Using Logic and Science to Establish Faith: An Islamic Perspective

Thank you guys for the round of applause even though I haven’t said anything yet but um so my name is Omar abdul-fattah and I am a history student here at UBC hoping to become a teacher and today I would like to talk about a very contentious topic but is something .

Using Logic and Science to Establish Faith: An Islamic Perspective

I think is very worse worth discussing discussing sorry and that is the relationship between logic science and faith and specifically I’d like to challenge the idea that science logic and faith are inherently distinct and and .

I’d like to do that by sharing my story of how I became a more practicing Muslim so I’d like to begin today by asking each and every single one of you guys or each and every single one of you what do you believe and by this.

I don’t mean I believe like reading break was way too short we need two weeks I mean what do you believe about like your existence like how you came to me and me and my experiences growing up in DC for the most part I think it’d be safe to say that this is something a lot of us have maybe thought about right growing up maybe some of us have parents who are well involved in religious institutions so this is something we probably thought about and .

if it’s something you haven’t thought about I ask you to think about it right now so take one second to think about what do you what do you believe and now I’d like to follow this up with another question why do you believe .

it now for some of us this question might throw us off because whenever you ask somebody why you’re assuming that there’s some sort of logic or scientific reasoning behind the question and this to me the surprise if you will highlights the common misconception that we have in our society today that religion and science and logic are inherently distinct and .

I would like to challenge that today by sharing my story like I said of how I became a practicing Muslim so you might see me standing up here with my beard and my hat I assure you this is not what is on the ISIS flag so I’m not repping Isis.

I guarantee you but for me I didn’t always go around repping my religion like this city if you don’t believe me here is here is one of the first videos I did for my youtube channel and if you’re wondering why it’s in Japanese I’ll explain in just a second but so so anyways you can see this low you know progression of the beard there and you know at one point where in the cap it didn’t just happen overnight this was a very intellectual it was a long intellectual spiritual struggle and so basically now to the Japanese part so two years ago .

Using Logic and Science to Establish Faith: An Islamic Perspective

I had the opportunity to work in Japan and I got a job teaching English and this job was kind of like an open placement so I applied for the program but they could put me anywhere in Japan and so I ended up on this island so this island is beautiful yes I slightly edited it just a little bit but this entire island is actually smaller than Stanley Park .

so I went to live on this island if you’re wondering where this island is this is Japan you guys know and this is my Island down there in Okinawa yeah Okinawa Prefecture so you can imagine a foreigner like myself being born and raised in the Lower Mainland New Westminster for the most part going to an island like this with a population of 390 people according to City Hall going to the nine alike this it was a huge shock for me.

I didn’t speak Japanese at all I didn’t even know how to cook or do laundry on my own this was a huge transition for me and it was also a huge transition for the people on the island so when they see someone who’s like 6 4 3 and you know one thing I often heard was like oh ok listener like you’re like your height is really tall basically that’s one thing .

I so obviously stood out but surprisingly there was one other person on the island who was almost my height but his height earned him a special name they called him jumbo Sun and Sun means like the honorific – anyways so me and jumbo Sun basically.

so I go onto this island and you can imagine I’m feeling pretty much like a superstar everyone’s inviting me to their house to the I get regularly invited to the three bars on the island and you know I’m feeling pretty good about myself but eventually all that fades and I get used to the routine .

so I’m going to school I’m teaching English and then I come back home and I’m just getting used to the routine and I’m like really what is the point of life anymore and it wasn’t really a depressive thought at first but it was just like you know .

I’ve just gotten so used to it like what am i living for at this at this time and everything that made me comfortable was kind of taken away from me so I had my language for one I couldn’t speak Japanese when I first came there that was gone I had my friends that was all gone my parents that was gone my school you know school was a huge source of confidence for me that was gone because I was graduated I graduated at the time.

so I found myself really getting used to the routine and for me this meant sinking into my own thoughts a lot and the one thing that I had to hang on to was my face that was the one thing I had to hang on to so I remember in prayer like really for the first time in my life thinking about my religion I was I was always a Muslim alhamdulillah but this was the first time in my life I was thinking about my religion so I’d be praying and .

