Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins' God Delusion 969749102X, 9789697491025

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Philosophical And Scientific Analysis Of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

DR. OMER FAROOQ SAEED

AURAQ

2021 Omer farooq saeed

Edition:

March, 2021 1st 978-969-749-XXX-X Rs X,XX PKR, $XX US

AURAQ

PUBLICATIONS ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN

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DEDICATION To Sheikh Ahmed Deedat, The Man who turned me around!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................... 1 FOREWORD.................................................................................. 3 PREFACE....................................................................................... 5 Introduction:............................................................................ 5 Objective:................................................................................. 7 Rationale:................................................................................. 7 Hypothesis: .............................................................................. 9 Literature Review: ................................................................... 9 Research Gap: ........................................................................ 11 Research Questions: .............................................................. 12 Research Methodology: ........................................................ 12 Limitations: ............................................................................ 12 Proposed Chapters for Thesis :.............................................. 13 Conclusion: ............................................................................ 13 References : ........................................................................... 14 Introduction:.......................................................................... 15 Chapter 1 ................................................................................... 19 1.1. An Introduction to God................................................... 19 1.2. The Belief in God: ........................................................... 20 1.3. Belief in God in Different Religions and Philosophies: ... 21 1.4. Ancient Greek Philosophies:........................................... 22 1.5. Semitic Religions:............................................................ 22 1.6. Non Semitic Religions: .................................................... 23 v

1.7. History of God:................................................................ 23 1.8. The Creator God: ............................................................ 24 1.9. The Sustainer God: ......................................................... 25 1.10. The Destroyer God: ...................................................... 25 1.11. The Documented History of God: ................................. 26 1.12. Belief in God in Major Religions of the World: ............. 27 1.13. Philosophical Religions: ................................................ 28 1.14. Is Spirituality Something New?..................................... 30 1.15. History of Spirituality: ................................................... 31 1.16. Religious Spirituality: .................................................... 31 1.17. Non-Religious Spirituality: ............................................ 32 1.18. Why Spirituality is Important?...................................... 32 1.19. Conclusion: ................................................................... 33 References: ............................................................................ 34 Chapter Two .............................................................................. 35 2.1. An Introduction to Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion: ...... 35 2.2. The Overall View:............................................................ 35 2.3. Philosophical Points in the Book: ................................... 36 2.4. The Preface: .................................................................... 37 Analysis: ................................................................................. 37 2.5. Chapter 1 – “A Deeply Religious non Believer”: ............. 39 2.6. Chapter 2 – “The God Hypothesis”:................................ 40 Analysis: ................................................................................. 40 2.7. Chapter 3 – “Arguments for God’s Existence”: .............. 41 vi

Analysis: ................................................................................. 41 2.8. Chapter 4 – “Why there almost certainly is no God”: .... 42 Analysis: ................................................................................. 42 2.9. Chapter 5 – “The Roots of Religion”: .............................. 43 Analysis: ................................................................................. 43 2.10. Chapter 6 – “The Roots of Morality: Why are we Good”? ............................................................................................... 43 Analysis: ................................................................................. 44 2.11. Chapter 7 – “The ‘Good’ Book and the changing moral Zeitgeist”: .............................................................................. 44 Analysis: ................................................................................. 45 2.12. Chapter 8 – “What’s Wrong with Religion? Why be so Hostile”? ................................................................................ 47 Analysis: ................................................................................. 47 2.13. Chapter 9 – “Childhood, Abuse and the escape from Religion”: ............................................................................... 49 Analysis: ................................................................................. 50 2.14. Chapter 10 – “A much needed Gap”? .......................... 50 Analysis: ................................................................................. 50 2.15. Scientific Points: ........................................................... 51 2.16. Quotations of Scientists instead of Scientific Quotations: ............................................................................................... 51 2.17. NOMA, Prayer and Evolution: ...................................... 52 2.18. Creationism and Scriptures: ......................................... 54 2.19. Biological Sciences: ....................................................... 55

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2.21. Social Sciences: ............................................................. 57 2.22. Social Science Scenario:................................................ 58 2.23. Social Science Again: .................................................... 59 2.25. Psychology Gaped Again: ............................................. 61 2.26. Is Morality an Unspiritual Affair? ................................. 62 2.27. Einstein’s Ideology of God: ........................................... 63 2.28. Cosmology: ................................................................... 63 2.29. Darwin and his theory of Evolution’s Working Scenario: ............................................................................................... 64 2.30. Contradictions: ............................................................. 65 2.31. Conclusion: ................................................................... 66 References: ............................................................................ 68 Chapter 3 ................................................................................... 69 3.1. Evolution and its History: ............................................... 69 3.2. Do Religions Reject Evolution: ........................................ 71 3.3. What Evolution Really is Biologically: ............................. 73 3.4. The story of Fossils: ........................................................ 75 3.5. Role of Primates: ............................................................ 79 3.6. Providence of Primary Nebula as Raw Material: ............ 80 3.7. Before Big Bang .............................................................. 80 3.8. Own Goal in Paleontology: ............................................. 80 3.9. Is the Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Infallible? ............... 82 3.10. Fallacies in Darwinian Evolution: .................................. 83

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3.11. Not Ignoring the History factor and Historical Sciences: ............................................................................................... 84 3.12. Operational Sciences Factor, How Inevitable? ............. 85 3.13. Science is All about Probabilities: ................................. 86 3.14. Scientific Method: ........................................................ 86 3.15. Observable Evidence: ................................................... 87 3.16. Darwinian Evolution is Unobservable: ......................... 87 3.17. Change of Kind:............................................................. 88 3.18. Adaptation: ................................................................... 88 3.19. The Vestigial Organs Lie: .............................................. 89 3.20. Darwinian Theory of Evolution is Unscientific in a Nutshell: ................................................................................ 90 3.21. Conclusion: ................................................................... 90 References: ............................................................................ 92 Chapter 4: Philosophical and scientific reasoning on God’s existence:................................................................................... 93 4.1. Introduction: ................................................................... 93 4.2. Philosophical Reasoning on God’s Existence:................. 95 4.3. Creation: ......................................................................... 95 4.4. Scientific Reasoning on God’s Existence: ....................... 97 4.5. Creation: ......................................................................... 97 4.6. Intelligent Design: ........................................................... 98 4.7. Quantum Mechanics: ..................................................... 99 4.8. Grand Design: ............................................................... 100

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4.9. From where did the Primordial Substance come from? ............................................................................................. 100 4.10. Infallibility of Scriptures and their Scientific Points:... 101 4.11. A Rational Viewpoint on God’s Existence:.................. 104 4.12. Is Atheism Rational? ................................................... 105 4.13. Naturalistic Viewpoint: ............................................... 105 4.14. Is Realism the Way to Go? .......................................... 106 4.15. Is Ultimate Scientism Justified? .................................. 106 4.16. Spirituality and Nature: .............................................. 107 4.17. Where does Dawkins’ and Darwinian Stance Stand in Epistemology? ..................................................................... 110 4.18. Where does they Stand in Ontology?......................... 111 4.19. Is Divinity Rational? .................................................... 111 4.20. Creationist’s Viewpoint: ............................................. 112 4.21. Gathering and Analyzing all Views: ............................ 124 4.22. Findings:...................................................................... 124 4.23. Social Sciences: ........................................................... 124 4.24. Biological and Physical Sciences: ................................ 129 4.25. Experimental Sciences: ............................................... 129 4.26. Concluding Remarks: .................................................. 131 4.27. The Middle Path: ........................................................ 133 4.28. We Only Ask for the Right Methodology! .................. 134 4.29. The Eight Fold Path: .................................................... 134 4.30. Conclusion: ................................................................. 141

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References: .......................................................................... 142 Bibliography ............................................................................. 143 Indexes..................................................................................... 146

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Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the name of Allah, most Gracious most Merciful. Peace and Salutations upon His last and final messenger. I would like to thank Allah the Almighty on the completion of my research work. It would not have been possible without His countless blessings and mercy. Alhamdulillah Oh Allah! You’re indeed the Greatest! With that, I would like to thank my parents whose continuous support throughout my career made me a better and hardworking person. Their decision to allow me to switch from my medical profession to Theology is one of their greatest favors upon me. I would also like to thank all of my professors especially my supervisor Dr. Muhammad Akram Rana whose support and encouragement throughout my dissertation was a game changing scenario for me, as it made me complete my work earlier. I would also like to thank Mam Farrukh whose guidance in the formatting of my synopsis was extremely valuable for me. In the end, it will not be fair if I don’t thank my classmates and friends namely, Usman Nasir, Husnain Mustafa and dearest Akif bhai whose company in the university made my time there a lot more enjoyable. I extend my gratitude towards my professors, Dr. Mumtaz ul Hassan Barvi, Dr. Shabbir Ahmad Jami and Dr. Herman Roborgh whose lectures were a great fun and learning opportunity for me, them honoring me always in the class, making me sit close to them in the first row and even sitting besides them in the class was a great privilege for me. A big shout out for their patience on my never ending questions and helping me become more productive by giving me challenging topics for assignments right till the end of the session. Also, a big thank you to brother Zaka the admin, without his help the whole process would’ve been more difficult.

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Cheers to all of them! May Allah reward them all in the life here and the hereafter. Aameen.

Dr. Omer Farooq Saeed

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Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

FOREWORD Praise be to Allah that I received much appreciation after the completion of my dissertaion and it was proposed and decided to publish it in book form as well. The question of why I selected this topic when no one other has on this level has been asked quite often. The answer to it is a very simple one. Right from the beginning of my course work I had made up my mind to write on it. The reason was that I was eager to analyze this book after I studied it for the first time and found an utmost need for it as it left many question marks in my mind and I was pretty sure that this would also be the case with any other person who reads this book. That resulted in an easy decision to chose this topic for research and hopefully I did justice to it In sha Allah. Before the reader may start the book, there are somethings which should be kept in mind before study : •

I haven’t changed the format of the original dissertation in the publishing of the book as well.

•

According to the format of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) a MPhil thesis can only consist of four chapters, hence I have tried to sum up the book in four chapters as well.

•

Again owing to the format, I have to keep it under the allowed limit of words and pages so I have touched and introduced some terminologies but kept the details short, in future when there’d be a second edition to the book In sha Allah i’ll try to expand it further as well.

•

Furthermore, despite of quoting heaps of references I have preferred my personal analysis over it as I am the author of this book not a quoter only.

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•

And lastly, I have tried to make things as simple as I could because this topic needed more understandable literature rather than difficult material for the reader.

I wish best of luck to the readers and welcome any of their suggestions. Happy Reading !

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Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

PREFACE Introduction: Richard Dawkins, a famous British writer, wrote a book in 2006 entitled "God Delusion". The theme of the book revolves around denial of God and affirming evolution. Hence this book turns out to be a mirage of atheism. Since its first edition was out, this book has been the bestseller worldwide for quite a long time. Bakewell (1) comments about the book: “There is no hesitancy or doubt here. Dawkins comes roaring forth in the full vigor of his powerful arguments, laying into fallacies and false doctrines with the energy of the polemicist at his most fiery”. Holt (2) talks about the book as: “The least satisfying part of this book is Dawkins’s treatment of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. The “ontological argument” says that God must exist by his very nature, since he possesses all perfections, and it is more perfect to exist than not to exist. The “cosmological argument” says that the world must have an ultimate cause, and this cause could only be an eternal, God-like entity. The “design argument” appeals to special features of the universe (such as its suitability for the emergence of intelligent life), submitting that such features make it more probable than not that the universe had a purposive cosmic designer”. Flew (3) analyses the book as: “I have rebutted these criticisms in the following statement: “My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 per cent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I’m 84 and that was Roy Varghese’s role. The idea that someone manipulated me because I’m old is exactly wrong. I may be old but it is hard to manipulate me. That is my book and it represents my thinking.

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Dawkins, is a famous atheist, he had been writing on similar topics since late 70's. First he wrote a book entitled "The Blind Watchmaker" and then he wrote another book entitled "The Selfish Gene" in mid 80's. And then in 2006 he wrote “The God Delusion” which was the continuation of The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene. Primarily this research dissertation would revolve around the atheistic viewpoints presented by Dawkins and their critical, historical and philosophical analysis in terms of science. Plus, the Darwinian theory would also be dealt with. Dawkins, unlike the title of his book quotes some delusions himself and attributes it to God, God didn’t say it but Dawkins, So, the main purpose is to analyze the book and reciprocate the idea of the theory of chance, which in terms of evolution is an ontic chance rather than the epistemic chance. Dealing philosophically with the arguments means to apply the thought process methodology which deals with the literary intellect. And to imply the scientific process to analyze work means to provide latest scientific facts regarding a particular claim in the field of science. In this work thesis both the methodologies would be used to give a detailed mark account on the book so that it doesn’t leave any stone unturned. Moreover, the amount of work done in terms of God Delusion or related to this book in the form of research articles, patents or books would also be included in a thought provoking analysis and only authentic references would be provided to prove the point. Impartial and gross references would be provided in the course of research and only widely accepted narratives would be given in order to strengthen our research work unlike Dawkins who adopted the most controversial opinions and unaccepted stances.

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Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

Objective: 1. To provide a critical analysis on “God Delusion” rendering Evolution. 2. To answer the question regarding atheism and existence of God in “God Delusion”. 3. To reciprocate theory of Evolution. 4. To apprehend the real philosophy regarding faith in God. 5. To find out scientific facts supporting God’s existence. Rationale: A critical analysis on this topic would provide a new dimension on the all debated hot topic of atheism and would be of great use in the international ranks of intellectual think tanks in the field of divinity. The doctrine of existence of God and evolution both would get addressed and would create a sense of awareness on both these dogmas. Ever since the emergence of modern day atheism, the debate regarding God’s existence have risen a lot especially in the west. In the intellectual ranks, this is considered the most discussed topic regardless of the field of research one is in, they do make the temperature rise by commenting on this topic. The result of this is that many people gets confused on whether to believe blindly in God’s existence or to think twice before believing. This leads to a need of intellectual addressing on this topic for the betterment of the society. As Muslims and followers of Monotheistic religion, It is also a duty of us to defend the existence of God on intellectual level so that we don’t leave any stone unturned for this purpose. Secondly, this is what our pious predecessors have done as well in the past by debating intellectually the Orientalists and answering them by writing permanent books on the existence 7

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of God. So it also becomes our duty to follow their footsteps in the modern world where it is more needed a well. Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal, the fourth Imam of Fiqh said, Yoosuf bin Moosaa al-Qattaan, the Shaykh of Abu Bakr alKhallaal, said: It was said by Abu Abdullah (Ahmad bin Hanbal) answering an atheist: "Allah is above the seventh heaven, over His Throne, separate and distinct (baa'in) from His creation, and His power and knowledge are in every place” Damon Linker sums up this :“According to the classical metaphysical traditions of both the East and West, God is the unconditioned cause of reality – of absolutely everything that is – from the beginning to the end of time. Understood in this way, one can’t even say that God "exists" in the sense that my car or Mount Everest or electrons exist. God is what grounds the existence of every contingent thing, making it possible, sustaining it through time, unifying it, giving it actuality. God is the condition of the possibility of anything existing at all.” Jerry Coyne, the atheist bloger states :“The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins expertly demolishes what he calls 'the God hypothesis', but devotes only a few sketchy anecdotes to establishing that this God hypothesis is the one that has defined religious belief through history, or defines it around the world today. AC Grayling insists that atheists are excused the bother of actually reading theology – where they might catch up on debates among believers about what they believe – because atheism "rejects the premise" of theology. And when The Atlantic ran a piece last year entitled Study theology, even if you don't believe in God”. So, profoundly it takes us to that point where we consider it really very important to discuss and do research on this topic in order to add something new to the intellectual world and also help out people getting off from their confusions on God’s existence.

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Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

The American Atheist Society is working hard in promoting their cause and creating a sense of ease among people regarding doubts in the existence of God, and to make them believe there’s nothing wrong in asking questions about God’s existence, for that they mostly use the scientific approach. So, it becomes more important to write a proper research dissertation on this topic to match the work done against it. Hypothesis: 1. God is not a delusion but an ultimate reality. 2. God is not a reality but only a myth and delusion.

Literature Review: After thorough and detailed research about the relevant literature regarding the given topic, it was found out that no work yet has been done on this topic so far on thesis level. There are some research articles on theological topics and others on scientific relationship with religious teachings. Moreover, there are some authorized books on the topic of atheism and divinity, hence most suited and related literature to the topics is described below. 1. Nidhal, G. (4) described “ The ultimate view point of islamic theologians refutes the idea of evolution while some of the those who have accepted are not theologians but philosophers” 2. Daniel, H. (5) described “ The human-chimp chromosomes carry much identical traits, we can assume they come from same ancestors”.

