Discussing Atheists Part 1

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Umrah
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2020 5:46 pm

For the Telethon event I got some time to contemplate over the words that Ahmed Al-Hassan directed to the Atheists and I wanted to share my notes and research on the topic with you here. I will post it in parts because it is very long. This is part one that deals with the "God Instinct".

Who are Atheists?
The first question we need to ask is: Why are people atheist?
Are atheists just people who want to follow falsehood? What are the reasons for people being atheist?
In fact most atheist are atheists, because they are truth seekers and have not been convinced by the incomplete and at times contradictory teachings that the scholars of religion present today.
Therefore we find many atheists more educated about religion than many so called believers and in the end atheists are more honest then those religious people who only believe because of cuture or habit or because their forefathers did so.

The God Instinct
Many a believer has tried to argue against atheists and has miserably failed.
They tried many different approaches but Ahmed Al-Hassan revealed that the strongest argument against an atheist is the following:

He referred every human being back inside themselves and said that the strongest proof that God exists is the feeling that everybody has inside of them, be it an atheist or a believer. The instinct that pushes people to worship something and to search for god.
Each and every human being has the innate instinct to search for some kind of supernatural being, something that created him... Muslims, Christians, aborigines and even the atheists themselves have had this feeling at some point in their lives even if they deny it now.
So who put this instinct there if not the creator?

In fact all of those who deny the existence of a God today, at one point in their life have searched for Him. There is nobody who has not had the need to worship something and has wondered if there is a hidden force that is ruling and controlling the world.
There are dozens of videos of the fiercest atheists, all of them admitting that they started their journey with the question: Is there a god?
That is why the very word "atheist" means "to deny the existence of a god". Someone is an A-THEIST because he has not found what he was looking for.

In his memoirs "An appetite for wonder" the famous atheist Dawkins describes, how as a child he used to believe in God, yet starting from the age of 9 he started to question his believe.
" I was a strong believer in a non-denominational creator god.”, he says.

The Science of Believe

But the evidence for this inner longing for a creator is not just anecdotal but is backed up by science as well.
Independent studies conducted with children from different backgrounds and 20 different countries confirm that believing and worshipping god is the NATURAL predisposition for humans, not the other way around.
In 2011 Oxford University announced that according to a major three-year international study, Humans are naturally predisposed to believe in gods and life after death.
Led by two academics at Oxford University, the £1.9 million study found that human thought processes were “rooted” to religious concepts.
The Telegraph reported that children below the age of five found it easier to believe in superhuman powers then to believe in human limitations.

Justin Barrett was the conducting scientist:
In his work, he finds that children as young as age 3 naturally attribute supernatural abilities and immortality to “God,” even if they’ve never been taught about God. This part is crucial, as Barret experimented with children from various backgrounds such as Mayan children living in Mexiko.
For anyone who is interested you can watch Barret talk about it here


So here again the question: is it not possible that this instinct was placed there inside of us, so we can find our creator?
And if it was not placed there by a creator, then how did it get there? Why is the human like that?
If god was a complete fantasy, why are human beings born with the instinct to believe in him?


But it does not end here.
Experimental evidence, including cross-cultural studies, suggests that three-year-olds attribute super, god-like qualities to lots of different beings. Super-power, super-knowledge and super-perception seem to be default assumptions.
Children are by their nature supernatural being, and it is us who train them otherwise.
Many children have invisible friends, although noone ever thought them to.
But it is then parents and the incitement that trains them to stop believing in these things and so studies have shown that the older children get and the further socialization proceeds, the less children believe in the supernatural.
And yet it was jesus who said that to enter the kingdom of heaven we must be like children.

Psychologist Jesse Bering and others have found evidence that children natually perceive themselves as inmaterial (spiritual) beings. They also perceive other people this way. For instance, they think dead beings maintain psychological states, but not biological states, and do not react with shock when it appears that someone has gone through a physical object.

The British Journal of Developmental Psychology reported an interesting study, in which children aged from 4 to 12 attending either a Catholic school or a public, secular school in an eastern Spanish city observed a puppet show in which a mouse was eaten by an alligator. After that, the children were then asked questions about the dead mouse’s biological and psychological functioning.
"Is the mouse still hungry? Does the mouse want to sleep? Does the mouse still live his mama?"
The findings again confirmed that children naturally believed that the mouse continued to exist after it had died.

The study quotes: "Athough kindergartners reason that biological imperatives (e.g. the need to eat food) cease at death, they continue to reason that the psychological states attending these biological imperatives persist after death (e.g. dead agents retain the capacity for hunger)" but the mouse still loves it's mother.