Using Logic and Science to Establish Faith: An Islamic Perspective

I started actually crying and I because I would start to think about what I was actually saying in my prayer but when you put all your baskets in and when you put all your money let’s say all your eggs in one basket then you really have to make sure that what you invested in is true all right it’s like investing all your money in Bitcoin and then you lose your job and you’re like what is Bitcoin I have no idea right.

so I started for the first time in my life I was like I need to make sure that my religion is true I don’t want to just do this because my parents are doing this right I don’t want to blindly follow what my parents are falling .

so I started a scientific experiment you could say and it started with this claim so one of the reasons Muslims believe that the Quran is the word of God it’s not man-made is because the book has no contradictions in it or that was the claim so instead of accepting this blindly I decided to actually do a scientific experiment and.

I should just mention that this claim is actually founded in the crime it’s the argument that comes from within the crime but for example verse 2 chapter 2 verse 2 says hadil kita boleh ie Buffy who done lil mo poppin this is a book about which there is no doubt guidance for those who are God conscious and in chapter 4 verse – laughs Elias at the Barone al-quran’ well Arcanum and I’m the viable a Gila Waja doofy here the laughs and kathira if this book was from any other than God that would have been within it many contradictions,

] so this is a claim that comes from within the Quran so I thought in my head I was like if there are contradictions in the Quran surely the internet would happen so I started searching online and this is one example of a parent contradiction that I came across this is one of the first one ,

so I don’t want to prejudice your opinions in any way so I’m just gonna put these verses out here and then you can decide if it’s a contradiction or not so this is the first verse take a second to read it here’s the second verse here’s the here’s the third verse okay is this a contradiction,

now I really thought about this and objectively scientifically empirically this is not a contradiction why because it is not an indication of how many angels were present rather it is a set of successive promises so just a set of successive promises so that was one of the apparent contradictions that.

I came across here’s another one how many days in Islam we believe that time is relative so our days are shorter than God’s days and this is based on this verse which says that God God’s Day is basically 1,000 days of which we count so this is one verse here is the other one is this a contradiction.

if you read the second verse it’s actually talking about the day of judgment which we believe is going to be so hard on people that it’s gonna feel like basically fifty thousand years the second verse isn’t actually talking about a day of God it’s talking about the day of judgment and ,

I don’t want anybody to blindly accept what I’m telling you if you kind of doubt what I’m saying go and look up the verses yourself like here are the references chapter 70 verse 4 so that was the first part of my scientific inquiry I’ll just go back to that yeah that was the first part of my scientific inquiry and what I basically did here was I took a claim that validated my religion and ,

Using Logic and Science to Establish Faith: An Islamic Perspective

I tested it I empirically tested it that was one claim that’s one of the reasons why I believe we believe that the crown is the word of God but that’s not the only reason here’s another reason there are no scientific errors in the crime one belief that we have in Islam is that the Quran not only is consistent with science but it supersedes science it precedes science because some of the things that are mentioned in the Quran 1400 years ago have only been discovered recently .

so I decided to actually test this out for myself instead of blindly accept it so this is one example of a scientific miracle you could say in the Quran it is he who has made the Sun a shining light and the moon a derived like I want to focus your attention on these two underlined terms I had no idea that the Sun is this own light and the moon is actually a reflective light.

I had no idea whatsoever so when I discovered this this really boggles my mind and just to clarify one thing no this is actually not in this verse it’s the next verse but so in this specific verse there are two words used to describe the different lights of the moon and the Sun the word for the Sun is Siraj which is like a torch if you will and the word for the moon is newer which is like the light reflected on the wall the reflected lake .

so I found this to be pretty amazing that was one example here’s another one there are elements of the Big Bang Theory that are present in the Quran so here’s an example oh allah mira Lavina Cafaro aniseh mati wall or de can authority on soffit oklahoma have those who disbelieve not considered that the heavens and the earth and by heavens and means galaxies were once a joint entity and then we separated them so we discovered in 1929 with Edwin Hubble’s observations that the universe was actually expanding and basically what he what he observed is that planets or stars actually are actually they’re going away from each other .