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3. Daniel, V. (6) describes “ Darwinian evolution is nothing but a theory, we must not lay our foundations of faith on merely a theory”. 4. Yahya (7) mentioned that “Darwinism is a product of misunderstanding, human, fish or ape genomes are all different in their traits. AG and CT segments in human creates human while the same segments in monkeys create monkey traits”. 5. Collins (8) mentioned that, “It also became clear to me that science, despite its unquestioned powers in unraveling the mysteries of the natural world, would get me no further in resolving the question of God. If God exists, the He must be outside the natural world, and therefore the tools of science are not the right ones to learn about Him”. 6. Bill and James (9) mentioned that “According to preformation, God alone was responsible for the ultimate act of creation” 7. Yahya (10) mentioned that “Human creation and its infallibility and perfectness is impossible to be achieved through mere accident, this indeed is the miracle of the Almighty”. 8. Yahya (11) mentioned that” By taking the concept of God away from humanity Darwinism brought disaster in the world and in return it did not give anything as replacement ending in a havoc situation”. 9. Crean (12) mentioned that “God is no Delusion but a reality. Christian dynamics strongly condemns the views Dawkins presented, we have complete faith in God despite any objections made at His existence”. 10. Yahya (13) mentioned that “This book is a hand book on the topic of delusion of evolution. Rejecting

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Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

the idea of Dawkins on God Delusion, it is proved that evolution is a delusion instead. 11. Yahya (14) mentioned that “It is proved through reason and rationality that believing in God is not foolish but God is known through reason. Allah shows His signs everywhere you go, how can this be possible that signs are true but Shower of the signs is not”. 12. Yahya (15) mentioned that “The real understanding of disbelief that is evident in the western society in the modern era. Facts and figures proves it is the society which carries a specific mindset but the ideology remains the same”. 13. Yahya (16) mentioned that “They deny the existence of God but are answerless on how the world really came into being. These are just guess work and assumptions and not fact that humans were created from chipms as an accident. 14. Tzortzis (17) mentioned that “God created the heavens and the Earth for a true purpose: to reward each soul according to its deeds. They will not be wronged.”. 15. Sarfati (18) mentioned that “Evolution being a myth, our best efforts would also cannot make it a fact and it is time to accept that God is the creator and we are the creation. Research Gap: A number of works had been done on the topic of atheism internationally, but Richard Dawkins work standouts because of the complexity and nature of work he has done on denying the existence of God. The will try his best to do unmatched work on this topic. 11

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Research Questions: 1. Does Richard Dawkins present the actual ideology and picture of God. 2. Are his views similar to the contemporary philosophers and scientists in “God Delusion”. 3. Is Richard Dawkins extremist and rigid on the topic of divinity hence support Evolution. 4. Did Evolution in humans really occur and faith in God is naïve. 5. Does Atheistic ideology carries weight in the light of modern philosophy and science. Research Methodology: 1. Descriptive and Analytical research methodology will be applied in the research. 2. The researcher will describe the overall scenario and would analyze it afterwards. 3. The researcher will follow library research methodology, would study the original sources deeply and analyze the whole work. 4. The researcher will consult the authentic sources of books, internet and modern technology. Limitations: 1. The researcher will analyze the work of Richard Dawkins in God Delusion only. 2. The researcher will be confined to the relevant topic only.

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Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

Proposed Chapters for Thesis : Chapter 1: Existence of God, its history, belief in God in different religions. Chapter 2: An introduction to Richard Dawkins God Delusion, its Philosophical and Scientific points, Contradictions in the Book. Chapter 3: Evolution and its history, Answering Dawkins Claims and truth about Evolution, Darwinian theory and its fallacies. Chapter 4: Philosophical and scientific reasoning on God’s existence, A rational view point on Atheism and Divinity, Gathering and Analyzing all views on Richard Dawkins God Delusion. Conclusion: We can get to the conclusion that the work of Richard Dawkins’ in God Delusion lacks circumstancial evidences on God’s existence but only provides a theoretical aspect of chance as a proof. His most of the work revolves around philosophy and science, through greek and modern philosophy and through modern science his ideas were proved to be unrealistic. It can be claimed that God is actually not a delusion but an ultimate reality.

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References : 1.

Bakewell, J. (2014), Belief in God, 218, 17-21.

2. Holt, J. (2013), Beyond Belief, 88,19-28. Flew, A. (2010), There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind. 3,36-54. 3. Guessoum, N. (2018), Oxford University Press, 250, 117-139 4. Haqiqatjou, D. (2017), The Yaqeen Magazine, 17, 2-18. 5. Varisco, D. (2010), Social Anthropology, 73, 91-102. 6. Yahya, H. (2003), Darwinism Refuted, (2nd Edition) Goodreads, India, P 23. 7. Francis S. Collins the Language of God – P 30. 8. Bill Mesler – H. James Cleaves ||, A Brief History of Creation – P 53. 9. Yahya, H. (2003), The Miracle of Human Creation, Goodreads India, P 17. 10. Yahya, H. (2003), The Disaster Darwinism brought to Humanity, Goodreads India, P 11. Crean, T. (ND) God is No Delusion, Marathon, UK, P 160. 12. Yahya, H. (2003), Evolution Deceit, Goodreads India, P 89. 13. Yahya, H. (2003), Allah is Known through Reason, Goodreads India, P 110. 14. Yahya, H. (2003), Crude Understanding of Disbelief, Goodreads India, P 111. 15. Yahya, H. (2003), The Nightmare of Disbelief, Goodreads India, P 69. 16. Tzortzis, H.A (2017) The Divine Reality, WS, USA, P 7. 17. Sarfati, J. (2008), Refuting Evolution, Wellington, NZ, 2008, P 50.

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Introduction: The quest about knowing the existence of God is not new. Right from the beginning of human race, man has been wondering and wandering about his creation and the creation of the universe in the broader aspect. This lead to many theories, assumptions and ideas regarding creation. The two most famous ideologies developed were the Semitic ideology and the Vedanta Ideology, which are the monotheistic and polytheistic ideologies respectively. But there was a thought process which denied the existence of God right from the beginning as well and this is the Atheistic ideology. The basic argument of the atheistic ideology is that God cannot be seen and hence it becomes the product of chance because Semitic – Monotheistic religions believes in the unseen God and the polytheistic religions also worship the unseen spirit behind the idol. Leaving aside the validity of the argument, atheists continued in their very way of denying the existence of God throughout the documented history of mankind whose span reaches centuries. These eras can be divided into three dominating periods. The primal era mainly consisted of idolatry, the ancient Greeks were the pioneers and mirage of it. In reaction to it the medieval era comprised of Semitic religions which happens to be the most dominating era. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all came with a succession of one another. The modern or the present era found a new dimension in terms of theology and divinity, which consists mainly around rational thought process regarding the existence of God and this lead many think tanks to atheism. Richard Dawkins, a famous English biologist, wrote a book named “The God Delusion” in 2006. The basic theme of the book was denying the existence of God and refuting claims regarding His existence. This book gained much fame and became international bestseller shortly after its release. This 15

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wasn’t Dawkins’ first work on the given topic but it was a continuation of the works he has been doing since four decades. His previous works were: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

The Selfish Gene (1976) The Extended Phenotype (1982) The Blind Watchmaker (1986) River out of Eden (1995) Climbing Mount Improbable (1996) Unweaving the Rainbow (1998) A Devil’s Chaplin (2003) The Ancestor’s Tale (2004) The God Delusion (2006)

Hence God Delusion is the sum of his previous works and that was the reason it was selected for an analysis. Provided Dawkins’ intellectual level, which he has been voted among the top three intellectuals of the world along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky in the Prospect Magazine, it was a matter of deep concern and importance to analyze his works right in accordance with the internationally accepted methodologies. For this very purpose the methodology of his book was sorted out. The God Delusion has two main and basic parts in terms of analyzing methodologies, as it is a continuation and sum of Dawkins’ previous works, so the first method followed is the scientific method. As Dawkins’ is a biologist, his works in the beginning were mainly consisted of scientific analyzing on divine topics. Agreeing to the methodology or not the same would be applied to analyze his work in order to provide a noncontroversial analysis. Secondly, with the passage of time, Dawkins’ also developed into a philosopher and he applies much philosophy in his books written in later years, and both of these scientific and philosophical methodologies got combined in The God Delusion. Hence the second methodology to be used, would be the philosophical method, this method has been illustrated more prominently now in 16

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Dawkins’ reasoning process as he gathers scientific information and uses philosophical reasoning on it to prove his points. As a result, the topic of this dissertation was proposed and finalized to be “Philosophical and Scientific analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion”. The researcher tends to provide an uninhibited discourse of proofs, points and tends to debate the validity of the claims made in the book under scanner. As the importance of the topic is well understood and no one has done an analysis of this book on MPhil level so this work would be prime and pioneer work from a different perspective God willing. The help of the Almighty we beseech in our affairs!

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CHAPTER 1 1.1. An Introduction to God In monotheistic thought, God is conceived of as the supreme being, creator deity, and principal object of faith. God is usually conceived as being omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnipresent (all-present) and as having an eternal and necessary existence. (1) Different faiths and religions have different perception of God. For some, God is an entity and for some it’s only a philosophy. Like in Buddhism, the concept of God is not clear, that is why it is considered an agnostic religion. While other religions like Hinduism, a single clear image of God is not formed while many different gods are worshipped even the animals. But in the Semitic religions, the monotheistic doctrine and a clear ideology regarding God is present where one same God is considered as the omniscient, omnipotent, creator, sustainer and destroyer of all things. This doctrine is prevailing in the three Semitic Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These religions provide one of the perfect representation of God’s attributes give a clear image on the history, existence and divine obligations to God. One of the basic obligation in it is the belief in the existence of God with the complete conviction of heart. And on the other hand some of the philosophies regarding God, some of which turned into religions and some stayed as philosophies present only a way to understand the existence of God and don’t provide any arguments itself on the existence of God. We will describe the existence, history of God and the belief in God in different religions in detail in this chapter. How the existence of God can be considered an ultimate reality? What does the scholars and intellectuals of past times say about God? How the human beings started to believe in God? What is the history of God? What is the belief in God in different religions and philosophies? What does the scholars of past 19

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and present times say about this issue? All these questions and the overall scenario of God’s case would be presented. The arguments of both the scholars in favor and against the ideology of the existence of God would be analyzed critically in the light of modern philosophies and scientific knowledge in the upcoming chapters. Plus, the conclusion will be drawn from the collected data and a tentative hypothesis would be presented at the end of the chapter. Some recommendations would also be given promoting the view of the hypothesis being formed as a result of the research done previously in the chapter. 1.2. The Belief in God: Right from the beginning of human race, human beings have had a belief in supernatural supreme being which perform their affairs. This belief is embedded in the human nature as whenever someone is in trouble he naturally sees upwards at the heavens asking for help or when he’s in dark he join his hands or opens them up to pray and ask for God’s help. This human nature is a proper characteristic quality and part of his traits. The human traits are defined and build of the DNA which has all the information regarding a particular person. This information can be described as binaries of a computer carrying it’s all information and these binaries in human DNA are the genes. So what does a human gene possess and says about God? Latest scientific research tells us about a gene named the “God gene”. This research tells us that inside a human body as the genes carry quantitative traits, it also carries a specified trait of belief in God. This gene is named as the Vesicular Monoamine Transporter 2 (VMAT2) gene (2). The primary function of this gene is to create a trait of belief in God inside a human being. It means that it is itself a spiritual gene which has been made divinely for injecting the belief in God in every 20

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human being. Turning away from it or acting against the belief in God means that a person is going against the basic genetic human nature. To get into a progressive mindset, one doesn’t need to undo all the previous things but to stick to the basic human nature and then provide a new dimension in critical thinking in the present world. Only this way the ultimate solutions of the presiding problems might be sought and the world would become a better intellectual place to live in. The point in every conflict and difference of opinion is to avoid hatred and to not be judgmental in any case. Whether the scientific approach or the philosophical and religious approach, the basic principles are set and the methodologies are formed on the basis of thorough examination and experimentations. When a proper methodology is given to accept or reject a theory/phenomenon, then going against the methodology is nothing but biasness. In case of God, the debate is on whether God is a theory or a fact. The religious methodology affirms that God is a fact whereas the scientific methodology considers it theory. In both the cases, in order to find a balance, a sense of commonality has to prevail. 1.3. Belief in God in Different Religions and Philosophies: Right from the most ancient philosophies to the latest religions, the belief in God has been a commonality among all of those. Be it the ancient Greek philosophy or the latest Sikh religion, the different ideologies regarding God has been the basic part of their thought process. The brief introduction of the ideologies of God in most of the religions and philosophies is given below:

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1.4. Ancient Greek Philosophies: The ancient Greeks believed in God, they were polytheists and had a belief in different gods performing different functions. Plato and Aristotle however believed in one God who is the creator of everything. While Aristotle believed in multiple gods as well. On the other hand, Socrates believed in literal God. The ideology of the Greeks is now being recognized and called as Hellenism. Hellenism is the polytheistic belief in different roman gods like Zeus, Hera and Apollo. A total of 12 gods were worshipped in the ancient roman era (3). Yet an ideology prevailed that romans and roman philosophers, thinkers were atheist, but this claim is not correct as most of them as mentioned before and the likes of Pythagoras, who initiated Greek mysticism and opened centers for people to practice mysticism speaks loudly on the theistic mindset of the scholars and people of Rome. 1.5. Semitic Religions: The Semitic religions, i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all believe in the unequivocal, unconditional believe in the existence of God. According to all the three religions, one true God is the creator, originator, sustainer and destroyer of everything. These religions hence are called the monotheistic religions meaning believers in one God. The Semitic religions covers the most of the population in the world with Sunni Islam being the biggest religion with over a billion followers, followed by roman catholic Christianity with just under a billion followers. While Judaism is the smallest of them with around 15 million followers in the world. It means that the predominant faiths in the world have their basis laid on the existence and oneness of God. As a result, most of the people living today in the world already have their faith in the existence of God and the others also do believe but differently which’d follow in detail. 22

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1.6. Non Semitic Religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism and Jainism are the major non Semitic religions. These religions primarily started with hearsay story narrating and different philosophies then turned into religion. Hinduism is the most ancient one in these religions and it has the ideology of three gods. They believe in the three basic gods and some 33 million other subordinate gods. But the main ideology of a creator God is present in the Hindu faith. Similarly, Buddhism which is another ancient religious ideology doesn’t have a clear image of God, that is why it is called an agnostic religion. Jainism is also a creationist religion and Zoroastrianism believes in two gods, one evil and one good, meaning that the ideology of God is clear there as well. Sikhism is the latest among these religions and they believe in one creator God. (4) 1.7. History of God: Right from the beginning of human race and the creation of the first man i.e. Adam (prophet) the belief in God has been an integral part of the human intellect. Different phases had been witnessed in the history of God, from beginning ancient to current modern times, there has been a different understanding of God in every phase of human life. In the ancient era God was recognized as the ultimate creator of all things after witnessing the sun and the moon, stars and huge mountains and from smaller to bigger living creatures, God was identified as a supernatural supreme being and creator of all that can be witnessed and considered to be residing above the skies. The medieval era was the era of linguistics, the people in that era recognized God by the linguistics of the sacred scriptures, the language used in the scriptures was mesmerizing and was way better than any poetry or literature available at that time, So, people recognized God to be the utmost intelligent supreme being and creator of all 23

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languages. Whereas the modern era is the era of science and technology, people at this day and time recognize God from the scientific phenomenon explained in the sacred scriptures. For this purpose, the sacred and revealed scriptures are studied carefully and thoroughly to check and cross check the scientific facts that they provide. Many scientists of the current age have confirmed various texts of the Qur’an and bible to be correct in accordance with modern science. So, people now recognize God as the one who sent down and revealed that scientific knowledge centuries ago which is being discovered in the modern day to be the supreme being and knower of all affairs! 1.8. The Creator God: How and which things was God running before the creation of human beings. This question leads us to the pre human era of creation. God has always been a creator. He was and is creating things before and after the human beings. In the beginning when there was a primary nebula, God caused a big bang to take place which expanded the universe. Then the planets were created and the ice age began. After a considerable amount of time, when the planets cooled down, planet earth was placed at the ideal location and distance from the sun to support any life. Hence life began on the earth from anaerobic bacteria to aerobic bacteria and then from simpler to complex, unicellular to multicellular beings. Human beings benefitted from everything made and gained knowledge about God and His works and creation phase by phase. The amount of knowledge humans possess today about God is way higher than what they had in the ancient times. Now we know that the origin of everything goes back to its originator and the footprints of this universe goes back to God, by many roads and ways but reaches at one same point and destination i.e. God.

