How do you know which one is the true one? You have to investigate all of them, for which you need few thousands of years. 

What I propose is a shift of paradigm. Man should not look unto another human being for guidance, but be inquisitive, question, reason. In other words doubt and gradually find the truth. 

Logically it does not make sense that god send a messenger in a corner of the world without the rest of the world having the chance to learn about it immediately. If we are all children of God we all should have equal chance for salvation. 

Also it make no sense that god make his message so confusing and illogical. All these so-called holy books are replete with scientific incongruencies, errors and absurdities. A host of apologists are trying desperately to reinterpret the so-called “difficulties” in their holy books. Shouldn’t the message of God be simple and clear to understand? If there are so many sects in the same religion, doesn’t it prove that the holy book of that religion is not clear for everyone to understand the same truth as God intended? Go to the section dedicated to Quran in my site and read any one of the articles, especially the Contradictions in Quran. See how this book is obtuse and contradictory. Could it be that the maker of this universe be so ignorant as it appears to be in Quran? (Bible is not better).

Usman: 
In third you said that your mission is to cause doubt, don’t you think that this isn’t polite? It means that you only cause confusion. I strongly believed that you talk about and believe in unity and peace while confusion is what is against it. I hope that you will be able to explain your theory of doubt.

Sina:
Teaching people to doubt is not impolite. Teaching them to have faith is impolite. We come from a religious culture that has all its values upside down. 

What is faith? Faith is belief in something without evidence. Once you have the evidence it is no more belief but knowledge. For example, there are people who believe in the Bigfoot. The Bigfoot is said to be a human-like animal living in North America. There is not enough evidence of the existence of such creature, yet some believe that it exists. If this belief is strong it becomes faith. 

But what will happen if we actually find such creature? Do you say that you “believe” that Bigfoot exists? No, at that time you “know” that it exists. Knowledge is based on facts. Belief is based on suppositions and lack of facts. Primitive people invented fables and gods and believed in them. They built religions around them. Even today some people believe that snakes are gods, some believe in cows, some believe that rats are the spirits of their ancestors, others believe that a black meteorite is fallen from heaven and therefore must be worshipped. Muslims believe that Muhammad split the moon, they believe that he performed Vudoo as soon as he was born and started to praise Allah. Jews believe that Moses parted the Red Sea and Christians believe that Jesus rouse from the dead and ascended to heaven. All of these religious people believe that Noah collected all the living animals in his ark while the whole earth was flooded for 40 days. They don’t doubt the absurdity of these beliefs. How could the polar bear go to Canaan? Who informed the Australian Kangaroos to head to Middle East? How these animals got there? All these stories are absurd. There is no evidence for any of them, yet people believe in them, because belief does not require evidence. 

You mentioned Mi’arj. Is this scientific? If God is supposed to be omnipresent, why Muhammad had to go somewhere else to meet him? Is Jerusalem the gateway to Heaven? If Muhammad traveled on a winged steed in one night to get to heaven then the heaven must be a physical place close to Earth. You cannot travel out side the Earth’s atmosphere with wings. Wings will only take you were there is air. With so many mapping, air travels satellite photos why we haven’t find this heaven? If heaven is not a physical place why Muhammad needed the winged steed? If Allah was behind the curtain then god cannot be omnipresent. An omnipresent god cannot be behind, in front, under or over anything. He is everywhere. This whole story is so naïf that it is mind boggling anyone still believe in it. But faith blinds. If someone said a similar story about someone else, no Muslim would believe it, but since it is about Muhammad, all lies are truth. The bigger the lie, the better it is.    

The charlatans calling themselves prophets wanted to keep people ignorant. They did not have our interest in their heart. They were a bunch of liars and impostors. They kept telling you it is not up to you to test God, but God must test you. They praised people for believing without questioning. The stronger was this belief, the better it was. Of course it was better for them, because people did not dare to question them and expose their lies. Now that we are mature, we have to ask these questions. We have to become skeptic and doubt whatever we were told and accepted as true. This does not mean to reject everything. It means we should ask for facts and stop believing things for which we have no evidence. It’s time to “know” not to “believe”. Doubt is the path to knowledge. If you don’t doubt you don’t ask and if you don’t ask you’ll not learn. The world owes to men and women who doubted. We owe to Galileo to Copernicus to Newton, to Darwin, to Einstein and to all those who doubted what they were told and found the facts. Now we no more BELIEVE that the Earth is flat but we KNOW that it is round. 

[This subject is explained in more detail under the section FREETHINKING]

 Usman:
Also if your mission is to pull people out of the religion then you must not leave then in some pathless way, you must guide them to some place, some religion, some destiny and some understand able God, to some laws to be followed and to some code of conducts to be followed for life. And your laws must also explain ones destiny not until death but onwards.

