Much has been said about the epistemic causes of atheism. Among them is what lies in failing to attend to the reality of belief in God as a necessity from which humanity cannot be separated; and what has been said about there being psychological causes, namely the mixtures and accumulations of childhood that later turned into a rebellious volcano; and what has been said about human desires and their unruliness being a principal cause of it; and likewise what may be said, that you need a moment of awareness that you have overlooked, and for that reason those who would excuse you do excuse you.
All of these causes, or some of them, or others, we call the loss of (guidance). Yes, according to what we see as adherents of a heavenly religion, we believe that you—as an atheist—are not upon guidance.
Before the word provokes you, I will begin with you with questions and points that may open before you a door to rebel against atheism and to accept change, and in that way you will have chosen your path by yourself.
Lend me your mind for a little while..
1- When you read the word (guidance), what description of this expression crossed your mind?
Will you agree with me on it? Or will you express it with an alternative word such as (misguidance)? That is, the exact opposite meaning.
And you may not wish to enter into terms that frame the mind, as some may like to formulate them, so you may call the word (guidance), for example, (illusion) or something close to it, in order to convey a message to me that you are outside that conceptual framing.
Whichever option you settle on, I will tell you something very important.
Whether you describe what we believe to be (guidance) as misguidance or as illusion, in both cases you possess an outlook, and this outlook has made you describe yourself, or describe me, with an expression that has a horizon of meaning. If I am (misguided) or (deluded), or whatever description you choose, this means that you formed this idea about me on the basis of determinants, and to express them you used particular concepts.
Do you know what that means? That you are an adherent of a religion. Some have said that atheism is irreligion, and some have said that it is a kind of religion; none of that matters much to us. What matters more is the conclusion we have reached, which is that you are an adherent of a religion. If you possess an epistemic outlook through which you can formulate the concepts and descriptions you see fit, relying on that outlook, then this is religion—call it what you will, but it is a religion.
2- Keep your description of me, and let us come to your companion who claims atheism in the east of the earth or its west, and let us ask him: What does he say about me? How will he describe me? Will he agree with you? Or will he differ on the result of your description of me?
If he agrees with you, then the two of you possess an epistemic system, and that is religion, even if you do not call it by the name of religion. And if he does not agree with you, then each of you has his own description; in his view you may be upon (guidance), and you may be upon misguidance. This proves either that you are both adherents of a religion, or that each of you has his own religion. The difference comes down to this: you have evaded the religion with a clear system on which many people agree, and you have showered it with criticism, and you have taken refuge in a personal religion that you have shielded from criticism.
Do you know the result of that? You must face the very thing from which you fled. You need a general outlook by which to prove the soundness of your religion; there is no escape from that. For the great deception that is summed up in atheism, and to which those who call themselves atheists do not pay attention, is that they evade the outlook that demands proof from them, and take refuge in the outlook in which they do not ask themselves for proof.
The summary of the atheist idea is that it is the existence of God and the existence of religion that need evidence, and that it is others who are required to produce conclusive proofs; as for them, they swim in the atmosphere of a deception that has made them forget that they, like others, are required to produce evidence.
Do you know now why some hold that atheism is an evasion of responsibility and a plunging into pleasures without limits? You may not be among those in whom the picture becomes clear through these psychological desires, but this is an epistemic conclusion that reason has drawn from fleeing from proof and being content with demolishing what is affirmed.
3- But if you refuse to be the holder of an outlook under any name whatsoever, you will automatically shift to the other side, which is the side of (ignorance); and you agree with me that the ignorant person must seek knowledge and an outlook, in order to walk through this life with complete clarity.
4- The search for knowledge concerning the atheist creed comes down to the search for God. Do you know what you did when you made yourself the measure of things? You decided that there is nothing you can prove to be a god and creator of this universe; but had you paid a little attention, you would have known that you did affirm the deity, but you changed it. In truth, you have deified your own self; you made your self the axis of everything, the reference for every outlook. This idea may pass you by and you may submit to it without thinking, because the human self is strong and its impulses are overwhelming. You have learned with me, through reading history, that there are those who enslaved people, and there are those who ruled, acted arrogantly and tyrannized in the land, spreading corruption.. Yes, you may be deceived by the slipping in of the idea that you are the axis of ideas and their owner; but how will the idea slip past you that that sun and that moon—indeed those stars and what lies beyond them—were made by you? Or that they came down upon us from (the earth) without design?!