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1.9. The Sustainer God: It is a known fact that the humans are a complex structure, and the universe is even more complex. The perfect functioning of the human body and the universe makes us realize that this complexity is nothing but an intelligent design. But the question raised mostly is that if it is an intelligent design and God created everything then at least He’s not involved anymore in the universe as the laws of physics prove. But this question has a simpler answer rather than difficult as God is the one who’s running the show in reality, He made the laws of nature, formally known as laws of physics and made them so perfect in their delivery that His permanent part in functioning them is not required. But the basic part and service God is providing is that He’s not letting the system to collapse down and is sustaining everything in its perfect form. Hasn’t it been for God’s ultimate intelligence, the devastating collision of heavenly bodies would have destroyed the universe already. It is He who is constantly playing His part and saving the universe and not letting it destroy until He wills. There is a narration describing how the sun takes permission from God every day before rising and God allows it, until one day when God wouldn’t approve its rising and would order it to rise from the west and the last day, days of destruction would draw closer. (5) 1.10. The Destroyer God: Apart from creating and sustaining, God is and will be a destroyer as well. There’s much of the space debris and the one of the biggest example in the space is the black hole. Once a big star/s the celestial body ends up in a black hole where everything that goes inside dies, it’s a house of destruction as a whole. Then at the earth everything that breaths, dies. Every living thing dies no matter how long is its lifespan, but eventually God makes everything to die. As death is the 25

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ultimate destruction, God is making everything to die whether living or nonliving, many animals become extinct like recently the passenger pigeon (6) and many are on a verge of getting extinct. These phenomenon gives us a proof that God is creating and destroying things at the same time. And at the end, whole of the things that exists, would be eventually destroyed when the world and universe would end and that’s a proven scientific fact that everything including the earth is going towards its end like the stars turning into black holes. 1.11. The Documented History of God: There’s no less than 7 thousand years of tentative documented history of mankind available. All of which is narrated and preserved through varies areas and times and by notable people of every era. Some of the books of history are the Tareekh Al Umam Wal Malook (History of Peoples and Emperors) by Tabari, Al Kamil Fit Tareekh (The Complete History) by Ibn Athir, Al Bidayah Wan Nahayah (The Beginnings and the Ends) by Ibn Kathir and then the Vedas specifically the most ancient one i.e. the Rigved (Religious Book of Hinduism). In all of these books, the beginning of mankind is described with the belief in God and God consciousness among people was considered the best trait. These history books haven’t have described any atheistic thoughts right from the beginning and up until a specific time when people started to disbelief, Prophets and Avatars were sent to remind people of God. Hence all the soundly narrated documented history also describes that God has always been an integral part of man’s life and God’s history is perfectly and soundly documented by people of every era, So, God didn’t come out of the blue at once and asked people to believe in Him but from Adam to the last person born today has been given guidelines and proofs to believe in Him through His creation. God historically has asked people to reason and to 26

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look around for Him, and one of the best intellectual source for a reasonable person is literature, and the most intriguing and thought provoking literature has always been the history. The thing which is important is to look in at it. 1.12. Belief in God in Major Religions of the World: The world religions can be divided into two basic categories. The Abrahamic faiths and the philosophical religions. The Abrahamic faiths are three i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Their doctrines on the belief in God are described below: 1. Judaism: Judaism is the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths. The basic doctrine in Judaism is that the children of Israel are the chosen one of God and they’ve got a degree of advantage over all other races. So, basically Judaism is a racist religion. But their basic doctrine of belief in God is very clear as they believe in one supreme being the creator of everything and call Him “Jehovah”. Salvation: The way of salvation in Judaism is belief in God and to adhere to His commandments. 2. Christianity: Christianity is the second of the Abrahamic faiths. The doctrine in Christianity is that God created the heavens and the earth and sent His beloved Jesus Christ to humanity in order to make them know about Him and to get rid of their sins by believing in Him. Their basic belief is in trinity which means God is one in three i.e. The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. So, the basic doctrine in Christianity as well is belief in the existence of God.

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Salvation: Salvation in Christianity is to believe that Jesus died for the sins of humanity on the cross and was resurrected and went back to his father in the heavens. 3. Islam: Islam is the third and final Abrahamic faith. Islam is strictly against racism and polytheism. Its basic doctrine is the belief in oneness of God and belief in the finality of the Prophet hood of Muhammad peace be upon him. It promotes the view that God is the ultimate creator, sustainer and destroyer of everything. So, this religion is the biggest advocate in the belief in God. Salvation: Salvation in Islam is Monotheism. That no partners should be associated to God almighty and to believe in the Prophet hood of Muhammad peace be upon him. 1.13. Philosophical Religions: Those religions whose base was once a philosophy and later on they converted into religions can be categorized as philosophical religions. The doctrines regarding God of some of these religions are given below: Hinduism: Hinduism is the idol worshipping religion. In Hinduism, although numerous gods are worshipped as idols but the basic doctrine is called Trimurti which means 3 gods. These three gods are Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. According to the Hindu belief, Brahma is the creator of the universe, Vishnu is the sustainer and Shiva is the destroyer. So, the belief in God in Hinduism is well established. Salvation: There’s no proper doctrine of salvation in Hinduism. 28

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1. Buddhism: Buddhism is second to Hinduism in terms of numbers in the world in philosophical religions. Its founder Gautam Budh went into seclusion and started to contemplate. He came up with four noble truths and an eightfold path to get rid of the sufferings of people in the world. However, the doctrine regarding God is not clear in the Buddhist religion because of which it is graded as an agnostic religion. Salvation: There is no clear guidelines regarding salvation in the hereafter however in the world the eightfold path is deemed as salvation. 2. Sikhism: Sikhism is the latest philosophical religion. It dates back only 500 years. Its founder Guru Nanak did many travels and noted many new things apart from his own country. Sikhism was actually a reaction against Hinduism or idol worshipping as a whole. So, its basic doctrine is the belief in God and the hereafter as well. It has taken many things from Islam as well like belief in oneness of God and the beliefs regarding the judgment day. Only rebirth in the world was something Sikhism inherited from Hinduism. But the belief in God remains the doctrine of Sikh religion. Salvation: Although no clear cut indications are given regarding salvation in Sikhism. But generally the belief in God and God consciousness are pillars of success according to this religion. More good deeds one would do in this world, the better hereafter he’d have. 3. Zoroastrianism: Zoroastrianism is world’s one of the most ancient religion going back to 600bc. Its founder was Zoroaster, and in the beginning it was a fire worshipping religion. In the doctrine of Zoroastrianism, there are considered to be two gods, Ahura Mazda, the god of goodness and Ahriman, the god of evil. So, 29

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in Zoroastrianism the basic doctrine of God is present although it represents two gods one good and one evil but the basic belief in God is present. Salvation: There’s no proper rule of salvation in Zoroastrianism rather it just engages a person to be good overall in the world. 4. Jainism: Jainism is another Buddhism like ancient religion founded by Mahavir. It was the philosophy of Mahavir which lead to the formation of the Jain religion. In Jainism, the Jains worship Lord Mahavir. But there’s no one God doctrine in the religion as Mahavir himself is considered the 24th deity in Jainism. But the belief in God though unclear but is present in the religion. Salvation: There’s no judgment day belief in Jainism so no rules of salvation are present as well. The religion just emphasizes on being a good person generally in the world, don’t kill anyone even the microbes and one would attain peace.

1.14. Is Spirituality Something New? As we understood that religions, belief in God and its practices are not new, they exist with the existence of human beings. Similarly, we can tell that spirituality has always been related to religions, hence the spiritual part which is one the most important part of a human’s life is also not new but ancient. According to the right methodology, something which is invented or discovered new that has to work hard to find its way into the mainstream society. It needs proofs, regular and consistent brainwashing and some monetary assistance as well to prove itself or find its way somewhat in the society. When we see that the spiritual nature of humans and religions both are not new, so what is new? What is it 30

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which has to find its way into the society through proofs? That is non-spiritual atheistic lifestyle based on conjectures! 1.15. History of Spirituality: The ancient Egyptian civilization older than thousands of years had spirituality as its basic component of the society so much so that they’d consider spiritual presence after death as well and performed rituals to gain spiritual heights. Mummification of dead bodies was also a part of that spiritual process. The ancient Japanese, Chinese and Mongol civilizations had great spiritual effects on their societies. Even so the religions like Tangrism where based purely on spirituality. Not to forget the reason the mention these facts is to bring conformity and consensus on the spiritual nature of human beings, the types of spiritualties would be discussed further in the following. 1.16. Religious Spirituality: Vthrough Baptism and Islamic Spirituality in its mysticism or Tazkiyah Nafs (Purification of Soul) are the most practiced ones in the world with consistency of over the passage of thousands of years. They’re all interlinked to each other in terms of purposes to attain spirituality i.e. to purify the soul and get closer to God. This was the Semitic spirituality, now coming to the non-Semitic spirituality. In Hinduism for instance, a whole scared book called “Atharvaved” one out of the main four Vedas is filled with mantars (words uttered in the process) for the attainment of spirituality. Moreover, the spiritual growth is important in other ancient religions as well like Taoism which is mostly related to mystic thoughts and practices, Buddhism and Jainism. Gautam Buddha spent most of his life in attainment of that spirituality and still his follower monks do it. Similarly, the Jains practice spirituality 31

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by Sannyasa and avoiding even wearing clothes or eating food purposely. All trying to reach one goal through different practices. 1.17. Non-Religious Spirituality: Is there any? The big question arises is there any nonReligious spirituality which exists at first place? The answer to it is pretty obvious, when we know that spirituality as a whole is a religious affair, it started in and out of the religions, so how can a product of a specific thing be found anywhere else without the involvement of the original material. Now does the slogan “Spiritual but not religious” or non-Religious spirituality make any sense? Someone who even tries very hard to practice some sort of spirituality without being religious himself, even then he goes through a particular practice of some religion like Yoga, which is a spiritual practice of Hinduism. In a nutshell you can’t get through to spirituality without a religion or a practice of a religion which might be its act of worship as well. You just can’t miss religion and get away with spirituality alone! 1.18. Why Spirituality is Important? Peace. That’s where spirituality is important. To lead a peaceful life, both at individual level and on the level of the society as a whole, human beings need spirituality within themselves and spiritual guidance to live a life with peace and tranquility. Jewish Rabbis, Christian Fathers, Muslim Sufis, Buddhist monks are renowned to be the most peaceful and law abiding people of the society. Whereas, the most of the cases of violence and suicide happens because of lack of internal peace as it is reported uniformly worldwide. This is where the role of spirituality and religion comes. Why religious people attain and have more internal peace than 32

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non-religious agnostic or atheists? This lack of peace creates a mental condition which leads to depression and hence either the person commits suicide or goes and kills someone else. That is why people living in theist majority countries have higher ratio of mental stability than the non-Religious. This indicates that a human necessarily leads spirituality in his life and it should be an integral part of his life, in fact it should be taught on higher levels for the maintenance of mental health and stability. 1.19. Conclusion: As a result, we witness the history of God, the history of religions and the beliefs in God in different philosophies and religions of the world and come up to a conclusion that the belief in God has been an integral part of every human being’s life right from the beginning of human race and it stays the most important affair for him throughout his life. We also conclude the all the major religions of the world promotes belief in God and no specific denial in God’s existence is noticed in the documented history of religions. Hence, the tentative hypothesis established from this is that God is an ultimate reality which cannot be denied in a human society. Plus, the spiritual part of a human’s life can’t also be denied as there is a complete history of religious spirituality and how useful it has been and still is for human societies. On the other hand, anything against it or the stance of non-Religious spirituality has to be proven with great deal of arguments still which hasn’t been done till now.

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References: 1. Merriam-Webster.com > Dictionary > God 2. En.Wikipedia.org > Wiki > God_gene 3. Aliki, (1994), The Gods and Goddesses of Olympus, Harper Collins Publishers, USA. 4. Alimardi, Mohammad Mehdi, (2013) Religious Inquiries – God in Sikhism, Vol. 2, No. 4, Summer and Autumn, 77-92. 5. Sahih Al Bukhari, Hadith no.3199 (2020). 6. Bucher, H. The Causes of Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon, Enrique, Chapter 1.

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CHAPTER TWO 2.1. An Introduction to Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion: God Delusion was written in the year 2006. It was the time before which Dawkins had already written 8 books on the similar topic including “The Selfish Gene” and “The Blind Watchmaker”, the two famous ones. God Delusion was Dawkins’ 9th book and it got a great reception from all over the world. It stayed bestseller for quite a long time in the international market. This book was like it brought a voice for atheists from all over the world who were looking for a representation on an intellectual level. This book can be considered a rejuvenation for atheistic world and it blew a new soul to their world. This happened for the first time after a century when Charles Darwin did it for the first time, God Delusion had the same kind of effects like Darwin’s Natural Selection, Origin of Species or The Descent of Man had. But this time around the world has progressed quite a lot in terms of science and technology unlike at Darwin’s time so God Delusion got more acceptance and appreciation from the scientific world. 2.2. The Overall View: Coming to the book God Delusion itself, it consists of 10 chapters and a preface. Dawkins gives a background and introduction to the book in the preface where he describes his encounters and experiences at the TV shows and goes on to make his case for a God Delusion. Starting with the chapters, Dawkins names the first chapter as “A deeply religious nonbeliever”. As the name suggests, Dawkins claims to be a deeply religious nonbeliever himself. He explains his given ideology in different ways in this opening chapter. Chapter two is named “The God Hypothesis”. In this chapter, Dawkins explains the different hypothesis regarding God in different 35

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religions, ideologies and philosophies. Chapter three is named “Arguments for God’s existence” and it deals with some of the arguments of some theists and Dawkins’ own commentary on those. Chapter four is named “Why there is almost certainly no God”, in this chapter Dawkins comes to his normal atheistic norms and fills some pages on denying God’s existence. Chapter five “The roots of religion” is a reciprocal of the previous chapter, Dawkins deals with history of religion as a whole in it. Chapter six is named “The roots of morality: why are we good”, and it explains the point of human moral values and its relation with God. Chapter seven “The ‘Good’ book and the changing moral Zeitgeist”, is a chapter on politics, and history of religious texts. Chapter eight is named “What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?”, and this chapter completely is based on criticizing religion and praising modernism. Chapter nine “Childhood, abuse and the escape from religion” the second last chapter is a chapter which includes real life incidents describing some pre claimed drawbacks of religions. And the final chapter is named “A much needed gap?” which consists of some mockery, humiliation and making fun of religions and religious cultures. After that there’s an appendix, citations, notes and an index to finish the book. 2.3. Philosophical Points in the Book: The book itself in general portrays a philosophical approach as a whole rather than following a specific research methodology. Some points are purely political, others are journalistic and a few are scientific as well. All the chapters including preface from one to ten are of different lengths and narrates a different story every time. Mr. Dawkins have adopted an analytical method mostly on news and events which has compromised the deep research and un biasness of the book. He promotes and adopts a staunch position and narrative right from the beginning of the book and continues 36

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till the conclusion. An overall introduction and analysis of the philosophical points in every chapter of the book is discussed below. 2.4. The Preface: The preface of the book contains a great amount of philosophy portrayed by Mr. Dawkins through different points. Mr. Dawkins writes he considers religion to be core reason of the problems of the world. He writes “A world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11 no 7/7 no Crusades, no witch hunts, no gunpowder plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ Killers’, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles’, no ‘honor killings’, no shinysuited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money… Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheading of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it…” (1) Analysis: Firstly, Mr. Dawkins clearly missed the trick by adding all different problems of the world once and for all at the credit of religion. He attributes the political, racial, economic and psychological problems to religion. No religion in the world regardless of its followers, promotes or idealize violence. There are many conspiracy theories against 9/11 or 7/7, but at the end it was a political job. Islam doesn’t ask Muslims to kill innocent people but to save them. If a follower is deficient in following the religion correctly, it is not the fault of religion but the follower. When Mr. Dawkins mentions gunpowder, he forgets to mention that no religious organization in the world makes ammunition. It is made non religiously by secular companies in the world, hey is Lockheed Martin a 37

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religious company by the way? It is all but money, not religion. By mentioning the partitions and different land occupying events, Mr. Dawkins misses the likes of Australia and Canada which got independence from the British as well like India, so was that also a religious affair given that all these countries were Christian themselves! It was a basic human right for independence and liberty which the world acknowledges no one labels or attaches it with religion, how can it be as well when both sides share the same religion i.e. Christianity in the given cases. But somehow Mr. Dawkins finds a problem in the right of free living and independence as well! Not to forget the next point which falls under the same flock of misunderstanding, the ‘honor killings’, as the name suggests they’re done for “honor”! sometimes because of enmity and other times for money! But of course why would someone making a specific point would want to mention all these! Moreover, when a person working in a ‘non religious’ company, has taken liberal and secular education and degrees, becomes a fraudster, it is his personal act, but if a person with religious affiliation loots people, it’s the fault of religion but the previous one wasn’t the fault of secular education! Not only that, Mr. Dawkins also goes on to provide false information, no female has ever been flogged to show an inch of skin! Either Mr. Dawkins doesn’t know the flogging law in religions or he is deliberately misinterpreting it, the flogging, wherever or whenever takes place, is because of adultery! Not because of showing your skin! Even then if someone has ever misused or misinterpreted any law of religion, it’s the fault of that person not the religion again like the actions of some psychopath Taliban! So, as a whole, whatever Mr. Dawkins has tried to prove from that has lacked even the basic proofs to begin with or it is a deliberate or undeliberate try to prove a point according to the pre developed ideology in the mind of the author.