Sina:
Truth is pathless. If I present myself as the path, then I am an impostor. It is not up to me to be the spiritual guide for others and it would be a mistake if anyone take me as such, follow me blindly and imitate me. We humans are all created equal. We are all endowed with reason. We can put our heads together and find the truth helping each other, but it would be a mistake to take someone as our guru and follow him. No man is infallible. Those who are honest acknowledge their limitations and those who do not, who claim to be from a deity that no one except them can see and hear, are impostors and charlatans. The substitute to religion is not yet another religion. That would be replacing ignorance with another ignorance. As long as people expect another person to guide them, there will be swindlers who will come forth pretending to be the guide and take them for a ride. 

Humans do not need another human for guidance. We have to be our own guides. We have to follow the Golden Rule. There lies our source of guidance. “Do not do to others what you do not expect others do to you”. This is the eternal truth. From this source we can get all the guidance we need.  

Usman:
Then you believe that these God, Allah and Yahweh are out dated, what about the researches that goes on (scientific), which proves the religious transcripts to be true. As I was a Muslim and so is my family I studied number of books that proved each and every Ayah of Quran to be scientifically right. For an example see below: 

Prove of Gravitation:

O company of jinn and men, if ye have power to penetrate (all) regions of the heavens and the earth; then penetrate (them)! Ye will never penetrate them save with (Our) sanction. (Q. 53: 33)

Sina:
There is no real research showing that god of the Quran and Bible is scientific. What you refer to is pseudo-science. It is ignorance and misinformation imparted in scientific language. Please go to the section dedicated to Quran in my site and read the articles that speak about Quran and science. I am not going to repeat this subject because it is explained exhaustively. However if after reading those articles you still disagree and want to refute me, I will be glad to address your specific points. I may be able to answer or I may accept your views. 

Just to make a quick note: Is jinn mentioned in the above verse scientific? If everything else in Quran was right just this belief in jinn cast doubt on the “divine origin” of this book.  What would you think of a scientist who talks to you of Santa Clause as if he was a real person? Now apart from that, why in the world you think this absurd and obtuse verse is the proof of the Gravitation? Religious people see what they want to see. This is faith.  

As for your criticism of Jonathan Baron’s definition of Rational Thinking, I am not familiar with his works and cannot comment.

 Usman:
 Do you believe in a God or multiple gods?

Sina:
I do not believe in any God as a being. I believe in the Single Principle underlying the creation. This Single Principle is not the same god of the theists. It is a non-being. Please read my article Life Beyond and the Single Principle in the section dedicated to the discussion of God.

 Usman:
Now towards proving my point. If you don’t believe on a religion, then you should not even believe on the existence of God. Because I don’t think that going through the intellectual maturity man came to know God, once in for while. According to me, he must have questioned someone, and someone might have said, God.

Sina:
The notion of God has been evolved from old myths. This has been a gradual process. It is an invention of human imagination and there is no evidence to its existence. It’s just like the belief in Santa Clause. Some one must have started this fairy tale and it grew. Allah is the same as Al Il ah Il or El was the supreme deity of the pantheon of the Sumerians. En in Sumerian language is the definitive article like Al in Arabic and The in English. So Enlil (En Lil = En Il) in Sumerian is Allah (Al Il ah) in Arabic. The H at the end is Arabization.  Allah was not introduced by Muhammad. It existed as the supreme god between 360 gods in Mecca. The wife of Enlil was Enlat. When it went to Arabia it became Al Lat or simply Lat. Later people said Lat was Allah’s daughter and Muhammad denied that he had any daughters.  People did not record their legends, so by going from mouth to mouth it kept changing. The same happened among the Jews. Yahweh who was originally the son of El or Elyon ended up merging with his father. 

These gods are myths. Gradually people became more sophisticated and could not accept several gods so they synthesized them together. There is as much evidence for the existence of God as there is for the existence of Santa. If you want to be a believer, it is up to you. Belief, as I said, is acceptance of something without evidence. You can accept anything without evidence and that is your choice. My job is to teach people how to be skeptic, how to question, how to doubt and how to not accept anything without evidence. This is my definition of Rational Thinking. If you still think faith is superior to doubt, then continue believing. Just remember that we owe our civilization to men who doubted not to those who believed. 

