Hamza Andreas Tzortzis
2 hrs · Edited ·
Last night's debate with Dr. Arif Ahmed was polite and friendly. There were many positives that came out from the debate. Firstly, it shows that university student unions, the debating society, the atheist society, and the Islamic society can work together to promote intellectual discussion in a peaceful and compassionate way. Last night's event was proof that all of this hate and misrepresentation of student Islamic societies and Muslim speakers is baseless. Public, intellectual and peaceful discussion is the way forward, and not lies, misrepresentations and hatred. Secondly, it shows that Islam is not on the back foot and can provide a rational case for its worldview. There are many atheists and sceptics who dismiss Islam as babaric, immoral, irrational and baseless, but these discussions actually show that Islam is an intellectual force to be reckoned with. The depth and level of last night's debate is indicative of that fact.
I presented three main arguments. Firstly, I argued that God makes sense of our inner subjective conscious states, you can read more about this here
http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/…/consciousness-and-the-new-s…/). Secondly, I argued that the Qur'an's linguistic and literary inimitability is best explained by God, you can read my recent essay of the topic here
http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/…/gods-testimony-the-inimitab…/. The final argument articulated a powerful reason why we must worship God. The summary of this argument can be found here
http://www.iera.org/dawah/gratitude-is-a-form-of-worship.
Dr. Arif Ahmed spent his time trying to find holes in my presentation and only provided one argument in favour of atheism. He presented a form of the problem of evil and suffering argument. I explained to him that his argument was emotional and weak. The problem of evil argument misrepresents the Islamic conception of God. God is not just good and all-powerful, rather He has many names and attributes. These attributes are understood holistically via God’s Oneness. One of His names is The-Wise. Since the very nature of God is wisdom it follows that whatever He wills is in line with wisdom. If something has a wisdom behind it means it has a reason.
To argue that one cannot see or understand the wisdom commits the fallacy of arguing from ignorance. The point here is that just because the wisdom cannot be understood it doesn't mean there is no wisdom. This reasoning is typical of toddlers. Many toddlers get told off by their parents for something they want to do, such as drinking an enticing brown gold liquid, also known as whisky. The toddlers usually cry or have a tantrum because they are thinking how bad mummy and daddy are, but he doesn't realise there is a wisdom that he cannot access.
Dr. Ahmed presented some interesting contention to my arguments. He said that materialism can best explain the hard problem of consciousness (which is the fact that we cannot know, understand or intellectual justify what it is like for someone to have inner subjective experience, or how they arise from physical processes). He presented the following syllogism (if I remember correctly):
1. Physical states cause subjective states
2. Physical states cause physical events
3. Therefore, subjective states are physical
I found this quite baffling at first, but then I realised that all he was doing was ignoring the hard problem of consciousness. He was ignoring that which required explaining in the first place. He adopted a type of materialism which is argues that the hard problem of consciousness doesn't exist, but the problem is that you cannot explain inner subjective experience via a materialistic worldview. If you were to know everything about the brain or map out all of the neuro-chemistry you will still not be able to know what it is like for an organism to have an inner subjective experience. In light of the hard problem of consciousness his first premise was not true. The hard problem of consciousness is an argument against the first premise, therefore his logic fails. I brought this up during our discussion.
Another contention he brought up was concerning my view that you cannot have an infinite regress of causes. I argued that you cannot have an infinite regress of conciousness causes, meaning that if a conscious being that caused the universes with conscious beings, was also causes by another conscious being, and that conscious being was also caused by another conscious being, and that went on forever (ad infinitum) you would never have conscious beings in the first place. He developed some thought experiments that essentially were just descriptions of a mathematical infinite and the potential infinite. I argued that although these are true and exist, what I am talking about is the infinite in the physical real world made of physical discrete parts. It simply doesn't exist. I gave him the practical example of an infinite number of people in the auditorium, and if I were to physically take away 5 people away I should have less than the original amount, and therefore should be able to count the now finite amount of people - but I can't. From a mathematical perspective in the room I should still have an infinite number of people, but practically this is impossible. It only works in mathematics because in the philosophy of mathematics the infinite is simply assumed to exist. It is a mathematical axiom, but not a practical truth. I'll explain more about this later.
Dr. Ahmed also raised the issue that it doesn't follow that the Qur'an is from God because people have claimed it is inimitable. He misunderstood the argument. My argument was that God is the best explanation for the Qur'an's inimitability. This is due to the fact that all other possible explanations - an Arab, a Non-Arab and Muhammad (upon whom be peace) - fail to explain the Qur'an's inimitability, once the historical background information is understood (see my essay cited above for more information).
In the beginning of Dr. Ahmed's presentation he said he was contacted by others to not participate in the debate due to the fact I had "controversial" views (something I reject). I thanked him for being true to his principles by ignoring their calls to boycott the debate. He even said we should do it again. It is not surprising that the people that tried to stop the debate from happening are Islamophobes. However, it should not surprise anyone that they claim to freedom of speech and intellectual discussion, yet fight against it. In other words, they break their principles in order to preserve them. Since they are a hateful, it should not surprise any us.
I am happy Dr. Arif Ahmed and myself showed the haters that we can engage in a peaceful and respectful way. We must let this continue and not allow others to prevent this much needed dialogue.
Topic: Arif Ahmed