Once upon a time there was a
flying spaghetti monster.
It got
eaten.
Some people got
bored, and so came up with other imaginary creatures.
Unicorns.
Fairies. Ideas such as
parliamentary democracy were put forward as new ways of
entertaining and occupying people, notions such as
justice and
freedom were also thought up.
None of these had any
substance, not one of these had any precedence in
evolutionary theory, but they mattered to a few, for a while. Of course
debates took place.
Santa Claus was voted to exist in the parliamentary democracy known as the
United Kingdom. Showing that such imaginary shapings had a hierarchy of sorts, and perhaps people were more used to thinking of the world in terms of some of them than others, but still,
decisions were made, and continue to be made, based on the chosen beliefs of every individual under the
sky.
Of course the
atheists will object, they will say that science tells us which beliefs are
probably true, and which are not. But then the
epistemologists and the
logicians will come out and hold their zealot cousins aback from a full frontal attack by pointing out, gently at first, but with increasing insistence, that
science is just a very nice method for collecting
facts, and how people see those facts, interpret them depends very much on how they
want to use them.
Henri Poincare, remarkably humble man considering his staggering contributions to
mathematics and the modern science we cherish today, realised one day while riding the
tram that we categorize our facts about the world based on our own sense of
harmony, their
utility, and of course our ability to
communicate these facts to each other. Interestingly,
logic, or rather the many types of logic which currently compete for use are not immune from this personal classification, neither are any of the many varied types of
mathematics.
This doesn't deny that science isn't an
extremely useful measure of the world in terms of phenomena. The collection and ordering of knowledge is one of the noblest human pursuits, arguably the most noble for the lives it saves, and the insight and
relief from suffering it brings. However if history has taught us nothing else it is to
keep an open mind.
The objects which are collected by our
experience are by no means
exhaustive, our understanding by no means
infinite, and our memory
hazy, our insight into the future limited to those causal
relationships we believe will hold based on a very slim set of key
experiments, and yet, for such little work we have come a very long way towards mastering those elements which would hinder our
survival.
The remarkable
success of our rational modern world comes from several key disciplines; mathematics and logic combine with a meticulous
Socratic method, and a ceaseless pursuit of knowledge, of constant experimentation, validation, peer review, and
ordering and
indexing of existing data. The problems arise when our experimental data throws up results which fly in the face of some cherished belief.
A good and cherished example of this is the notion of
Creationism within
the Victorian Era. The Victorians had some very strongly held beliefs as to the nature and origin of man, based in
Christian doctrine, and also consequently the nature and origin of species across the world. The creation of the world, with its creatures fully formed was seen as a centrepiece for the belief that
God was the architect of the world, and mankind. The
Bible was true, and anything else was heresy.
Of course their belief in Creationism was wrong. As
Darwin sailed the oceans with
the Beagle, he found ample evidence of
natural selection, and the differentiation of species over many generations to form
new species. The
finches come to mind. So do
Pigeons. For those interested in reading the book (
Origin of Species) take my advice and skip the section on pigeons. It is very boring. The rest of the book is quite good though. He makes his point well. And his results combined with the work of the geneticist
Mendel, lead to a
theory of evolution. In simple terms once species become sufficiently differentiated that they cannot breed with each other, they can then be regarded as new and separate species.
This was a
shock for the Victorians; there was now a method for new species to come into the world which didn't require a
Creator God (as Christianity described Him). A major pillar supporting the Church's theory of the world was removed, and their authority on temporal matters (and consequently spiritual matters) significantly weakened. All this was very sad for Christianity, however if you move away from the Christian traditions to
Islam, you find that the central dialogue between the church and secular atheistic institutions in Victorian England, and Europe and the Americas had little if nothing to say which affected
the Islamic view of creation. Quite simply their attack was on the Christian God, His Church, and the
tithes. And their assumption that all religions were essentially the same was false, which is why you're seeing so many atheists now scrambling to come up with new dogmatic positions to insult Islam and Muslims.