I’ll pretty rapid right this is one of the reasons why we believe that the heavens in the earth or the galaxies and the earth were once closer together than they are now and the whole idea of expansion is presented in this next verse and we are its expander so this is was mentioned 1400 years ago and it was only confirmed by Edwin Hubble in 1929 so for me it wasn’t,

so much amazing that this was consistent with the Quran but what was amazing to me was that there wasn’t a single verse that I came across in the Quran that was inconsistent with science and to me what this means to me is that Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him did not write this book like logically I’ve thought about this.

when I was analyzing this people say he wrote the book but I thought you know what I had no idea that the moon was a reflected light or I had no idea that you know the universe was expanding but how did he know and he loved 1400 years ago when there wasn’t Google you know he couldn’t just Google things so that was the second part of my scientific experiment then I realized okay I was like okay this makes sense what I was taught as a kid wasn’t just lies.

Using Logic and Science to Establish Faith: An Islamic Perspective

I validate it I looked at my I looked at it myself but what about evolution right is it not another thing that completely contradicts everything that I’ve learned as a Muslim what about evolution and.

so I began to study evolution and here’s what I realized about evolution whether you accept evolution or if I were to accept evolution and every single thing that it states that doesn’t justify me becoming an atheist or it doesn’t justify me being an agnostic why because the theory of evolution in and of itself doesn’t explain the origins of the universe and I would argue further that it doesn’t really explain the origins of the first organism because every discourse on evolution assumes that things can reproduce so a question that I had in my head was okay.

I was like take me back to the first organism how did I even get the ability to reproduce and even if you accept that you still have to explain the you know the origins of the universe so that was one thing I realized about evolution the second thing I realized was .

whether I choose to devote my life to Islam or whether I take a more agnostic secular route either way I’m being involved in blind right many religious people they blindly take the followings of their scholars just like many people who believe in science blindly accept what their textbook tells them or what you know their scientists told them right .

I mean take for example the idea of evolution how many people who believe in evolution have ever actually studied the archaea archaeological record themselves or how many have actually looked at the journal articles themselves even though it’s free to do with UBC library website right so few people do this and so ultimately the point is here that what I’m trying to get at is my journey to faith really was an intellectual process it didn’t just stop me .

I didn’t just have a vision one night and I’m like yes Allahu Akbar you know it really was it really was a slow intellectual process and it’s still in a way is for me the reason why I get up every morning before sunrise to pray is for this reason because.

I believe this is the truth intellectually logically and spiritually and so what can any of you guys or any of you take away from this are you guys have heard a lot of amazing TED talks today and but I don’t believe in knowledge without application right you should listen to something and you should actually implement it in your life so I’d like to leave us all with one verse from the Quran and this verse is presented in the context of a theological debate but it’s.

so something that I try to live my life with every every year so something I try to live my lifetime so the verse is called her to burhanakum in quantum sonic beam present your evidence if you are truthful okay and so my message today is no matter what you’re exposed to always ask questions always critically think always seek evidence always ask for evidence

. so if somebody comes today to you or tomorrow and says you know just intruder or just abolish taxes don’t just blindly accept them don’t rip up your t4 right hang onto it right always ask questions where’d you get that information from write ask questions there’s nothing wrong with that and.

Using Logic and Science to Establish Faith: An Islamic Perspective

so when we do this we make ourselves less susceptible to believing in things that fuel or drive so much of the oppression that we see in the world today the racism the Islamophobia the sexism all these negative things are fueled by ignorance and that’s .

because people don’t ask questions they blindly accept things and they don’t seek our evidence so think be critical and just seek out the truth thank you guys very much thank you and if I could just mention something briefly uh next week we’re having starting Monday we’re having our annual Muslim Students Association Islam Awareness Week.

so if you guys have questions about Islam or just want to come and eat halal food then please stop by the nest and I will see you there Sharla thank you very much .

Using Logic and Science to Establish Faith: An Islamic Perspective

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