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2.5. Chapter 1 – “A Deeply Religious non Believer”: Mr. Dawkins, after moving from the first part of the chapter which consists of Einstein’s ideology on God, quotes some incidents in the society which have happened in the past. He mentions the notorious Danish cartoons published to mock the prophet of Islam and gives an account and details to defend that act. Like he mentioned in the preface people like Sam Harris and ibn Warraq who are notorious themselves in trash talk on religions, it gives us an indication that from what kind of people Mr. Dawkins is impressed and what his ethical ideology is like. Analysis: The incidents which happens in a society implies for two main things, either the incidents which follows the social norms, they are considered normal as well and those which violates the norms are considered controversial. As the world is a global village now, so the norms have also gone global now, so whatever happens at any part of the world, the whole world witness that and gets effected with the consequences of it on a scale which varies from the global, economic or political weight of that country. Similarly, when quoting about the blasphemy laws which are regarding the sacred personalities and books, one must not forget the impact it creates globally. It is as if someone who does something like the Danish cartoons incident, he is intentionally provoking 1.7 billion Muslims of the world to get violent and angry and then they can be defamed after that, circumstantially it all looks like a plot against them. But what Mr. Dawkins want to prove from quoting this incident, that is a big question. If he talks about blasphemy laws, then there are laws on Holocaust implemented internationally to stop people discussing the thing which is sensitive and disturbing to a specific group of people i.e. Jews, who are some 15 million in numbers in the whole world. If that is possible and it is a case and law intact 39

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internationally, then what problem does Mr. Dawkins have on the implementation of a law on the topic which is sensitive to 1.7 billion people of the world. As there are many laws made and amended regularly by sovereign countries and no one has an issue on it, so why creating an issue on this law? If someone do violate the community standards of religions intentionally, what he is actually doing is that he’s bringing the peace of the world at stake, creating controversy, provoking and destroying peace of the world by his act. Is it an intelligent thing to do? 2.6. Chapter 2 – “The God Hypothesis”: In this chapter, Mr. Dawkins explains different ideologies and doctrines of religions. As he mentions himself that he also belongs to a religion which is atheism, he compares and explains other faiths with his in this chapter. The main idea the chapter however is the God hypothesis, but he makes his judgements rather than presenting the case for a hypothesis. He mentioned briefly polytheism, monotheism, secularism, agnosticism, NOMA etc. in this chapter. Analysis: As a philosophy, the discussion on different religious ideologies is a part of the subject of world religions. But ironically Mr. Dawkins don’t even recognize any religion at all but still discusses this subject. Firstly, the ideology of polytheists is described and very cleverly it is used to criticize the majority group i.e. the monotheists. In reality the polytheistic view is not explained but to ridicule monotheism. Then when monotheism is described, this huge and the biggest group of religion in history till date in the world has been tried to be taken down by quoting anonymous people and just showing hatred towards these religions. On the other 40

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hand, secularism and agnosticism is praised heavily which shows the author’s ideological inclinations towards it. As a whole the research and analytical factor looks way behind in this chapter and the criticizing and hate mentality clearly shows off. 2.7. Chapter 3 – “Arguments for God’s Existence”: This chapter out of all, as the name suggests should have been a scientific chapter but this is the chapter with purest philosophy. Mr. Dawkins has used different methods of philosophy in this chapter to not to analyze arguments on God’s existence but to give a verdict after every bit of philosophical argument. In the later part of the chapter, Mr. Dawkins share his personal life experience as well to prove and undo God’s existence with some incidents. How strong is this approach, it’s up to the reader to disintegrate. Analysis: Firstly, Mr. Dawkins gives an opening quote of Jefferson in the beginning of the chapter saying the professorship of theology mustn’t have a place in our institutions. The question is, why? Why are you and other atheists so afraid of theology and theologians? Why do you want to close a discipline and the huge amount of research which is being done in that discipline, both in favor of it and against it, this is what research is all about too as it gives a touch of both parts of the argument and create a balance between those arguments. By giving such a quote, the writer has shown his extreme and stereotypical views on the topic already. Afterwards, the arguments on God’s existence should’ve been taken from the writings of the theists and if any real life experience was to be shared, the experiences of theists should also have been mentioned for an unbiased analysis. Mr. 41

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Dawkins quoted some verses from the bible and completely missed the Quran. He primarily used those verses for criticizing them while all he ignored all the irrefutable facts and highest levels of philosophical passages. The ontological arguments are purely philosophical in nature, but when two parties are in a conflict, the best way to judge between them is to analyze the philosophy of both, and then present their conflicting views to the presenters and beholders to decide. But unfortunately this wasn’t the case in this chapter. 2.8. Chapter 4 – “Why there almost certainly is no God”: The rabbit comes out of the hat at last in this chapter. Mr. Dawkins directly moves to the atheistic goal from trying to be analytical in the previous three chapters. After discussing the arguments for God’s existence in the previous chapter which proved nothing but an opinion, Mr. Dawkins now directly moves to a conclusion in the next chapter again quoting similar kind of people and similar kind of stuff. Analysis: The chapter starts with a philosophical example of a Boeing 747, although Mr. Dawkins got the idea of it but even then went on to deny it. Mr. Dawkins criticizes the creationists who believe in the grand design of the universe. This rift between creationists and Darwinists is not new, there have been a history of it when both the parties call each other nonsense. This example is no different where one party try to prove itself right and shows to end the debate by quoting some specific examples. The author then goes on to develop his ideology on Darwin’s theory and provides some anthropological and cosmological theories, yes ‘theories’ only and makes his case on them. In the world of philosophy, it is considered the weakest reasoning when someone adopts a 42

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view based on an unconfirmed outside theory, incident or example. He finishes the chapter again with idealizing agnosticism, his dream position. 2.9. Chapter 5 – “The Roots of Religion”: This chapter which by name suggests deep philosophy, surprisingly doesn’t present any philosophy on the given topic. Instead it presents much of scientific discourse. It is pretty evident that the roots of religion lie way back in history and inside a human being it is in his gene, so to present its real root one need to go exactly there where it belongs to, which hasn’t been the case profoundly in this chapter. Analysis: Mr. Dawkins has presented some of the psychological debate in this chapter which can be deemed under philosophy, but otherwise the chapter deals with Darwin and his evolutionary thoughts and practices. One social fact which Mr. Dawkins couldn’t deny in the chapter was that the religion lets go and decreases the stress and depression but in desperation calls it ‘Placebo’ effect. It is well noted that even if someone calls it placebo, still the benefits can’t be denied which establishes its positive and irreplaceable effects in the society. 2.10. Chapter 6 – “The Roots of Morality: Why are we Good”? Mr. Dawkins claim that the roots of morality in human beings is also Darwinian in nature. He gives example of the sexual desire in human beings as it is engraved in them from the ‘Darwinian roots’, according to him, similarly if one part of human instincts can be Darwinian in nature, so why can’t the 43

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other be the same? He also adds to the point that even if there exists no God, there’re still reasons to be good, these points are accompanied with examples, before and after quoting the cases for it. This chapter is on social problems and the society mainly. Those of the problems are which moral in nature, like how one can be good if there’s no God and why should one be good if there’s no God or religion? From where does the moral values comes from? From Darwinian evolution or religion? And what religions and society say about it. Analysis: ‘The roots of Morality: Why are we Good?’ Is a chapter which claims that all the good in the world is not because of religion, while the author forgets that it is only religion which bounds billions of people to do good and to be a good person. If the worldly laws which binds people on only to follow laws and punishes on breach of laws, then why can’t religion give the same guidelines to people and provide with at least the divine verdicts applicable in the hereafter. While there are no laws for moral values in the world, only religion gives ultimate solution for moral value issues of the world. The historic records and analysis of current human lives proves to us that it is religion which is the reason of moral values in people and not the evolution, hence if no religion, no one would follow and apply moral values in the world. Moreover, the roots of sexual desires or any other thing is related to Darwinism is not established at first place, how can it be related to morality in that case anyway! 2.11. Chapter 7 – “The ‘Good’ Book and the changing moral Zeitgeist”: This chapter especially deals with Mr. Dawkins’ criticism on Christianity and the bible. Dawkins, born and raised a 44

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Christian, has his bad memories with the religion. He describes some immoral texts from the bible (old and new testaments both) and makes a sense of God being immoral, he also describes the incident of prophet Abraham sacrificing his son and tries to quote Islam as well to some extent in this chapter. His main purpose in this chapter seems very clear that he’s trying to portray religion as something vague, nonsense and immoral as a whole. At the end of the chapter he also gives some latest examples as well which will be analyzed below in the analysis. Analysis: First of all, talking about trinity and Jesus being acclaimed the son of God by some Christian faiths, this seems inappropriate indeed and rightly so many modern day Christians doesn’t believe in this doctrine at all, neither it is mentioned anywhere in the bible that Jesus is the physical son of God and is partner with God in His divinity. That’s the reason why many learned modern day Christian professors deny this notion of Jesus being the physical son of God, instead they interpret the term son as the ‘beloved’ of God and the chosen one, this indeed is the way bible describes many other people in it as ‘sons’ of God meaning the beloved of Him, so there’s no trinity in that case. One such name is Professor Dr. Herman Roborgh 1 who gives such interpretation of son of God word used in the bible. Secondly, coming to the immoral texts from the bible, so it has to be made sure that only the authentic material is under discussion in intellectual debates. Bible has never claimed it to be the word of God, rather it claims Jesus to be the word of God, the bible is the historical record which some people narrated in their way, some of them quoted it in an immoral way too, so God is not responsible for the words of people, adding to it, it is not established at first the God said 1

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whatever is in the bible, so when it is not established that God said it, then He’s not responsible either for whatever is in it. For example, the gospels in the new testaments i.e. Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are from Mathew, Mark, Luke and John and not from God, neither it is claimed anywhere in there in the bible something like that. Furthermore, Mr. Dawkins quotes the incident of sacrifice of prophet Abraham’s son, Ishmael according to Islam and Isaac according to Christianity. He condemns this act, but let us take an example of a wife who wants check the loyalty and love of her husband, what she does is she asks her husband to either sacrifice his friendship with his childhood friend or either leave her. The husband who loves his wife agrees to leave the friend for his love, at seeing this the wife says it’s ok you can keep your friend, I just wanted to check my importance in your life and I got that, at hearing this the husband hugs his wife to let him had his friend, both embraced each other with love and the end of story. Did you find anything wrong in the story? Now apply the same on the incident of sacrifice of Abraham with his son and God wanting to check the loyalty and love of his prophet Abraham with him, once Abraham got ready for the act ordered by his Lord, the Lord accepted his sacrificial intentions for his God and let him have his son. Anything wrong with the story? The last of the points where the author quotes why the Saudi authorities are building Mecca by demolishing the old town, I mean, are you even serious? What does God had to do with it! So, hereby the chapter describes the so claimed immoral values in the scriptures, it should be well noted that the secular world today lacks behind the most in moral values, the west is nowhere today in terms of moral/family values, only commercial ethics are used for personal gains or financial advantages but no real guidelines are there in personal lives of people. Similarly, black sheep are in every

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community, every group of people whether religious or secular so pin pointing any doesn’t makes sense. 2.12. Chapter 8 – “What’s Wrong with Religion? Why be so Hostile”? This chapter again is used as a medium to criticize religious teachings. Mr. Dawkins claim that religions are fundamentalist and their followers are sterile, while he tries to justify homosexuality as well which all the Semitic religions condemns. He has given some examples from the Muslim past history, quoted some black sheep form the community again, tried to link Islam with extremism because of that and gave a much satisfied look (cheers mate) by quoting all that. Analysis: Firstly, Mr. Dawkins, if he’s so liberal then why he tries to interfere in lives of people at first? He even seems interested in sex positions and is devastated on the missionary (the most pleasurable according to a research). While again quoting different cultures is not an intelligent thing to do because there are hundreds of different cultures in the world and all have different acts and practices, why wasting your time on it! Secondly, coming to the point of encouraging your troops in the battlefield, take an example, if you’ve been invaded by someone in your homeland and you need to defend yourself at the same time you desperately want to settle the panic in your troops and your people, set religion aside for a minute, what is the best thing you can do? Would you say to your army that go in the battlefield and fight with no reward, or would you encourage them with some reward? Would you say if you die you’ll be forgotten or would you say you’ll be remembered and kept alive in our thoughts and prayers forever? Of course 47

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you’ll do the later and this is what God has done in the Quran and His promise is the most just and the most honest one, God says in the Quran: “And say not of those who are slain in the way of Allah: "They are dead." Nay they are living though ye perceive (it) not.” (2:154) (2) When an eternal promise is made by the most honest, it creates wonders like it did in the wars of Muslims at the time of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) where the Muslims defeated 10 times bigger armies than them! Similarly, Mr. Dawkins quoted Ibn Warraq, with another misleading and incorrect historical fact, they claim that only the wars and times of the beginning of the times of Islam were less brutal and the wars of later times were more bloody and violent. While facts state that after gaining the ultimate power Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) marched towards Mecca with his companions to take his homeland back, he had all the power and that was the later part of Islam in the life of the Prophet, he passed away shortly after that, and despite of having the right and power to take revenge, what did the Prophet do? He forgave all his enemies! He forgave everyone! And there was peace in the city of Mecca! God says in the Quran: “Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors.” (2:190) (3) And “Therefore, if they withdraw from you but fight you not, and (instead) send you (Guarantees of) peace, then Allah Hath opened no way for you (to war against them).” (4:90) (4) So, a golden rule is given in the Quran by God almighty that fight only those people who fight you i.e. the people who wants to create mischief on the land by waging a war. And 48

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give peace to the ones who want peace and it is prohibited to fight anyone who offers peace. This is indeed the best ever statements that could ever be made on war laws! Many people’s lives would’ve been saved if governments would have implemented this rule in the brutal world wars! This chapter shows the real atheistic ideology of intolerance and presents a propaganda of religious fundamentalism. Like every worker in the company strictly abides by the rules of business of the company, and that employ which is the most adherent to the rules is considered the best, then why isn’t the same approach is followed in religion where the one who strictly follows is religion should only be called a good devotee of the religion and not fundamentalist. While homosexuality has been considered unethical historically by the majority of people regardless of their religious affiliations and it destroys families and family systems, so because of the negative effects it has on the society and the morality of a person, it is highly condemned by religions. All these three chapters i.e. chapters 6,7 and 8 are combined in a way that they all exhibit and present the same kind of arguments and same ideologies. All three of them are on the social and moral discussions and the effects of religion, good or bad, on the society. Hence these three chapters should be combined together by the reader for a better understanding and analysis and to extract a better outcome from the analysis itself. 2.13. Chapter 9 – “Childhood, Abuse and the escape from Religion”: A chapter which needed a separate analysis because of its kinky nature. Mr. Dawkins again puts some light on some real life incidents and tries to prove a point. The point is that religions, whether Christianity or Islam, they promote sexual violence of all kinds, child abuse, female exploitation and 49

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male dominance to sum it up. This, according to Mr. Dawkins prove that there is no God! Analysis: First of all, the acts of people do not effect on whatever they’re adherent to as a person. Like the violation of the law of a country by a citizen doesn’t makes the law incorrect, similarly, the evil acts and misunderstanding of religious scriptures by their followers doesn’t makes the religion incorrect. Human beings themselves are not perfect in any regard, so how can one expect perfection from the followers and adherents of the religion only? Why not close a company if an employ makes a mistake? If you want to close the religion because of the bad acts or misinterpretations of its followers. Anyhow, the bad and evil acts should be condemned whether committed by theists or atheists. 2.14. Chapter 10 – “A much needed Gap”? This final chapter presents the same ideology as the previous book presented. There has been a lots of repeating in the book, same ideas, same presentation with the same kind of arguments and same approach and ideology. This chapter is no different in any way from the rest of the book. Analysis: Mr. Dawkins says that it is a belief that God provides consolation for people of their mishaps, injustice and missed opportunities, he also says that it is a belief that all the inspirations in the world, all the encouragements and all the hope comes from God. He says it is not true but didn’t provide any strong proof against this proven fact. It has been the case 50

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all over in the book, like sometimes when Mr. Dawkins says that cosmology doesn’t confirms God, but doesn’t gives any reference or concrete evidence to deny this. Just gives theories and assumptions, as the book finishes in it. 2.15. Scientific Points: As far as the scientific points are concerned in the book, which is a vast majority of the book, they revolve around some very specific things. The Darwinian evolution, theory of natural selection, Einstein’s ideology of God and the cosmological arguments. To put them in a specific manner as well and to introduce them and analyze them briefly, an overall discussion on them would be presented in the following. Chapter 1: Starting again with the chapters one by one for a scientific analysis this time. The first chapter mostly doesn’t offer much scientific points but only gives quotations from some scientists instead, Mr. Dawkins have mostly relied on Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan in this chapter and have given statements from them to provide a supportive narrative with his stance of atheism. Analysis: 2.16. Quotations of Scientists instead of Scientific Quotations: Mr. Dawkins quotes Carl Sagan, the American astronomer and according to him his partner in faith. But let us first see what Carl Sagan has to say about his beliefs, Sagan said: “I am an agnostic”

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(Jim Dawson, the Demon-Haunted World, Minneapolis StarTribune, March 2, 1996) (5) So, Sagan wasn’t sure of his beliefs either, neither he said that he’s an atheist but said that he’s an agnostic. An agnostic is the person who not sure about the existence of God, agnostics say that maybe God exist or maybe He doesn’t, their core belief is that a human being can’t know about God exactly so God is unknowable in agnosticism. So, the question arises here that if Sagan hasn’t claimed himself to be an atheist, why does Mr. Dawkins tries to prove him one? What is the need to provide the quotations of a person who is agnostic and doesn’t considers the knowledge of God reachable to human beings. Secondly, Mr. Dawkins has failed the scientific process here by not coming up with scientific facts but just quotes from scientists trying to give a touch of science instead created a fallacy. Chapter 2: This chapter is a so claimed hypothesis for God. Mr. Dawkins tries to create some arguments out of nothing to defy God. He puts forward some arguments form the experimental sciences and others from the social sciences, the result is an alleged disproval for God and His presence. Analysis: 2.17. NOMA, Prayer and Evolution: What does NOMA brings to you, an evolutionary scientist asks. It brings no God hypothesis, he answers himself. We live in a world which now can be graded as a scientific world, but still those people who should have stuck to science the most, turns away from it the most when it comes to God and theology. Take the example of the prayer experiment. It the 52