Have you not found—as a serious truth—that you did not create them, and did not create yourself?! Have you not found all that design, for which medical scientists needed to learn theory, learn anatomy, and carry out research to discover some of the secrets of your body, in order to undertake some measure of design in treating your illnesses? So if you needed knowledge and design in treatment, how can you deny them to the original maker of this body?
Some of those who claim atheism may think that a phrase that came in the Qurʾan—which is what we call a verse—in which it is stated: “Do they not observe the camel, [to see] how it has been created? and the sky, how it has been raised? and the mountains, how they have been set? and the earth, how it has been surfaced?” (Qurʾan 88:17–20), they may think that it is merely an amusement for the gaze of naive minds, or they may think that it is a simple proof that has none of the factors of persuasion. But if you pause seriously at this question, and add to it another phrase from another verse, “I did not make them witness to the creation of the heavens and the earth, nor to their own creation” (Qurʾan 18:51), a clear answer will encompass you from which it is not rational to escape, namely: that all those existing things are at the height of design, and you are not the one who designs them; rather, man has needed more design in order to know some of their secrets.
In order for the atheist to be deceived, the atheist theorist resorts to removing this idea from the focus of thought, or to muddling it. So even if you are told that a great explosion occurred and then the universe was formed, you should ask them: And who made that explosion?
5- You use the proofs for the existence of Allah the Exalted and the existence of the Creator throughout your life. Yes, you apply them constantly, but you may not be aware of that; you apply them to everything in your life except creed and belief in Allah. That building you passed by—you acknowledge that it is not your property and that you did not build it, and you may prove with some evidence that it is not mine either; but this is not enough for you to judge that this building belongs to no one, and that no one built it!
Do you see that the problem lies merely in your not knowing the owner and the maker? When, with this vast universe, you reach the conclusion that it has a designing maker, then you have reached Allah, because it must go back to a Creator.
I know that some atheists have said that the more science advances, the more we come to know the causes of which you claim Allah is the maker, and that this means that we put God, as an idea, in the place of ignorance of causes. But this is the opposite of what is claimed. Have you not asked yourself whether human ignorance, which man has continued to dispel with knowledge, is in reality a proof—or further proof—that the unknowns far outnumber the knowns, indeed by a proportion that cannot be measured!
The need for God is not as some atheists have understood it, namely that He is the First Creator and nothing more—and so they resort to criticizing this idea through discovering the causes of the occurrence of things. No; God is the First Creator, and He is the One who governs all causes; indeed, all creatures cannot do without Him for a single moment. However many causes and techniques you come to know for the continuance of the spirit in the body, you cannot guarantee anyone’s life by those causes so that he lives without death!
Death, then, is an important reality on which you ought to reflect deeply.
6- And in conclusion.. it seems necessary that you devote yourself to reflecting on precisely what I have mentioned to you, so that you find that depth lies in clarity; so do not search for it in obscurity, because God, if He created you, will not make the path complicated for you. The most that can be said is that our selves may cloud the vision, and so need reminding and alerting.
And always remember that the knot comes down to those ideas. As for entering into descriptions of those who believe in Allah—that they have no morals, or that they have shunned freedom and have not known any meaning of dignity—or describing the rulings of religion with such descriptions, all of that confirms that you measure matters, issue judgments and enact laws. If you claim that they are fixed laws, then you have admitted against yourself that you are an adherent of a religion or a school of thought; and you have not guaranteed the fixity of those laws, because many have differed with you. So the better course, in terms of organizing one’s thinking, is to focus on the subject of God and religion, in terms of existence and conviction, because entering into descriptions and issuing judgments will lead you into labyrinths that condemn you more than they serve you.
Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi
www.mosawy.com