Another important term I came across in this regard is the term "teleological thinking".
Studies have shown that children tend to think teleological, meaning they always assume that everything happens for a reason and that things exists because of the purpose to serve.
Teleological explanations are based on the assumption that an object or behavior exists for a purpose.
This is why one of the first and most asked question of a child is "why?" Ask a three-year old why it rains, for example, and you are likely to hear something like "so that plants have water to grow." Likewise, lions exist "for going to the zoo," and mountains "are for climbing." This tendency of children to infer design suggests an explanatory default: In the absence of competing knowledge, the best explanation for an object with a plausible function is that it was designed to fulfill that function.

This is opposed to the atheist nothing that things do not exists for a purpose and everything is just conincidence.

So we ask any atheist: if these is no purpose to this life nor to anything,why is this question innate in us? How is it deeply rooted in each human being?
Why is this instinct still in us after thousands of years of supposed evolution?
Could it not be that the creator put it there to remind us to question why we are here?



Professor Pascal Boyer, an anthropologist at Washington University and author of Religion Explained, said that atheism was probably the unnatural way to be.
“Religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems,” he concludes.
In the following video he explains how his studies have shown that our brain is wired to accept religious ideas.


This wiring for the unseen leads to many self proclaimed atheists holding beliefs that do not seem so atheist at all.
Several studies have shown that many so called atheists believe in reincarnation, astrology or some kind of spiritual force.

So even if an atheists says, No, i dont believe in God, because institutionalized religion is strange or corrupt,
They still have the tendency to believe in the supernatural.
That is why in nations like Iceland for example, which is one of the Top 10 atheist nation in the world, you will find that according to a 2007 study by the University of Iceland, an estimated 62% of the nation believe that the existence of elves is more than a fairy tale.
Yes most people in Iceland's are atheists but believe that elves are real.

China also is one of the most atheistic nations in the world yet you find ancestor worship widely spread. The Chinese believe that if you honor your ancestors they answer you and help you in return. Another clear believe in the unseen and life after death.

I will end this part of the research with a quote of Karl Jung who also recognised the existence of this innate human instinct.

He writes:
"Has mankind ever really got away from myths? Everyone who has his eyes and wits about him can see that the world is dead, cold, and unending. Never yet has he beheld a God, or been compelled to require the existence of such a God from the evidence of his senses. On the contrary, it needed the strongest inner compulsion, which can only be explained by the irrational force of instinct, for man to invent those religious beliefs ... In the same way one can withhold the material content of primitive myths from a child but not take from him the need for mythology, and still less his ability to manufacture it for himself." ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 30

If there was no God, why would every single child that is born, no matter where and when, consider it so evident that there is some kind of all knowing creator and that there is something beyond this physical world?
Could it be like a genetic memory, part of our designed code to have an inner longing to know about God? Has our creator maybe programmed this question inside of us to remind us of him?

Ahmed Al-Hassan once more has astonished me with his answer to atheists because he turned the question that they have been asking the people of religion around and threw it back at them.
They say: where is god? Show me god? If you show him to me I will believe.
Yet whatever you show them on the outside will never be enough.
But he has pointed the atheists into their own insides and has made everyone over their own selves a judge.
Because this is the justice of god.
He has placed the proof that you will be asked about inside your very self. You need no expensive equipment to measure it and you need nobody to testify on god's behalf. You can feel him and experience him yourself if you only want to.


In the next part of the research we will discuss the phenomena of perception as well as the simulation theory in regards to discussing with atheists.
Korddad
Posts: 54
Joined: Tue Jul 14, 2020 3:50 am

That why when People said "Is God exist?" That curiosity is the answer for the questioner because you are seeking for him by asking is God exist. The instinct of wanted to know God and that is the answer. Who place that instinct if not God. That why God is closer to you than a jugular vein.
User avatar
Asma
Posts: 148
Joined: Tue Jul 14, 2020 2:46 am

Umrah wrote:
Tue Jul 14, 2020 8:48 pm
For the Telethon event I got some time to contemplate over the words that Ahmed Al-Hassan directed to the Atheists and I wanted to share my notes and research on the topic with you here. I will post it in parts because it is very long. This is part one that deals with the "God Instinct".

Who are Atheists?
The first question we need to ask is: Why are people atheist?
Are atheists just people who want to follow falsehood? What are the reasons for people being atheist?
In fact most atheist are atheists, because they are truth seekers and have not been convinced by the incomplete and at times contradictory teachings that the scholars of religion present today.
Therefore we find many atheists more educated about religion than many so called believers and in the end atheists are more honest then those religious people who only believe because of cuture or habit or because their forefathers did so.