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part of psychology, neurology and biology to deal with effects of certain actions of humans effecting their behavior, health and wellbeing. Now what implies on the prayer effect on a human being? Does it make him better, things stay the same or it worsens? According to the Centra State Hospital, "the psychological benefits of prayer may help reduce stress and anxiety, promote a more positive outlook, and strengthen the will to live." (Source: Wikipedia) (6) So, in plain words, Mr. Dawkins want people to die? Or to live happily? Of course we believe he’d want them to live happily because he worries about them so much, then why does he wants to take away God from them and take their hopes away? What does or what can he give people in return by taking God away from them? The last of the points is evolution, and as Mr. Dawkins said himself that he became atheist after knowing and reading about the theory of evolution, and according to him Darwin’s theory of evolution gave people the perfect believe of atheism, this argument gives the idea of how weak is the belief structure of Mr. Dawkins and atheists is, as they put their trust in a theory, what if this theory is disproved in the future scientifically? Theories do get cancelled, papers are revoked every year, what if it happens to the theory of evolution too? Scientists do approve and disprove each other’s theories pretty often, what if another scientist comes and disproves Darwin’s theory? What’d Mr. Dawkins do then? Could he return the time he wasted of people just behind a theory? Can he return that time? Or can he take the people gone to hell because of him? Would he take their responsibility on his shoulders on the judgement day? Chapter 3: Mr. Dawkins discusses arguments for God’s existence. He provides different kinds of arguments in this chapter, discusses the creation story of the bible but doesn’t touches 53

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the Quran at all. He provides a rough sketch of the arguments of creationists and refutes them in his way. The chapter can be given the centrifugal point the book. Analysis: 2.18. Creationism and Scriptures: In the beginning of the chapter, Mr. Dawkins tries to provide the cosmological argument against God’s existence but without completing his argument, he directly moves to the ontological argument section to analyze theists and their beliefs. The first question which arises is that why didn’t Mr. Dawkins provided the epistemic arguments of theists on God’s existence and His creation especially? Because the answer to his questions was in the epistemic arguments which he missed intentionally, what can we call it? intellectual dishonesty? Coming to the scriptural explanation of creation, again it’s an unscientific approach to quote a document which doesn’t claims to be from the author himself, similar is the case with the bible as it is from the historians and people who wrote it centuries after the person to which a specific book is attributed to in both the testaments. The book which claims to be from God almighty directly i.e. the Quran, he didn’t touch it at all, maybe intentionally again by fear of losing the argument! Chapter 4: So why there’s no God? Mr. Dawkins tries to justify it in this chapter by using the most scientific terms in this chapter, the arguments revolve around three things again, evolution, cosmology and anthropology. Some parts of genetics and some of history are also explained in the chapter for justification of the atheistic narrative.

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Analysis: 2.19. Biological Sciences: Mr. Dawkins has used the evolutionary point and the cosmological points again in the chapter (which has been dealt already wouldn’t be repeated), but the biological science point of genetics is a new argument this time. Number one, DNA and RNA’s are complex structures containing vital information of living beings. These are encoded structures which provides each thing for a life when required in his life from placenta to death. These genes and chromosomes are responsible for different traits exhibited by different beings from within a specie or outside a specie. God doesn’t favor or discredit the X chromosome as sarcastically quoted by Mr. Dawkins but He makes these things happen precisely and perfectly. The question arises that how does the cells come to know about mitosis and meiosis in reproduction, how does that information reaches the cells for the very first time, especially in the first human being to non-existing human (before the process of reproduction) inherit the information embedded rightly at right places. The models of God’s creation in and of the genes are also formulated, one such example is by Dr. Nathaniel T. Jeanson and Jeffrey P. Tomkins and their genetic model. Finishing with the point of anthropology and social sciences (the detail of which would be discussed in the later chapter’s analysis), the incidents that occurs accidentally carries no significance in the scientific process until or unless they’re processed upon like when the apple fell on Newton, it didn’t have any significance until Newton formed the law of gravitation! Chapter 5: Mr. Dawkins tries to provide the roots of religion in his 5th chapter. The roots he provided are generally psychological in nature. The author gives evolution a go here again in the 55

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chapter and a touch of biology but tries to relate it with Darwinism. He claims that religion take advantages of the fears of people and it gives greed of reward and attacks directly on the psychic of people. Analysis: 2.20. Psychology and Religion: To begin with, religion, according to Mr. Dawkins doesn’t fits in the biology of humans but in the other hand he contradicts himself by saying that religion targets the weak and emotional parts of a human psychology. Here we should explain the psychology of reward as well, reward in psychology serves as the ‘reinforcer’ 2. Reinforcement means the urge to perform good in acts with the intention of gaining rewards. Now if God ordains right in accordance with the human psychology, why problem Mr. Dawkins have with it? Does he want God to go against the human psychology, punish him always and don’t give him any reward or encouragement to be good? Then what about the law of a country? It makes people fear of violations and encourages people to do good, is the state also playing with minds of people? This is the ultimate match of biological nature of a human being to get encouraged with reward and get afraid of punishment. If you accept the governments act to make laws of reward and punishment, then God’s act is also justified in the same manner. It is natural and right science of psychology! Chapter 6: This chapter deals with the morality scenario, although from this chapter till the end there are no significant scientific 2

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points mentioned or discussed, but they can be dealt under the social sciences banner. So, this chapter mentions the probable roots of morality whether it’s divine or Darwinian and provides reasons to be good even if there’s no God. Analysis: 2.21. Social Sciences: The World Economic Forum states a research “This equation happens even for atheists, who often take up the mores of their culture, which happens to have been influenced heavily by religions they don’t even ascribe to. So it’s not that religion does not affect morality, it’s just that morality also impacts religion.” 3 So, research confirms the relation of religion with morality and the relation of culture on religion. For example, in Islam, a girl can propose a man for marriage as a woman proposed Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) for marriage as well but it is considered immoral in the subcontinent among the Muslims for a girl to propose a man, so there we have an example of culture getting over religion in morality (right or wrong it’s a separate issue). Hence, we can certainly say that it is religion which is the root of morality according to latest researches as well but sometimes culture also effects this mechanism of morality in some cases which can be analyzed in the light of religion too as well. Chapter 7: This is the chapter mentioning biblical ethics and moral values. Although again there are no scientific facts quoted but 3

www.weforum.org › religion-does-not-determine-your-morality

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this can also be graded under the social sciences banner. Social science is also a science so it should be dealt with as well scientifically, although these things could have been mentioned under experimental sciences as well but Mr. Dawkins decided against it. Analysis: 2.22. Social Science Scenario: Here again Mr. Dawkins quotes some of immoral things out of the bible to which a question arises, according to what principle are these things graded as immoral? Who decided these incidents to be immoral in the quotations provide? You’d have to agree that all these things if are immoral then they’re immoral religiously! Not on any other account! When they seem, sounds and are immoral themselves on religious grounds, then the only thing which’d make sense here is that these quotations are not authentically attributed to the names of the books in the bible otherwise they wouldn’t have contradicted the religious believes themselves. Once it is established that whatever immorality is extracted out of the bible is in reality on the base of religion and at the criteria of God’s teachings then what’s the point of getting mad at those apart from authenticity, yes, this is one part which’d have been researched but wasn’t to be. Again when they’re immoral on the basis of religion, it again gives the indication of no systematic or proper moralities present in atheism, they also have to judge on the basis of values given by religion! Chapter 8: This chapter deals with the other aspect of social sciences or morality for that matter i.e. extremism. This point is worth noting that despite of the fact that there are not established morals in atheism, still Mr. Dawkins debated on them very 58

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much and most of the times didn’t even realize that he’s judging on the base of religious moral grounds because the first opposer he’d find against any social issue of immorality, that’d be religion indeed! Mention any bad thing of the society and many find religious rulings staunchly opposing it! Analysis: 2.23. Social Science Again: Here, another thing happened which Mr. Dawkins didn’t realize that he’s mentioning, promoting and advocating a religious stance by pointing a finger over any social issue because why these things are bad because religion made them bad. So first of all thank you to Mr. Dawkins to talk on these issues because it’d just made and help religious stance stronger and would take away misconceptions out of the minds of people and would make their minds clear on religion. Mr. Dawkins say that religion is hostile, just to answer, yes religion is hostile, but to extremism, no religious ruling or teaching makes you an extremist but it happens when a person goes away from the religious teachings! If a scientist doesn’t follow the scientific process and fails in his experiments, whom would you blame? Science or the scientist? Chapter 9: The second last chapter of the book contains some of the real life incidents and contains the mentioning of some of the black sheep of the community. This by the way is itself an unscientific process to take and pin point the bad specimen from the batch and leave all the goods. There are some 6.9 billion religious people in the world, but Mr. Dawkins only see the handful of bad ones and leave all the good ones! Why doesn’t he quote good stories of the religious people at least morally like he mentions that for atheists! 59

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Analysis: 2.24. Sexual Behaviors: As religion has put light on every part of a human’s life, it has also put light on the sexual life of humans. When someone like Mr. Dawkins tries to exploit this part out of religion, he forgets to study its deep teachings on this topic. Sexual life is a part of biology and is an integral part of every sexually reproductive being. Not only it is a cause of reproducing new off springs but it also brings pleasure created by God in it otherwise no one would have done it or would had interest in doing it and the races and life on earth would have come to an end very soon. In different religions and cultures, there are different teachings on sexual lives and sexuality as a whole. It is the most personal matter in a human’s life and has emotional linkages with him as well. Why does Mr. Dawkins want to enter the bed rooms of people at first place? Why does he want to see what couples are doing in the bed room, how they’re doing it and sometimes he even wants to have a look inside the womb to have a look what’s happening inside. Yes, when someone do something bad in the society sexually, he rapes or molests not matter where does it happens, in the church or in the mosque, synagogue or the temple, it must be taken into account as the religions condemns this and have punishments even capital punishments for this act and also the laws of state should also be implemented on this heinous act. Yes, one worth mentioning thing, Mr. Dawkins did see what bad happens at religious centers, but didn’t he ever see that how many rapes happen at clubs every day? Which religious book is being taught at the night clubs? Which priest severs alcohol at the pubs? Why didn’t he mention the larger portion of incidents which happens every day at clubs when 60

Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

people beat rape and after getting drunk and only mentioned an occasional incident which happens on some religious place? It clearly means he’s not interested in saving women from getting raped or tortured but he’s ONLY interested in targeting religion to satisfy his heart. Chapter 10: This last chapter which was expected to be the extract of the book but is otherwise and mentions psychological issues again and doesn’t finishes the job in fact opens many new ones. It was hoped that there would be a result, a summary or some findings on and according to the title ‘God Delusion’ but it was on why God wants to reward people and why’d He give them prizes and good returns. Analysis: 2.25. Psychology Gaped Again: If there is God, hypothetically if we consider that Mr. Dawkins agree to this point, so wouldn’t that be His right to reward people for good and give them prizes for their good deeds? So, the point is having a God and then even if you move ahead you yourself would agree that it is up to the God to do anything and give return of good for good and bad for bad. So, indeed people are inspired through God and have an emotional expectation of receiving good rewards for their good deeds as promised by God. If it’s not the case that people won’t receive any consolations from God, then wouldn’t the world be an unjust place to live in? So God rightly so with His justice, gave people the hope of reward and this inspired the psychology of humans to do their works in a good manner, to be punctual, to don’t rape, don’t steal, don’t kill and be good in all your works. In the end it all comes to whether God is there or not 61

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and the rest of the things becomes unquestionable that are to follow only after getting the answer to this question. Hence, in this last chapter Mr. Dawkins should have tried to do that and have ended with the findings against God which he was unable to do, and God stood as high as He was before this book, exalted as He is and Gracious as He’s always have been! Just to summarize the scientific points mentioned in these chapters, a summary of them is mentioned below: 2.26. Is Morality an Unspiritual Affair? Why be moral without a spiritual allegiance? When you’re not going to have an eternal payback for your morality then what’s the point of morality at first place? And what morality is by the way without spirituality? Who made it? Who made its SOP’s? When was it invented? Who was the inventor? We know that inventor of spiritual-religious morality is God himself, but keeping man made laws at one side (no matter how moral or immoral they are) what are the basics and place of morality as a whole in there? Specially for someone who doesn’t considers spiritual morality as something binding. For example, if no one’s watching you, why would and how would you stop from committing a crime? Imagine someone is in a jungle where there’s no one, no law no witnesses, you being a human go on to impose the law of jungle on someone and kill or rape anyone. Is it justified? If not, then why would you stop if no one’s watching and you can’t get caught? This is where the role of spiritual morality comes where it doesn’t matter there is an uncovered area in terms of law or there’s not witness to your crime, you still won’t commit the crime because the divine morality is always activated and its sense is around you wherever you go. And that is what would stop you from committing a crime and make you a morally sound member of the society.

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2.27. Einstein’s Ideology of God: Mr. Dawkins puts all his eggs in one basket, i.e. the basket of Einstein. He presents the views of Einstein on God and backs them with all his power and force. What exactly are the views of Einstein, not on theory of relativity but on religion is a big question to ask. He, like Mr. Dawkins was not an expert of theology. Like Mr. Dawkins is an Ethologist, Einstein was a physicist. His comments on theology would just be considered as his opinion in that case. Like Mr. Dawkins has quoted Einstein, he has tried to portray him as kind of an infallible personality, forget about theology, just only to talk about his scientific views, we find out that modern scientists like Mark Buchanan and Stuart Clark have refuted the scientific views and theories of Einstein including theory of relativity. (7) Moreover the International NAC Society has disproved Einstein’s theory of relativity with their findings. (8) So, a person whose work is highly criticized even in his field of work then how can the opinions and comments of that same be acceptable blindly on some other field specially i.e. theology. 2.28. Cosmology: Out of the cosmological arguments which Mr. Dawkins gave in the book, it is well understood that he has put those arguments as the second main pillar of his atheistic viewpoints. According to the author, when he sees in the skies and galaxy, he sees no God or a grand design. He is by default an anti-creationist. So, it is pretty evident that he will do his best to deny creationism theory. As far as the creation of the heavens and the earth is concerned, all the Semitic religions are unanimous and have explained with great detail the creation of the heavens and the earth. While all that has been explained in God delusion has been a secondary issue and the primary issue hasn’t been touched to begin with. As the 63

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theory says that matter can neither be created nor be destroyed but only changes its forms, from where does the primary nebula came from then? This is a big question which wasn’t answered in the book. If an ideology is based and presented on the basis of conjuncture and assumptions, then what scientific proofs one could expect to be presented afterwards. It should have been the case that if the author doesn’t believe in creationism then he should have provided a substitute and a complete map of affairs which happened to make the universe despite of just quoting from other people and relying on their specific and non-decisive opinions. If we answer all the points presented by the author against creationism, then it would be that whatever you believe that the universe came into being like that, God ordered it to be made this way, then it’d be enough as an answer and the claimant would be left with no further answer or explanation to it. 2.29. Darwin and his theory of Evolution’s Working Scenario: Charles Darwin, (died 1882) a biologist, was the person who introduced the concept of natural selection among species and developed the theory of evolution for the first time. This theory gained much appreciation and reckoning throughout the world and many people got impressed by it in times to follow. One of those persons is Mr. Dawkins himself. He is the who is much impressed by the idea presented by Darwin and in his book God delusion he made that theory a base of his arguments. The way this theory has been presented in the book is a point to note. It has been portrayed as a fact rather than a theory. Religions also don’t deny evolution as a whole but the point of disagreement is in the details of it. All the Semitic religions presents the same ideology of human creation as God made Adam (the first human being according to them) with His own hands. The point presented before as 64

Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

well can be presented now too, that even if evolution took place and we agree to its all types for the sake of arguments, then how does and how can it deny the existence of God? If, according to the evolutionists, humans came into being through a gradual and continuous process of evolution, from simpler to complex, unicellular to multicellular, from bacteria to fish some stages after and resulting in humans as a result, even then how does it denies the existence of God? Only one sentence again is enough to answer this, that God ordained it to happen like this and it happened this way. The scientists, including Mr. Dawkins doesn’t believe in the religious story of creation anyway then leave that aside for a minute, but how do they deny this and say with certainty that there’s no God? Which of the parts of the theory of evolution tells that? If there is no evidence for it then it’d be rather easy to adopt this view that believe in evolution and believe in God as well! Isn’t it? 2.30. Contradictions: The prime contradictions in the book comes from the main idea of ‘God Delusion’. As the title implies, there should be a concrete evidence to prove that God is a delusion, instead the book mostly refers to the flaws in actions of the followers of specific religions. In addition to it, when some of the scientific references against the existence of God are given, they only stick to the theories of creation while God is not limited to creation only. God, in theology is a supreme being which is responsible for all the supernatural things around the universe, if someone comes to know the processes of some of the phenomenon like how rain falls or how a baby is born, how does it nullifies the presence of divine intervention in all that. On the two points on which the book lies and where its basis is formed, are the ones which are the weakest in terms of factual reasoning. Does a rational argument not cover all the probabilities of a debate? then how does Mr. Dawkins rules out the probability of God’s existence on a theory of 65

Dr. Omer Farooq Saeed

evolution which all the three Semitic religions don’t deny as a whole. In the whole book, the author hasn’t discussed the probability ratio of or against God’s existence. On the other hand, coming to the theory of evolution, the basics of evolution are covered inside the creation stories of Semitic religions. Only the references of Semitic religions are being here mostly because Mr. Dawkins have mainly attacked Semitic religions himself. So, for example, in a prophetic tradition in Islam, it is narrated that prophet Adam was 60 hands tall when he was created. (9) But man today is only 6 feet tall, it proves evolution occurring throughout time in human history. So, it becomes a big contradiction when Mr. Dawkins doesn’t even touch the stance of religions on evolution, did not narrate a single opinion of a religious scientist or theologian, and comes up to a conclusion on his own! But still the workload of providing proofs and the burden of tolerance to cope with the delusion title on God is laid down on the theists themselves. Even though, the theists are ready to reconcile, but only if the atheists talk rationally and are ready to present both sides of the coin in differing topics. It will be a case of high concern if the approach is not fixed and the contradictions like referring to the irony of proof and burdening oneself with the all in all approach of being a judge, jury and jurist is not dealt with. If the given problem is fixed, then researchers from both side would be in a position to cope with the overall scenario of conflict situation in God’s debates. It is the only conflict management criteria among intellectual discussions in scientific research proposals and philosophy. 2.31. Conclusion: This chapter draws us closer to a conclusion that the book written by Richard Dawkins, lacks an unbiased and progressive, reconciling and research methodology oriented approach. The book generally revolves around an illusion 66

Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

being formed in the mind of the author that God somehow doesn’t exit and he should do everything he can do to prove its nonexistence. For this purpose, he takes each and every available source against God no matter how irrelevant or irrational it is and tries to draw a conclusion after bit of quote and every bit of his own commentary on it. He puts forward many ‘evidences’ of the social problems of the society as ‘conclusive evidence’ and presents drawbacks of religions and proves that is why there is no God, which of course seems like a far cry with these arguments. He completely forgets or intentionally doesn’t presents the drawbacks of atheism in the society, doesn’t present the quotes or arguments of the theists and religions, doesn’t present the complete picture, which is like not giving the accused a chance of defense in the court and issues verdict and convicts all the religions and billions of theists alike in the world. How this can be an acceptable approach, it’s up to you, the reader.