Who do you think is superior, ArRazi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd who doubted and were called heretics or Ghazali, Bukhari and Muslim (not to mention Khomeini and Mullah Umar of Afghanistan)? The latter may be important for Muslims. But as Islam’s glory fades, so these men of faith will be forgotten. Razi, Sina and Ibn Rushd will be remembered forever for their great contribution to the world. These people did not believe in Islam but they put their trust in science and facts. They doubted the validity of the garbage that was given to them and therefore became the giants that they became. Under the section Freethinking, I have an article called Freethinkers of Islam. You may like to take a look at it.

Usman:
As for Yahweh, the Lord, He is believed to be very loving to His creatures, how could He kill them all, when He loves them?

Sina:
I think you should read the Bible. I am sure you will not be saying this if you read that book. If you don’t have time, just read Joshua. This is a small chapter. No one who has read Bible would say such thing. 

Usman:
You think that people use religion. Of course they do, but not everyone.

Sina:
Good and bad people exist everywhere. My fight is against bigotry and fanaticism. Religion is the source of bigotry and fanaticism. People who are inclined to do evil, find justification for their acts in the cruel teachings of their religion and the good people cannot stop them because they can produce verses from their holy books and silence any opposition. That is why fundamentalism always wins. Quran is full of mandates to kill the unbelievers and hate them. (See the collection of the Quranic verses called Quran Teaches). That is why the countries that call themselves Islamic and want to implement Islam are barbaric. These countries kill people left and right not because they are not following the teachings of Islam; they do so because they are following those teachings. Also my site is not “revolutionary”. If by revolution you mean instigating rebellion and uprising, that is not what I intend to do. I do not advocate violence. The whole rational behind my writings is because I want to make this world a peaceful world where all members of humankind can live together in peace, without one thinking of others as najis, kafir, inferior or try to subdue them and impose on them Jazyeh (Islamic penalty tax imposed on non-Muslims).

Usman:
Do you think that man has reached a mature enough state to understand the origin, existence and everything about Allah/God/Lord/etc?

Sina:
There are some questions for which we may never find an answer. But I am a positive thinker and say: “never say never”!  With the expansion of human understanding and the discovery of science, I believe that one day we may be able to answer many questions such as the ones you posed. [I believe so, because of that I have no evidence. It’s just a belief] 

But one thing we “Know” [we know because we can prove it] is that the explanation given to us by a bunch of charlatans posing as messenger of God is absolutely false. If you read my article Where is God and other articles under the same heading, you will know that such god as portrayed in the Quran and the Bible is a logical impossibility.  

I define God as the Single Principle. This is only a theory, a hypothesis. I am not here to deceive people like the unscrupulous quacks who pretend to be the messengers of God demanding total obedience, and absolute faith in their concoction of mumbo jumbo and threaten you with the fire of hell and the wrath of an imaginary god if you dare to question their absurd claims. I want you to think, doubt, and come up with your own understanding. Your understanding and my understanding will not be 100% true. But at least they are based on some facts that we know and the more facts we learn the more we understand. Our beliefs will evolve. We can exchange ideas and help each other to understand more. Eventually the humanity will get closer and closer to the truth. This is much better than having faith in a falsehood, fighting over it and trying to impose it on others by sword and by blind faith.

Usman:
Why don’t you study Allah, according to Quran and tell me about that in more detail.

Sina:
I was born a Muslim and that was the first thing I studied. This deity is absurd. If you want to know why I reject Allah you have to read my article in the section called God. Especially the one called The Purpose of Creation. If still you have questions or objections, I will be more that happy to address them or accept your views if they are convincing.

Usman:
Can you give me more information on the books “Katib al Waqidi” and “Tabari”?Well if this is true about Muhammad, then why don’t you see this conversation in this way that one day the dispute of LAT, OZZA, and MANAT will be over, and it is clear now? We see no follower of LAT, OZZA or MANAT today.

Sina:
You can order the books of Katib al Waqidi and Tabari from an Islamic bookstore.

The issue of the three daughters of Allah is over now and so the question of Allah himself will be over when people start to think rationally and abandon blind faith.   

Usman:
And as you claimed that Muhammad was misogynist, then please I admire him on this thing that he provided more freedom to women then any other religion. 

Sina:
One thing religious people love to do is to fool themselves. Muslims believe that Islam improved the status of women. This is a total lie. I have written an article disproving this lie. It is called Did Islam Improve the Status of Women? You can find it under the section dedicated to Women. 

The next fallacy is that Muslims compare the status of Muslim women of today with the status of non-Muslims of 2 or 3 thousand years ago. Even if Bible is unkind to women, no Jew or Christian follows those books when it comes to the treatment of women. Women’s rights are protected by the secular laws and not by religious laws. In Islamic countries, women are abused because Muslims cannot get rid of Shariah. 

Kind regard 

Ali Sina