The God Instinct
Many a believer has tried to argue against atheists and has miserably failed.
They tried many different approaches but Ahmed Al-Hassan revealed that the strongest argument against an atheist is the following:

He referred every human being back inside themselves and said that the strongest proof that God exists is the feeling that everybody has inside of them, be it an atheist or a believer. The instinct that pushes people to worship something and to search for god.
Each and every human being has the innate instinct to search for some kind of supernatural being, something that created him... Muslims, Christians, aborigines and even the atheists themselves have had this feeling at some point in their lives even if they deny it now.
So who put this instinct there if not the creator?

In fact all of those who deny the existence of a God today, at one point in their life have searched for Him. There is nobody who has not had the need to worship something and has wondered if there is a hidden force that is ruling and controlling the world.
There are dozens of videos of the fiercest atheists, all of them admitting that they started their journey with the question: Is there a god?
That is why the very word "atheist" means "to deny the existence of a god". Someone is an A-THEIST because he has not found what he was looking for.

In his memoirs "An appetite for wonder" the famous atheist Dawkins describes, how as a child he used to believe in God, yet starting from the age of 9 he started to question his believe.
" I was a strong believer in a non-denominational creator god.”, he says.

The Science of Believe

But the evidence for this inner longing for a creator is not just anecdotal but is backed up by science as well.
Independent studies conducted with children from different backgrounds and 20 different countries confirm that believing and worshipping god is the NATURAL predisposition for humans, not the other way around.
In 2011 Oxford University announced that according to a major three-year international study, Humans are naturally predisposed to believe in gods and life after death.
Led by two academics at Oxford University, the £1.9 million study found that human thought processes were “rooted” to religious concepts.
The Telegraph reported that children below the age of five found it easier to believe in superhuman powers then to believe in human limitations.

Justin Barrett was the conducting scientist:
In his work, he finds that children as young as age 3 naturally attribute supernatural abilities and immortality to “God,” even if they’ve never been taught about God. This part is crucial, as Barret experimented with children from various backgrounds such as Mayan children living in Mexiko.
For anyone who is interested you can watch Barret talk about it here


So here again the question: is it not possible that this instinct was placed there inside of us, so we can find our creator?
And if it was not placed there by a creator, then how did it get there? Why is the human like that?
If god was a complete fantasy, why are human beings born with the instinct to believe in him?


But it does not end here.
Experimental evidence, including cross-cultural studies, suggests that three-year-olds attribute super, god-like qualities to lots of different beings. Super-power, super-knowledge and super-perception seem to be default assumptions.
Children are by their nature supernatural being, and it is us who train them otherwise.
Many children have invisible friends, although noone ever thought them to.
But it is then parents and the incitement that trains them to stop believing in these things and so studies have shown that the older children get and the further socialization proceeds, the less children believe in the supernatural.
And yet it was jesus who said that to enter the kingdom of heaven we must be like children.

Psychologist Jesse Bering and others have found evidence that children natually perceive themselves as inmaterial (spiritual) beings. They also perceive other people this way. For instance, they think dead beings maintain psychological states, but not biological states, and do not react with shock when it appears that someone has gone through a physical object.

The British Journal of Developmental Psychology reported an interesting study, in which children aged from 4 to 12 attending either a Catholic school or a public, secular school in an eastern Spanish city observed a puppet show in which a mouse was eaten by an alligator. After that, the children were then asked questions about the dead mouse’s biological and psychological functioning.
"Is the mouse still hungry? Does the mouse want to sleep? Does the mouse still live his mama?"
The findings again confirmed that children naturally believed that the mouse continued to exist after it had died.

The study quotes: "Athough kindergartners reason that biological imperatives (e.g. the need to eat food) cease at death, they continue to reason that the psychological states attending these biological imperatives persist after death (e.g. dead agents retain the capacity for hunger)" but the mouse still loves it's mother.

Another important term I came across in this regard is the term "teleological thinking".
Studies have shown that children tend to think teleological, meaning they always assume that everything happens for a reason and that things exists because of the purpose to serve.
Teleological explanations are based on the assumption that an object or behavior exists for a purpose.
This is why one of the first and most asked question of a child is "why?" Ask a three-year old why it rains, for example, and you are likely to hear something like "so that plants have water to grow." Likewise, lions exist "for going to the zoo," and mountains "are for climbing." This tendency of children to infer design suggests an explanatory default: In the absence of competing knowledge, the best explanation for an object with a plausible function is that it was designed to fulfill that function.