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References: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Dawkins, R (2006), God Delusion, The Preface, Great Britain: Bantam Press. Al Quran, Surah Al Baqarah, Chapter 2, Verse 154 (Sahih International). Al Quran, Surah Al Baqarah, Chapter 2, Verse 190 (Sahih International). Al Quran, Surah Al Nisa, Chapter 4, Verse 90 (Sahih International). Dawson, J. (1996) The Demon-Haunted World, Minneapolis Star-Tribune. En.Wikipedia.org > Pschological-benefits-of-Prayer https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026801-500why-einstein-was-wrong-about-relativity/ Challenge to the special theory of relativity, NAC Society, Published on Physics Essays. Sahih Al Bukhari, Hadith no.246 (2020).

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CHAPTER 3 3.1. Evolution and its History: Evolution is simply defined as “The ability of living beings to pass on and transfer their specific traits to the next generation with some changes occurring at each stage”. These occurring changes are called mutation and the process is called evolution. This idea was first presented by a French Biologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck in the 19th century. (1) Although some of the details he provided were wrong but the concept first formed was by him primarily. After Lamarck, it was two British biologists, Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin who formed the formal theory of evolution based on natural selection. (2) Wallace and Darwin formed their theories individually and added much details regarding transfer of characteristics through the process of natural selection and provided a new concept and ideology in the field of biology. But Darwin’s theory became much more famous and adopted because of his notes which he described from when he was travelling from place to place and noting changes and theorizing their natural adaptations and hence changings occurring by a result of it. According to Darwin, some of the animals which he noted like snake, he said that snakes used to had hands and feet but with the course of time the hands and feet vanished for a better adaptation in the environment. Similarly, he said that giraffes used to have small necks but with the passage of time their necks prolonged to survive in the environment. Here he also presents a theory of ‘Survival of the Fittest’. This theory states that only the fittest beings in the environment survives and other beings gets extinct. For this purpose, different beings adapt environment accordingly and changes themselves gradually to survive, the beings which are able to do it, survives, and the other vanishes with time, and this process 69

Dr. Omer Farooq Saeed

as a whole is called evolution. He also states that human beings evolved from apes, and this is the mirage of evolution. Evolution itself is a slow and gradual process and it takes time, so much of time that a simple and small change takes millions of years to complete. Hence the evolution of humans from apes also took millions of years, so no historic or documented evidence is available for it but only circumstantial and archeological evidence is presented in this theory. The archeological argument presents the fossils of Neanderthals as the in between link among humans and apes during evolution, but the problem again arises that the human beings are found today, apes are here, but where are the Neanderthals? It can also be possible that the so claimed fossils of Neanderthals are the fossils of some other extinct animals, mistakenly taken to be the in between evolutionary stage of human development. Hence Darwin’s theory got more famous, but the effects it had are famously said to be that ‘the people who followed Darwin, became more Darwinian than Darwin himself’. This sarcasm means that Darwin himself wasn’t so staunch on his stances and was found to be confused most of the times and indecisive the other times, but the people who followed/follows him, the likes of Mr. Dawkins, became staunch in their stances on evolution hence were called to be more Darwinian than Darwin himself. We saw this in fact in the God Delusion as well where the author presented his views solely on Darwinian evolution, which of course is ‘A Theory’ and became decisive in extracting results from the idea of evolution, which in turn were the ‘findings’ of Darwin after his journeys and didn’t underwent any proper in vivo or biological processing or experimentations.

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3.2. Do Religions Reject Evolution: Now here comes a big question, do the religions reject evolution? Or which of them accept or which reject? The answer is very simple - the Semitic religions do not reject evolution as a whole. As there is detail and difference of opinion among scientists on evolution as well, similarly there is some detail and some differing opinions among religions on evolution too. All religions do not accept all types of evolution as a whole and all of them don’t deny them completely as whole too. 1. Judaism: In the 19th century after the development of theory of evolution systematically, the majority of Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism came to accept the existence of evolution as a scientific fact. They interpreted Genesis and related Jewish teachings in light of this fact. The first chapter in the Jewish bible is regarding the creation and is named ‘Genesis’ which is synonymous to creation. Lately, many verses of that chapter have been related to evolution. This resulted in a modern and scientific interpretation of the Jewish bible a build the narrative of creation in accordance with modern science. A list of those Jewish scholars who have written extensively on it are: •

“Nathan Aviezer: In the Beginning, Biblical Creation and Science; Fossils and Faith: Understanding Torah and Science

•

Aryeh Carmell and Cyril Domb, ed.: Challenge: Torah Views on Science and Its Problems

•

Daniel E. Friedmann: The Genesis One Code: Demonstrates a clear alignment between the times of key events described in the Genesis with those derived from scientific observation. and The Broken Gift: Harmonizing the Biblical and scientific accounts of human origins 71

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•

Aryeh Kaplan: Immortality, Resurrection and the Age of the Universe: A Kabbalistic View

•

Yehuda Levi: Torah and Science - Their Interplay in the World Scheme

•

Jonathan Sacks: The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search For Meaning

•

Gerald Schroeder: Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible; The Science of God

•

Natan Slifkin: The Challenge of Creation” (3)

2. Christianity: "I'm an evolutionary biologist and a Christian," states Stanford professor Joan Roughgarden in his book ‘Evolution and Christian Faith – Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist’. (4) Similarly, Christians such as Gray maintained that God had providentially arranged the biological processes of evolution to bring about God's purposes. (5) An evangelical researcher Denis R Alexander, writes that it’s up to the scientists to find out link between evolution and religion, religion has described the phenomenon already, it is science who is to gap or create that link between evolution and religion and established a proper systemic connection among them. 3. Islam: It is pretty evident in Islam that evolution has occurred. It is mentioned in a prophetic tradition that the first human i.e. Adam was 60 hands tall (6) and a normal human today is 6 feet tall, hence homogenous evolution is proved from the Islamic sources. Moreover, Muslim scholars like Daniel Haqiqatjou, (7) a graduate from Harvard, believes strongly in 72

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evolution. He has written papers in favor of it namely “Can Islam Object to Evolution? Valuating Human-Chimp Genetic Similarity” (8). Hence the Islamic stance on evolution is also very clear that it has occurred and Islam don’t object to it. Even the premium Islamic sources like Hadith confirms this phenomenon. So, it is concluded that all the Semitic religions supports the phenomenon of evolution. At some level, particular or specific, religions support the idea of evolution. So, this theory is not alien to religion neither they have ever rejected it, in fact it is being taught in their schools/colleges/universities in all countries whether Jewish, Christian or Islamic. So, how does and why does Mr. Dawkins accuse religions against evolution? How does he say that because evolution occurred so God do not exist whereas evolution is part of religions and their literature. It is that where evolutionists also differ on some parts of evolution, similarly, religions also have some concerns on some parts of evolution. But when religions are in support of it that God created living beings like it, how can Mr. Dawkins deny these facts and claim there is no God when religion are in favor and supports the evolution idea and believes in God at the same time, so what is the problem then? How does believing in God becomes a problem from Mr. Dawkins then? His main argument of evolution is accepted in religions, so it that he’s only not accepting God because he’s allergic to it? is it an allergy of the name of God? If that’s the case then there are many names of God, in Islam alone there are no less than 99 names for God (9), he can opt for any of them which he likes, or is it the problem of faith in Him? Only Mr. Dawkins himself can tell this! 3.3. What Evolution Really is Biologically: As the reproduction of living beings occur, whether asexually or sexually, they undergo some natural changes caused by either environment or changes occur in genetic makeup itself 73

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which is called mutation. These genetic changes are considered a natural process and normal phenomenon and it takes thousands of years sometimes for one small simple change, and other times the mutations in traits occur from one offspring to another like eye color, hair texture etc. But the changes which occurs as a result of severity of the environment or which the habitat compels is named as a phenomenon known as ‘Survival of the Fittest’. Charles Darwin presented the idea of survival of the fittest in his theory of evolution. He proposed that when animals living in a jungle suffers to the toughness of the environment and the difficulties to survive in there, they start to undergo some changes in them develop features which suites them to adapt to the situation around them in the environment. Out of such examples, according to Darwin, notably are the giraffes, snakes, apes, fish and many birds. He described that many animals underwent changes with the passage of time to survive in the environment and those who couldn’t adapt, didn’t survive either like dinosaurs. Similarly, the birds developed long beaks or feathers with respect to the habitat available around them. But the problem occurred where he developed the ideology that humans also evolved from apes as a result of evolution and his given stance sparked controversy. As the religions believe that God created man with His own hands and the first man was named Adam, (9) the stance of Darwin on human creation stirred discomfort and controversy among religions as Darwin himself belonged to a practicing Christian family. One of the solid arguments given by religious scholars even at the time of formulation of the theory of evolution in the 19th century was that how Darwin can give such a big statement or form an ideology based on only his observations from his voyage to some islands. Whereas this big claim (though scientific in nature) needs proper scientific backings and concrete proofs to be accepted. 74

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As science developed so much recently, it has provided and added many more arguments on evolution but at the time of Darwin, science was still in its developing stages and no supportive arguments or proofs were available at that time for Darwin. Because of this very reason, the rift between biological science and religion started because the straight meaning of the theory of evolution was if human developed from apes, then God of course didn’t create human and hence there is no God and no religion effectively as well. But as the science developed, it was found that human creation, if considered to be happened in different evolving phases, it doesn’t rule out God or His existence. Similarly, as more understanding between scientists and religious scholars developed, religions adopted the view that even in the case of evolution, the interference of God in creation (or human creation to be exact) is not ruled out, and this is also what the scientific process is also, it doesn’t rule out probabilities after the development of certain theories of them to be absolutely right or absolutely wrong. If the theory of evolution says that apes started to grow intelligent with the passage of time and developed into humans eventually going through different phases of evolution, then religion asks for conclusive evidence from science on it, may it be through fossils or circumstantial evidence, but there should be something at least, not merely an observation or theory. This shows that now it doesn’t happen to be a rift, but an intellectual and education cum discussion of the scientific process to be exact. Hence even here, there’s no fight or bigotry of the other as Mr. Dawkins claim. 3.4. The story of Fossils: Then there is a long story of fossil debates. The evolutionists claim that there are fossils available which proves that the human creation occurred as a result of evolution. While the creationists also claim that many fossil evidences are 75

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available that humans didn’t evolve from other species but were created as such. Now to analyze the situation, it is well noted that the main hold of evolutionists is that preliminary evolution is proved and established through experimentation and well noted through the whole reproductive process in vivo. The problem still occurs where the intermediate fossils of each stage are not found at all. Evolutionists claim that Intermediate-Form organisms with abnormal structures once lived, but not a single one of their fossils exists. For example, it is claimed that the fish evolved into frog undergoing at least four intermediate stages, but none of the fossils of those four stages are available. Similarly, it is also said that the frog evolved into lizard through four distinct stages, no fossils of these four stages are available. Quite surprisingly, it is also claimed that the lizard evolved into rabbit undergoing three proper stages of evolution, but the fossils of all three stages are not available at all. There are even terminologies formed on this ideology where ‘half reptile – half fish’ creatures are considered to have existed, but no fossil evidence of such an organism have ever been found. Now, on the other hand, the fossil evidence against evolution are many. The creationists have presented plenty of concrete evidences against any type of inter specie evolution or hetero genus evolution. According to evolutionists, whales and elephants, butterflies and ants, orchids and nettles, humans and fish, all supposedly share one same common ancestor. Some of the latest scientific fossil analysis also provides evidence that the fossils mistaken to be the fossils of Neanderthals are in reality the fossils of homo erectus skulls, the human race which exist even today. Hence whether the fossil be millions of year old or a present day structure, the hetero genus evolution is not proved by anyway through fossil record. Whereas, there are numerous evidences for no change in structures of living beings available through fossil record even today, the detail of some of which is given in the table below: 76

Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

Name of Specie

Time - Location

Fossil Record

1.

Mushroom

100 million year - Myanmar

No Change

2.

Ant Lion

100 million year - Myanmar

No Change

3.

Scorpion Fly

100 million year - Myanmar

No Change

4.

Marsh Beetle

50 million year - Poland

No Change

5.

Snail Shell

100 million year - Myanmar

No Change

6.

Flutter Fly

50 million year - Poland

No Change

7.

Reptilian Foot

100 million year - Myanmar

No Change

8.

Dwarf Six-eyed Spider

50 million year - Poland

No Change

9.

False Flower Beetle

50 million year - Poland

No Change

10.

Bee Fly

50 million year - Poland

No Change

11.

Turkey Gnat

50 million year - Poland

No Change

12.

Hyena Skull

73 million year - China

No Change

13.

Lynx Skull

65 million year - China

No Change

14.

Jackal Skull

51 million year - Taiwan

No Change

15.

Leopard Skull

73 million year - China

No Change

16.

Zebra Skull

45 million year - China

No Change

17.

Raccoon Skull

43 million year - China

No Change

18.

Monkey Skull

32 million year - China

No Change

19.

Fish Marten Skull

78 million year - China

No Change

20.

Cheetah Skull

73 million year - China

No Change

21.

Tasmanian Devil Skull

32 million year - China

No Change

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Dr. Omer Farooq Saeed

22.

Turtle

98 million year - China

No Change

23.

Polar Bear Skull

74 million year - China

No Change

24.

Ash Leaf

23.5 million year - Spain

No Change

25.

Araucarian Cone

178 million year - Argentina

No Change

26.

Juniper Leaf

5.8 million year - Bulgaria

No Change

27.

Apple Leaf

50 million year - Canada

No Change

28.

Cherry Laurel Leaf

50 million year - Canada

No Change

29.

Filefish

4 million year - Italy

No Change

30.

Octopus

95 million year - Lebanon

No Change

31.

Sea Horse

4 million year - Italy

No Change

32.

Kill Fish

3 million - USA

No Change

33.

Squirrel Fish

50 million year - Italy

No Change

34.

Wolf Herring

95 million year – Lebanon

No Change

35.