God, in Islam, is not anthropomorphized (given human face or personality), indeed the anthropomorphic representation of God in Christianity is shorn away in the early stages of debate and God is reduced to principle attributes to allow whatever conception of Him which remains to fight on against
philosophical onslaught. In fact the philosophical flames keep scorching off layer after layer of dogmatic characterisation until what is left is a pure monotheistic conception of God as the Infinite, the Eternal, the Absolute, the Omnipotent, Omniscient etc, which is similar to the Islamic list of
99 names for Him. And yet the attacks on him which remain still attack on the basis of His being a Person, because the
Bible states that apparently man was made in His Image. This is regarded as highly dubious and as an article of faith is not present in Islam. The net result of this is that Muslims tend to enjoy science a great deal more than their Christian cousins, and tend not to get drawn into long debates on
Evolution.
Yes there is a possibility that life evolved from
single celled organisms. Then again, we have no
concrete evidence of anything with a simple
genome transforming into another species with a more complex genome. A critical and necessary step in the ladder of evolution. So do they
deny evolution?
Not really. It doesn't affect their belief in God. He may very well have used evolution as a mechanism for the creation of the world. Or He may not. They're sceptical of evolution, as they are of
cold fusion, and
the promise of lower taxes.
Of course this is only one side of
the coin. The traditional arguments against God in Christianity were also all arguments against
authority, the strict control of thought, censorship of ideas, and suppression of knowledge. As they don't apply to Islam, those which remain are in deadlock with the rather clear conception of Allah which Muslims have.
So what of the case *for* belief in God?
Interestingly, this is left to the individual to resolve. There are many examples in
the Quran which point to signs in the heavens and earth as proof of Allah's, His Power, His Majesty. Yet the central dialogue between the Prophet and the natives of Mecca wasn't whether God was real, but rather that there weren't many Gods, but
just the One. That no image of Him would suffice,
no idols should ever be worshipped or any human sacrifices required. That He preferred
kindness and
charity, and
real spiritual courage, and most of all
sincerity. There wasn't, and still isn't a priesthood in Islam. No soul is meant to bear the burden of another in the
Judgement day, as a consequence the individual is required to come to their own understanding of God, and their place within the world, taking other's words as advice and nothing more.
In concrete terms for some it is the
poetry and the
power of the Quran. For others it is evidence of a Creator they see in the world. For others it is a matter of logic. For yet others the presence of justice in the world is enough. Yet others simply say they 'know', and leave it at that. Sometimes again it's all these and more... It is hard for an
atheist or an
agnostic to have a conversation with these people, the normal 'conversations' don't work, and there is
no traction. Belief in God isn't contingent upon one over-riding 'trick' it simply
is.
So the natural courses of conversations shift to
cultural misconceptions, to
racism, to
bigotry and then on to
hatred. Conversations about 'understanding Islam' shift to 'your traditions' to 'well I saw a news article which said..' and then an attempt to claw the '
problem of evil' argument into the dialogue, leaving the other party deeply disappointed that what seemed like a genuine chance to
share ideas and
knowledge and
culture between two intelligent people has turned into a dry cold semantic
debate on the variance of values and the superiority of one set of logical skills over another. (Muslims usually win these discussions by pointing out that the role of the Devil (
Iblis) is
fundamentally different in Islam, and he has a purpose to serve like anyone else. So
Free Will, the
Goodness of God, and his
Omnipotence are preserved.)
The difficulty that most atheists, and Christians, and indeed many Muslims face is not
the flying spaghetti monster, it's the fixation on and adherence to tales about him. Looking at the world with
fresh eyes means
continuing to think, then it doesn't matter whether the spaghetti monster gets
eaten, evolution turns out to be entirely false, or parliamentary democracy turns out to be a left turn in history and
soon forgotten, because you'll still be on your way.
Free from delusion.