This is opposed to the atheist nothing that things do not exists for a purpose and everything is just conincidence.

So we ask any atheist: if these is no purpose to this life nor to anything,why is this question innate in us? How is it deeply rooted in each human being?
Why is this instinct still in us after thousands of years of supposed evolution?
Could it not be that the creator put it there to remind us to question why we are here?



Professor Pascal Boyer, an anthropologist at Washington University and author of Religion Explained, said that atheism was probably the unnatural way to be.
“Religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems,” he concludes.
In the following video he explains how his studies have shown that our brain is wired to accept religious ideas.


This wiring for the unseen leads to many self proclaimed atheists holding beliefs that do not seem so atheist at all.
Several studies have shown that many so called atheists believe in reincarnation, astrology or some kind of spiritual force.

So even if an atheists says, No, i dont believe in God, because institutionalized religion is strange or corrupt,
They still have the tendency to believe in the supernatural.
That is why in nations like Iceland for example, which is one of the Top 10 atheist nation in the world, you will find that according to a 2007 study by the University of Iceland, an estimated 62% of the nation believe that the existence of elves is more than a fairy tale.
Yes most people in Iceland's are atheists but believe that elves are real.

China also is one of the most atheistic nations in the world yet you find ancestor worship widely spread. The Chinese believe that if you honor your ancestors they answer you and help you in return. Another clear believe in the unseen and life after death.

I will end this part of the research with a quote of Karl Jung who also recognised the existence of this innate human instinct.

He writes:
"Has mankind ever really got away from myths? Everyone who has his eyes and wits about him can see that the world is dead, cold, and unending. Never yet has he beheld a God, or been compelled to require the existence of such a God from the evidence of his senses. On the contrary, it needed the strongest inner compulsion, which can only be explained by the irrational force of instinct, for man to invent those religious beliefs ... In the same way one can withhold the material content of primitive myths from a child but not take from him the need for mythology, and still less his ability to manufacture it for himself." ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 30

If there was no God, why would every single child that is born, no matter where and when, consider it so evident that there is some kind of all knowing creator and that there is something beyond this physical world?
Could it be like a genetic memory, part of our designed code to have an inner longing to know about God? Has our creator maybe programmed this question inside of us to remind us of him?

Ahmed Al-Hassan once more has astonished me with his answer to atheists because he turned the question that they have been asking the people of religion around and threw it back at them.
They say: where is god? Show me god? If you show him to me I will believe.
Yet whatever you show them on the outside will never be enough.
But he has pointed the atheists into their own insides and has made everyone over their own selves a judge.
Because this is the justice of god.
He has placed the proof that you will be asked about inside your very self. You need no expensive equipment to measure it and you need nobody to testify on god's behalf. You can feel him and experience him yourself if you only want to.


In the next part of the research we will discuss the phenomena of perception as well as the simulation theory in regards to discussing with atheists.

Please do share more, this is such an interesting topic!
Seyyah
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Jan 02, 2021 10:43 am

Amazing Work..)Thanks
rumunzigera99
Posts: 19
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2020 12:51 pm

Imam Ahmed al Hassan a.s. was asked by an Ansar by the name of Abu Abbas : "How will we be sure that there is Allah?"

The answer from Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan was read on Paltalk on the 4th of May 2016 in English and Arabic:

"May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon you

Tell him to think only about one thing and certitude will come back to him, if he uses it correctly.

To think only about the justice of the creator.

Who is the one who brings this justice when for example someone mistreats his parents or one of the parents, who is the one who returns this act of mistreatment against the parents?

Who brings this justice?

You mistreat your parents for example and the creator responds to you with the same action of yours.

Or a person fornicates or transgresses against the honor of people, the creator returns this act and someone comes who transgresses in turn against this persons' honor and so on. This is for the purpose of giving you an example.

In the name of Allah The Most Merciful The Intensely Merciful
"The fornicator does not marry except a [female] fornicator or polytheist, and none marries her except a fornicator or a polytheist, and that has been made unlawful to the believers." (Al Noor verse 3)

Fornication is a debt on you and it is repaid from your household.

How can this be without a leader? Or a ruler?

Does nature for example bring forth this justice?

Justice is the Just and he is Allah - there is no god except Him - the Living One, the All-Sustainer.

This is enough for every fair truth seeker.

Let him think about this justice and he will know that there is a creator.

The one who mistreats his parents and the fornicator – and we seek refuge from Allah

As you judge, you shall be judged."
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