Shrimp

150 million year - Germany

No Change

All these species ranging from over 170 million years to 3 million odd years old have been studied thoroughly by scientists from their found fossils and the present day specie occurrence in terms of all their sizes, shapes and structures and found that over the past millions of years, no change of any kind have occurred in these living beings which could be deemed as evolution, hence no evolution occurred even in that vast period of time. In these fossil studies, it is noticed that a variety of all types of living things are examined, from plants to insects, and from sea life to jungle animals. A worth noticeable point is that those animals which are considered to be the most endangered animals, i.e. endangered to get extinct in present times like polar bears and leopards etc. are also present in the study, now even if these endangered animals haven’t undergone any evolution (noted through 78

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study of their fossils) then how could those animals would have undergone any evolution which were doing alright in the environment, which of course is the demand of survival of the fittest theory which is the basis of evolution according to Darwin. Another interesting fact noted is that monkey, which is considered the anthropoid animal to human is also present in the study and haven’t undergone any evolution or “became human” in the course time (of millions of years). And for the unbiased opinion, just to prove it if someone do object on the authenticity of the studies, most of these studies have been performed in China, which is a majority agnostic country, so being biased religiously is the last thing which they could do, moreover this research and these statistics are available online for everyone to witness, they reference link of one of which is given in the footnote below. 4 3.5. Role of Primates: It is well known right from the beginnings of the documented histories that the first human beings were complex in nature and distinctly and absolutely different from other primates. The monkeys, lemurs, apes and chimps were always simpler and limited to jungles in terms of habitats as compared to the humans. The nature of these animals was to live over the trees, eat and sleep, no progress no planning no framework for futures. Yes, hunting is one part similar in them with the humans but the nature of hunting is still different in humans and other animals, not to forget that the lions are renowned to be the best hunters of the jungle who doesn’t uses any weapons and are made that way to hunt by their own, apes were always nowhere near in the list of best hunters of the jungles. Now, coming to the most important part, the migration. Robert Cohen (10) describes the nature of 4

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migration of the primates from the beginning of human race in his book Migration, the study reveals that the human societies, their habitats and their inhabitants were always different, complex and distinct from other animals in terms of migration (primarily) specially from other primates. It gives a clear indication that humans were never the same or at least had any matching qualities as compared to other animals and primates, especially on social and cultural levels. This point gives a big dent to the bus of Mr. Dawkins! 3.6. Providence of Primary Nebula as Raw Material: 3.7. Before Big Bang The point where we start to discuss we move often directly move to the secondary phase of creation which is the big bang. But what happens is that we skip to discuss the primary phase of creation which is the providence of the raw material which resulted in something big, a huge mass which exploded causing the formation of the galaxies and solar systems. Why does this primary phase of creation is not discussed? How does the mass first started to develop and got so big that it created everything? When it developed, was it by itself, if yes then how? From where did the raw material come from? In the field of manufacturing, it is the basic job and need to provide the raw material, and the universe or the multiverse didn’t need it? How! The only rational answer to it can be that the primary basic raw material was provided by the creator, the manufacturers would agree, and if you agree to a creator here, then why not afterwards! 3.8. Own Goal in Paleontology: One decisive explanation from two scientists of the highest level and experience, Fred Hoyle and Chandra 80

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Wickramasinghe on the Darwinian evolution is quoted below: “It is not hard to find writings in which the myth is stated that the Darwinian theory of evolution is well proven by the fossil record. But one finds that the higher the technical quality of the writing the weaker the claims that are made. The imperfections are blamed in the best texts, however on the incompleteness of the fossil record, yet if one persists by consulting the geological literature the truth eventually emerges. The fossil record is highly imperfect from a Darwinian point of view, not because of the inadequacies of geologists, but because the slow evolutionary connections required by the theory did not happen. Although paleontologists have recognized this truth for a century or more, they have not been able, in spite of their status as the acknowledged experts in the field to make much of an impression on consensus opinion.” (11) The quote continues: “The rate at which genes coding for polypeptides (e.g. hemoglobin) undergo mutations has been measured in the laboratory to be not greater than 10^5 per generation, which implies a rate for changing individual amino acids in the corresponding polypeptide chain of as little as 10^7 per generation. If only ten amino acids of particular kinds are necessary at particular locations in a polypeptide chain for its proper functioning, the required arrangement (starting from an initially different arrangement) can’t be found by mutations, except as an outrageous fluke. Darwinian evolution is most unlikely to get even one polypeptide right, let alone thousands on which living cells depend for their survival. This situation is well known to geneticists and yet nobody seems prepared to blow the whistle decisively on the theory.” (12) The above quotes, if read carefully, would solve the fossil problem easily. We would have provided the information our self but intentionally quoted two renowned scientists on it in order to make the case neutral. These are decisive comments from the two scientists as they first explained that at first a geological argument i.e. fossil record must not be given to 81

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prove Darwinism. Secondly, they provided information on how imperfect the fossil record is on Darwinian evolution because what Darwin and Darwinists want to prove from that can’t be proven at all. And thirdly, the biological information on the making of polypeptides is clear to every geneticist and student of genetics that the slow evolution makes it impossible to even stake a single gene the way Darwinists explain in all that time. And at the end the two scientists also pointed out their astonishment on why the geneticists don’t speak up on it despite knowing all this, so we can say Mr. Dawkins has scored an own goal by taking the plea of fossil record. Now what he would do? Would he accept this all or still be a rolling stone? 3.9. Is the Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Infallible? Owing to the scientific process, a theory is a ‘theory’ unless proven to be a fact. In intellectual language, an undeniable fact is called universal truth. So the question arises, under what category do Darwinian evolution fall? It is a theory? A fact? Or a universal truth? To get the answer we need to just look at the meanings of all of them. Like what a fact is, for example there is a sun and a moon in the sky, that’s a cosmological fact. A human has two hands and two feet, that’s an anatomical fact. Similarly, a thing which is accepted universally is a universal truth. For example, telling a lie is bad, that’s a universal truth, a human wants love and compassion, that’s a universal truth. Now coming towards a theory, what a theory is? Wikipedia quotes that “A theory is a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking often is associated with such processes like observational study, research.” (13)

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So, by the definition of theory we understand that a contemplative phenomenon which is accompanied by observation or study or research or all three of them or two of them and results in a hypothesis is a theory. This is pure thinking and may or may not lack conclusive evidences at the beginning or at the end of its formulation. Now, applying all the three terminologies to the Darwinian evolution. Is it a fact? The clear cut answer is no because a fact is above any sort of doubt and evolution have many doubts at all levels. So is it a universal truth then? The plain answer to that as well is a no. A universal fact is accepted universally allover but evolution is not accepted even by many scientists. So, it should be a theory then? The answer to it is again no! why? Because a theory is based on ‘rational thinking’ according to its definition and evolution is not based on rational thinking but assumptions. An assumption, according to the scientific process can’t be considered as a theory. When it lacks evidences (even circumstantial), do not present a clear picture, the helms of affairs are controversial, even the biologists disagree to its cores, then how can it even be called a theory! So then the next question arises, what is it then? As mentioned before, it is an assumption, a naturalist assumption, and that’s it. Hence to answer the question, is Darwinian evolution infallible? It is concluded that it is certainly and surely fallible and an assumption is bound to be fallible, otherwise how would the scientific process be fulfilled! Even how the science would progress if we start taking assumptions seriously! It will but stop the progress in science and the scientific process, which of course shouldn’t happen. 3.10. Fallacies in Darwinian Evolution: Before going on with the discussion, it is important to distinguish between the ‘Darwinian theory of Evolution’ and biological evolution as a whole. Biological evolution is the 83

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adaptation and mutation of the living beings which is a natural process, like finches developed different beaks with the passage of time as Darwin also explains. On the other hand, Darwinian evolution is claimed to be the change in kind of the living creature like dinosaurs into birds, amphibian mammals into whales and apes into humans, so this is a totally different ideology regarding evolution, hence it shouldn’t be called just evolution but Darwinism (as the theory goes back to Darwin). So, the point of disagreement is Darwinian evolution or simply Darwinism and not evolution. So what does Darwin’s theory present, is analyzed below: 3.11. Not Ignoring the History factor and Historical Sciences: It’ll be unfair if the history is ignored about the beliefs and documentation of human race. If the fossil record, a part from history, can be taken then why not the civilized history? The civilized human history explains the human beliefs on their own creation and they had documented almost everything from what they had seen with their eyes, including other human beings. They used picture portraying languages and techniques and also used archaic languages including pictures in motion and events happening around them. Those archaic languages and sketches perfectly explained the cultures and civilizations of that time but not at a single place in history, any incident of a being changing its kind or becoming another thing is reported whether archaic or documented written history. Those people of that time who even drew animals and used to wore the costumes of animals would not report something extra ordinary happening like evolution? So what’s the lesson from history is taken then? The evolutionists certainly contradict the history and are not looking to accept it at all! Ignorance of law is no excuse! A person gets penalized even if he’s unaware of the law,

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similarly if someone doesn’t know about God, it won’t help his cause! 3.12. Operational Sciences Factor, How Inevitable? Now, to what history takes us is a transformation period at every stage. There shouldn’t be war among the sciences presented by theists and atheists but as science always brings there should be a harmony among those sciences, even if there is not we should try to make one. The operational science is that absolutely which would make things a lot clearer. How the human transformation, transportation and rehabilitation occurred with the passage of time in accordance with the environment they faced, it tells us not at any stage did there was a point in history that the operations were suspended. So, the operations have been an ongoing process since eternity you can say, then how there was no operation of atheism, a proper functioning of them and atheistic values, cultures and societies develop while what the human genes carry, they carry that from day 1 in them, why couldn’t the civilizational operations occur in atheism to develop atheistic society and its proper functioning like religion? Religion always had that operational system in humans as they had it in their genes and civilized culture. Right from the beginning up till now, there is a proper functioning operation of religion in every existing human society. The question then arises, why only after a biological ‘discovery’ of evolution, there was a need to indulge religion in there? What Darwin did was a biological event, he never claimed it to be a religious event neither anyone else could say that as well, so why the scientists converted and tried to transform that biological event into a religious affair? Couldn’t they have stayed the limits of their discipline and wouldn’t have commented on the other discipline i.e. religion? Wasn’t it the easier to say for the scientist even with

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belief in evolution that God made us like that? Why an extreme stance religion? Hatred? 3.13. Science is All about Probabilities: When talking about science, the first word that comes in the mind is probability, meaning that you can’t be decisive in a scientific theory but you should talk in probabilities. But surprisingly, especially in the case of evolution the people with atheistic mindset get decisive. What happens them is the core of science is replaced with staunch pre conceived beliefs and many facts and figures are ignored. For example, famous linguist Noam Chomsky presents a stat in his book: “Just a couple of years ago, there was a study of what people thought of evolution. The percentage of the population that believed in Darwinian evolution at that point was 9%... About half the population believed in divinely-guided evolution.” (14) What this stat shows us is that scientists/atheists/people or whatever you may call them have failed to convince the majority of people about the ideology and theory of evolution, most certainly because of the lack of convincing evidences. Now the question arises that why does people like Mr. Dawkins and other atheists doesn’t quote stats like this and don’t pay heed on them at first. Why don’t they understand that on how weaker ground they’re standing upon and still making much huge but vague claims and arguments on such a huge thing! They must at least realize this fact, at least! It’s all about realization and they’d start seeing things differently! 3.14. Scientific Method: “A scientific method is based on the collection of data through observation and experimentation”. (Science Daily) (15) 86

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So the first point is to check whether or not the theory of Darwinian evolution follows the scientific method. As the definition of scientific method tells us, a scientific method must contain two basic things and through those two things the data is collected, one is observation and the other is experimentation. So let us check whether the Darwinian evolution fulfills these two conditions for the scientific method. 3.15. Observable Evidence: Darwinian evolution does not present any observable evidence at all which is the core of the scientific method. Darwinian evolution claims that evolution occurred at least 60-65 million years back, so quite naturally it is not observable. The only evidence presented is the fossil record, like Darwinian finches etc. but that’s not an example for Darwinian evolution but biological evolution (the details for it will be discussed later). If there’s no observable evidence available then how can the scientific method be fulfilled. This proves that Darwinian evolution does not follow the scientific method. If a ‘theory’ which claims to be a scientific theory and do not follow the scientific method itself at first place, then how can that be called even a ‘scientific theory’! 3.16. Darwinian Evolution is Unobservable: This is a scientific fallacy of the Darwinian evolution. What is often referred about some organisms like Darwin’s finches etc. for an observable evidence, they’re actually not an example of Darwinian evolution but biological evolution. Darwinian evolution is the change in kind and not the change in a specific trait of an organism, and there is no observable evidence available for Darwinian evolution in that case. So, the Darwinian evolution in a nutshell is unobservable. 87

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3.17. Change of Kind: The biggest question being asked about the Darwinian evolution is that is there any instance of a change in kind of an organism available all over the history, history of fossils or paleontology alike. The answer is, absolutely no factual evidence is available for a change in kind of any organism at all. Bacteria is still bacteria, a finch is still a finch, a fish is still a fish, an ape is still an ape, so where did the change in kind happened which is the core belief in Darwinism. If there is no change in kind, then there is no Darwinian evolution hence no Darwinism. When the examples are given for the likes of stickleback fish about the Darwinian evolution, the Darwinists still accept that the stickleback fish is still ‘fish’ and no change in kind has been observed since centuries. The changes in a particular organism is a something very other than Darwinian evolution, which is discussed below. 3.18. Adaptation: Most of the time, in fact all the time for the Darwinists, adaptation is mistaken to be evolution. In the language of sociology, if a person who was rich and used to have a lavish lifestyle, then he had a financial set back and his lavish lifestyle was gone and he had to live a modest lifestyle to fulfill his household needs, this person would be called to have adapted according to the environment around him and not evolved. Similarly, the common sense had to be used in biological adaptation as well, if a bird has developed distinct beaks in accordance with the environment, it will not be said that it has evolved but it has adapted according to the environment because the bird is still a bird with some change in its traits. This natural environmental phenomenon had been misunderstood, intentionally or unintentionally by the Darwinists. And this is the difference between Darwinian evolution and biological evolution! 88

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3.19. The Vestigial Organs Lie: Charles Darwin, claimed that there are some vestigial organs in a human body, these are the organs which are claimed to be the remnants of previous ancestry, Darwin gave a list of those parts/organs in his book “The Descent of Man” (1890). Quite interestingly, all these organs and body parts said to be ‘useless’ have distinct and important specified functions in the body. For example, the coccyx, said to be the tail bone (which is not the right name for it) because it is believed by the Darwinists that it is the remnant of the tail of apes, the alleged human ancestors, so it was given the name of tail bone and it is useless or a vestigial organ. While latest researches show us that “The coccyx serves as an attachment site for tendons, ligaments, and muscles. It also functions as an insertion point of some of the muscles of the pelvic floor. The coccyx also functions to support and stabilize a person while he or she is in a sitting position. 5” (16) So, the coccyx has a proper function in a human body and it serves an extremely important part of the vertebrae or the ending of it. Similarly, we have been quoted the example of human appendix to be the leftover or remnant from the ancestors, while “The scientists believe that the immune system cells located in the appendix have the function of protecting the good bacteria, They’ve documented the existence in the bowel of a biofilm - it is a thin and delicate layer of microbes, mucous and immune system molecules living together on the lining of the gut.” 6 (17) So, the appendix also has a vital body function according to latest researches, then how these organs can be labelled as ‘useless’ just to fulfill your and get a help or support for your particular belief! Similar is the case with other vestigial 5 6

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organs like the muscles of ear which aids in hearing and the wisdom teeth, which helps in hard chewing. So how could these body parts be called as useless when they have their proper functions! So how is Darwinian evolution proved by these vestigial organs then! 3.20. Darwinian Theory of Evolution is Unscientific in a Nutshell: All the discussion above proves one thing, that the Darwinian evolution is not a scientific notion but it is a kind of a belief adapted by Darwinists including Richard Dawkins. Darwinism does not follow the basic scientific process and violates all the basic cores of it. It is the biological evolution which is a process of adaptation, is observable and is scientific. Whereas, the Darwinian evolution is based on assumptions and guess work, which by no means can be deemed as a scientific phenomenon. If there is no Darwinian evolution then the base of atheism is shattered pretty badly because if humans are not evolved from fish or apes, then from where did they come? They scientific process leads us to creation and intelligent design, while Darwinism leads us to unscientific beliefs and blind following of assumptions and guess work! 3.21. Conclusion: From the above chapter, it is concluded that they base of the beliefs of Mr. Richard Dawkins presented in “The God Delusion” is Darwinism, and a critical scientific and philosophical analysis of Darwinism is presented. The findings of the analysis lead us to the point that Darwin’s theory of evolution is far from what could be accepted as a fact and is hanging in the air as a highly doubtful theory with thousands of questions being raised at each and every core 90

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point of it. Further studies showed us that the so called and so claimed fossil record does not help Darwinian evolution in any case rather weakens the case for it even more. A table provided regarding the fossil record gives shocking revelations that there hasn’t been a change in kind of any organism at all in history even about 180 million years back. Those of the changes noted in specific traits of some organisms are called adaptations and are examples for biological evolution and not the Darwinian evolution. Hence it is concluded that the right and sound, scientific type of evolution is the biological evolution, which do not present the idea of change in kind of living beings rather describes small changes occurring in them with course of time in accordance with their environment. While the Darwinian evolution is the unscientific phenomenon with no factual evidences or observable evidences. Darwinism do not present or gives proofs or is supported by concrete evidences, hence a belief can’t be built on a theory (even if you call it) which is so weak that it doesn’t even follow the scientific process yet claims to be one and is lacking immensely in scientific proofs as a whole.

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References: 1. Pbs.org > Wbgh > Evolution > Library 2. Bbc.co.uk > Bitesize > Guides > Zwvpsg8 > Revision 3. Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design". Rabbinical Council of America. 2005. 4. Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist, evolutionandchristianfaith.org 5. https://www.bethinking.org/does-evolution-disprovecreation/is-it-possible-to-be-a-christian-and-believe-inevolution 6. Sahih Al Bukhari, Hadith no.246 (2020). 7. harvard.academia.edu › DanielHaqiqatjou 8. https://yaqeeninstitute.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/11/Can-Islam-Object-to-Evolution.pdf 9. Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 9, Book 93, Hadith 489 10. Cohen, R. (2021) Migration ‘The movement of mankind from prehistory to present. 11. Hoyle, F – Wickramasinghe, C (1981), page 163, Evolution from Space, Great Britain: Granada Publishing. 12. Hoyle, F – Wickramasinghe, C (1981), page 164, Evolution from Space, Great Britain: Granada Publishing. 13. Vocabulary.com > Dictionary > Theory 14. Chomsky, N. (2011), page 128, How the World Works, USA: Soft Skull Press. 15. Sciencedaily.com 16. Healthline.com > Human-body-maps > Coccyx 17. Medicalnewstoday.com > Articles

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CHAPTER 4: PHILOSOPHICAL AND SCIENTIFIC REASONING ON GOD’S EXISTENCE: 4.1. Introduction: God, a supernatural supreme being, the omniscient, omnipotent, creator, sustainer, destroyer the intelligent designer, the grand designer and many attributes goes by with the names, tags, titles or qualities of God. God is a deity, and is being accepted as one right from the beginning of human race, both philosophically and scientifically. God, with His attributes is known differently at different parts of the world. Different religions define and understands, identify God differently, they have different ideologies about God and different ways to worship Him but the basic concept of God being a deity is the same with little differences. In old days, when there was no significant scientific development in the world, the philosophers all around the world used to enjoy the same status as the scientists do today. The poets were even worshipped in some societies and in others they were given high ranks in the state. Those were the days when the understanding about God was very limited to one particular side, i.e. the mind, whatever the contemplating mind of intellectuals brought as an idea was accepted by masses in general. Although at each part of human race in history, the Prophets were sent to teach the right ideology about God, but as soon as they left the rites, rituals and traditions replaced the teachings of Prophets. At that point the role of philosophers was deemed to be extremely important to lead the society on social ideologies and specially the ideology regarding God which was forgotten as time passed and new generations took control of the society. For the given purpose, many philosophers stated their philosophies on God, some denied the existence of a personal God while others accepted it with conviction. The pattern varies from all around the world including the Greek philosophers, Arab philosophers and the Indian philosophers 93

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alike. But then the question arises, is the time of philosophy over? Or the field and discipline of philosophy is not to be followed now? The answer must be no! Philosophy is a major part of human intellect and as far as human intellect is alive, philosophy should also be alive as a field, philosophy is a very important part of religions as well. We see many religions even started as a result of a philosophical reasoning by its founder like Buddhism and Jainism. And the Semitic religions also presents a proper field of philosophy as an integral part of their religions to solve many of their problems. Soon after the advent of the scientific boom, the scientists and science particularly gained considerable importance in the society. People’s center of trust was now shifted from philosophy to science but the significance of philosophy still remained high before the intellectuals. Science overtook because of its attractive prodigy of proof while philosophy was still thoughts and contemplations. But the importance of both of them can’t be denied in the society as a whole. Philosophy fulfills the intellectual needs of man and science fulfills the indigenous needs based on proofs of human kind. In that case, the most important part in a human’s life i.e. the belief in God must be dealt with the proper scientific and philosophical reasoning in order to get its due place in people’s mind and the society of sorts. In this chapter, for this very purpose, the philosophical and scientific reasoning on God’s existence would be discussed in detail. A rational viewpoint and proper reasoning would be followed to discuss the above mentioned topic and the stances of some renowned scientists and philosophers would also be given along with the references from some scholars/theologians of each Semitic religion.

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4.2. Philosophical Reasoning on God’s Existence: Mr. Dawkins has used the philosophical approach in God Delusion a great deal. He has used the given approach to disprove God’s existence while here a different perspective would be adopted i.e. to prove God’s existence. The reason to adopt this perspective otherwise is to bring a balance between arguments and to show the other side of picture. After reading God Delusion, a perception is created in the mind that maybe it has been like that since eternity that belief in God is just a blind following and has got no basis, but the case seems to be quite different with the study of philosophy and applying that approach to reason in an unbiased manner on God’s existence. The overall scenario can only be made clear by bringing in equal and opposite argument against a previously built narrative which’d either take it down or would strengthen it even more. A counter narrative is always important to check the viability of the presented argument. That’s the philosophical approach in a nutshell. There have been many philosophers form the past who refuted each other on the same presiding and particular topics. This tradition has to be followed for a healthy intellectual environment and to ensure that justice has been done to a particular topic. So, in case of God and for the case for God, similar counter philosophical arguments would be presented in reply to Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion’s arguments to check whether the arguments presented are a concrete building or a house of cards. 4.3. Creation: Coming to the point of philosophically analyzing God’s existence. The first, foremost and the strongest argument is the creation. When you look at a building, the first thing that comes to your mind is its creator and his skills, when you see a computer, you think of its manufacturing company, you see 95

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a mobile phone and you think of its operating system and other qualities. If these things mentioned which are considered the most hi tech and sign of advancement of the modern world have an obvious creator, then how can the most intelligent being who make these things i.e. human does not have a creator? Moreover, the creation of the heavens and the earth is a sign of a creator itself. All the system in the galaxy is a perfect system, the sun and the moon, the stars and the planets, all are perfectly designed and are living their lives a proper manner. We know that nothing makes itself, neither we have made ourselves nor the galaxy made itself, and specially the nature can’t create itself, that’s unscientific and illogical if someone claims so. Then you got to find the starting point of all these things. As claimed, that the universe was matter in the beginning and then the primary nebula and the big bang caused the making of stars and planets. The question that arises here is that from where did such a huge mass came from at first place even if we agree that the stars and the planets originated from this primordial mass. Even if we agree that this mass gradually became bigger after other small masses kept on depositing on it even then the question is still the same that from where did this small matter come from? Where and how did it was created for the first time, who created this for the first time? Even the smallest of the particles which allegedly made bigger components, did these small particles made themselves? As mentioned before, it is absolutely unscientific, untrue and illogical to say that something created itself or all came from nothing. ‘Nothing’ can’t create something, if the building can’t create itself, the mobile or the computer can’t create itself then how could the other nonliving substance could create itself! So, we come up to a point and a finding that in the beginning, there was ‘something’ which created everything. The smallest of the particles didn’t create themselves but they were first created and then where deposited intelligently to their prescribed and perfect positions, and as mentioned before, the universe is a 96

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perfect creation and the result of all the discussion leads us to only one point, that first creator who made everything and destined to be perfect is none other than God the almighty the all-powerful, doer of all affairs who created everything perfectly and made it flawless, and the one who made things perfectly and flawless, must be perfect and flawless Himself, which is the attribute of God indeed. 4.4. Scientific Reasoning on God’s Existence: As it is important to make sense in your arguments on literary grounds, it is equally and sometimes even more important to make sense factually. What facts are supposed to be in present day and time which are accepted allover as proofs, those are the scientific facts of the present day. So, to prove a point in plain in this world, you got to make sense scientifically. This is what Mr. Dawkins has also tried to do in God Delusion to strengthen his case. So this is exactly the way to go without any doubt then, we find an agreement among us here. So, it becomes even more important for God to make sense scientifically because this is what His slaves demands in this time and age. It’ll be even more interesting to make a case for God scientifically as a counter narrative to God Delusion because Mr. Dawkins is pretty obvious in his approach that he thinks and this is what his stance as well that he is an atheist because of science. So let us check science in that case and see what science provides us on God. 4.5. Creation: As in philosophy, similarly in science as well the primary argument on God’s existence is creation. Scientifically, there are different stages of creation for everything. Looking at human beings first, they come into being as a result of sexual reproduction. The spermatozoa meet eggs and the 97

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fertilization process starts inside the womb of female mother. The normal process of development of a human being takes 9 months in the mother after which he/she is delivered out of the body. This is the observable evidence available on human development and being discussed in the field of embryology in great detail. But this is all that we have as an observable evidence on human creation as for now. We know that it happens this way for human reproduction and we do have an agreement among theists and atheists alike on this. But the point of disagreement occurs on how it happened for the first time, i.e. how did the first human came into being, the disagreement is on first human and not on the humans to follow. So, the point of discussion would also be the first human and not the ones to follow. Theists claim the first human was Adam, created by God Almighty, and the atheists claim that the first human evolved from apes and it wasn’t created. It’ll important to check the arguments of both sides to make a case for creation and in turn for God. The story of fossils had already been discussed in chapter 3 and it’ll not be repeated here, only the headline arguments would be pinpointed to make the discussion and case as brief as possible. 4.6. Intelligent Design: One of the greatest observable phenomenon in the universe for the beholders is the intelligent design. The intelligent design is the ultimate proof for creation, once the intelligent design gets proved, the creation automatically gets proved too. Basically, in the creation of the universe, regardless of what someone believes that it is created as a result of an intelligent design or it created itself or came into being as an accident, the perfectness of the created stuff is agreed upon. Coming to the creation of man himself, is human an intelligent design as well? It’s pretty evident that human being is a complex structure and is far more complex than the 98

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most complex machine on earth. It takes us to a point that a mere accident can’t lead you to such a complex structure when all the intelligent brains combined in the world couldn’t create one even closer to the humans. If anti-creation scientists or pseudoscientists claim that human beings have been evolved as a result of millions of years of evolutionary process and are not created, then why could they not speed up the process of evolution to show the world that this is evolution and this is how it happens. The reason why it couldn’t happen is because the Darwinian evolution theory is based on assumptions and presumptions, while it remains unobservable since almost a couple of centuries now from when Darwin proposed it for the first time. So, what is the substitute for evolution then if it’s not proved? Quite naturally its counterpart theory i.e. creationism. If it’s not accident and everything didn’t create itself (which is scientifically impossible as well) then everything is surely created courtesy an intelligent design by God. God made everything perfectly. The sun, the moon, the stars and the everything in the galaxy and prescribed specific orbits and functions of everything. God made the vegetation, the fruits and flowers, all distinct in color, fragrance, appearance and taste. God made unicellular microorganisms, all invisible to the naked eye but performing their specific functions precisely. God made birds and animals, all different from each other in size, texture, functioning and features. And then God made the humans, the most perfect of them all, unmatchable and praiseworthy in its every aspect, and this completes the intelligent design! 4.7. Quantum Mechanics: One of the forms of intelligent design is also noticeable in the field of quantum mechanics. Scientists like David Bohm, and renowned personalities like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk have talked about this pretty explicitly. What the field of quantum physics offer is the formulation and behavior of the smallest 99

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of particles i.e. the atoms and their nature. Bohmian mechanics tells us that the atoms get energy from an unspecified source and they follow the general relativity principle (of Einstein). This leads to the idea of a matrix like situation of the supernaturally controlled mechanics in the cosmos and also in the electromagnetic waves/radiations on earth as well. This idea absolutely resembles the religious ideology of supernaturally controlled environment allover and everything following and performing its destined and prescribed functions in the universe. This is but an absolute confirmation of creation at micro leading to macro levels. 4.8. Grand Design: Stephen Hawking, proposed the grand design for universe and described its whereabouts. It is important to distinguish between the intelligent design and the grand design because both offer creation at different levels. To summarize, the intelligent design specifically describes the creation at micro levels and in living beings and nonliving alike, whereas the grand design specifies macro levels of creation specifically the universe and cosmos. It is well noted that the universe grandly designed and follows a perfectly specified program. This programming of the universe is actually the grand design of it. All the celestial objects are compelled to follow their specific roles, Hawking may call it gravity but in reality it has to be called creation because even gravity, be it micro gravity follows the ‘natural processing’ of the greater compelling forces, noticeable in the black holes, and maybe called the physical forces or you may call it creation in a nutshell. 4.9. From where did the Primordial Substance come from? After the discussion on the intelligent and the grand designs and knowing about the quantum mechanics, and now 100

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keeping them in mind we discuss the primordial matter. Now we know that the basic element, forming element of everything is the primordial matter. But the big question is that from where did this primordial substance come from? The scientific fact tells us that nothing can create itself, so the primordial substance shouldn’t have made itself either. Then the thing which makes everything, where did that come from itself! Is there any other answer than God created it? if something else came in your mind then you need to revisit these sciences once more, and if God came in your mind then you used common sense, congratulations for that. 4.10. Infallibility of Scriptures and their Scientific Points: One big in fact one of the biggest point in the scientific reasoning on God’s existence is the divinely reveled scriptures. What these scriptures contain has been a point of discussion since centuries. For the people who believe in these books, claim them to be miraculous in every sense. The people who don’t believe in these books, claims them to be antiscience in fact an enemy of science. Regardless of the actions of some religious fanatics (fanatics are everywhere by the way even in seculars and liberals) like what happened to Galileo Galilei or some other scientists at the hands of religious stereotypes, that were the wrong actions of the followers of the religion, but the base of religion i.e. the scriptures doesn’t oppose science at all, any wrong interpretation of the scriptures in this regard must be demoralized. On the other hand, all the Semitic religions and their scriptures encourage and contain scientific facts. Specially the Quran has been claimed to have more than a thousand verses about science in it including all the different disciplines of science like biology, geology, embryology, astronomy etc. As it is the only book which haven’t undergone any changes since 14 centuries, so it doesn’t contain any unscientific point as other scriptures like the Jewish or Christian bible may have because they’ve 101

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undergone changes with the passage of time and the words of God has been mixed with the words of humans, so they might and do contain some unscientific points, but it is not the point of discussion here, even then these scriptures have some scientific facts despite of undergoing changes. If one wants infallible text or document, then it is the Quran which is also the point of discussion here. Now, what this discussion leads us to is a point where science itself don’t have any answers if they deny the existence of God. If there are, and there certainly are many scientific facts in scriptures, then how did these facts come in them? Take the example of the Quran, it was revealed some 14 hundred years ago, at that time there was absolutely and extremely less knowledge of science those days in fact in some disciplines it was close to no knowledge available those days. Then how did those scientific facts come in the scriptures when there was no scientific knowledge available in those days? To quote an example, Dr. Keith L. Moore, undoubtedly the world’s most renowned embryologist, writes about embryology in the Quran in of one of his articles as: “Statements referring to human reproduction and development are scattered throughout the Qur'an. It is only recently that the scientific meaning of some of these verses has been appreciated fully. The long delay in interpreting these verses correctly resulted mainly from inaccurate translations and commentaries and from a lack of awareness of scientific knowledge. Interest in explanations of the verses of the Qur'an is not new. People used to ask the prophet Muhammad all sorts of questions about the meaning of verses referring to human reproduction. The Apostle's answers form the basis of the Hadith literature.

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It is mentioned in the Quran: "He makes you in the wombs of your mothers in stages, one after another, in three veils of darkness." (Quran 36:6) This statement is from Sura 39:6. We do not know when it was realized that human beings underwent development in the uterus (womb), but the first known illustration of a fetus in the uterus was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century. In the 2nd century A.D., Galen described the placenta and fetal membranes in his book "On The Formation of the Foetus." Consequently, doctors in the 7th century A.D. likely knew that the human embryo developed in the uterus. It is unlikely that they knew that it developed in stages, even though Aristotle had described the stages of development of the chick embryo in the 4th century B.C. The realization that the human embryo develops in stages was not discussed and illustrated until the 15th century. After the microscope was discovered in the 17th century by Leeuwenhoek descriptions were made of the early stages of the chick embryo. The staging of human embryos was not described until the 20th century. Streeter (1941) developed the first system of staging which has now been replaced by a more accurate system proposed by O'Rahilly (1972). "The three veils of darkness" may refer to: (1) the anterior abdominal wall; (2) the uterine wall; and (3) the amniochorionic membrane. Although there are other interpretations of this statement, the one presented here seems the most logical from an embryological point of view.” (1) References to embryology in the Qur'an", Article for The Journal of the Islamic Medical Association, Vol. 18, Jan-June 1986, pp. 15-16. The above research statements in the article of dr. Keith Moore states many important points, firstly, dr. Moore agreed to the fact that there was no proper scientific knowledge on 103

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embryology available in the 7th century C.E when Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was sent as a prophet in the Arab. Secondly, the Quran has precisely described the embryonic stages of the human placenta in the womb of the mother. And lastly and most importantly, he has confirmed the Quranic embryology “scientifically”, and of course from did these facts would have come in the Quran when there was no scientific knowledge on embryology there in the world especially the Arab which was majority unlettered like the Prophet himself, the answer to it is a simple one this time, that but quite naturally it was an inspiration sent down to the Prophet by God to make people believe in Him and the Prophet peace be upon him as well. Now what options are left for the deniers of God and His divinely revealed books, either to accept the divine origins of the sacred scriptures which in turn would make them accept existence of God as well, or deny these facts and commit and adopt an unscientific notion and make their stance unscientific altogether as a whole. The choice is with the dear atheists themselves of course!

4.11. A Rational Viewpoint on God’s Existence: Mr. Dawkins have used a lots of philosophy in God Delusion to prove his points. Regardless of the point that he didn’t provide facts but incidents in his book, it’ll be important to see the rationality of his arguments and to provide counter arguments with equal or more rationality then his. There always have to be a difference between an opinion and a fact. But this distinct difference was not kept by Mr. Dawkins in his book. There are many features/parts of an argument, some distinct and some irrelevant. While the most acceptable argument is the most rational one. Rationality have to be kept in front by both the theists and atheists. If it’s not kept, then the argument literally goes into waste altogether. Mr. Dawkins presented his possible part of (whatever) rationality 104

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in the discussion of existence of God in his book, while the missing part of rationality in answer to it would be presented now in the following lines to make it a just affair. It’ll be made sure that all the findings are based purely on rationality and a just case for even the atheists would be presented because discussion only one part of the pictures itself makes the argument non rational. 4.12. Is Atheism Rational? The first impact of the word ‘atheism’ in the minds when it is heard is that maybe it’s a more rational viewpoint because as God can’t be seen, heard or touched so it makes more sense to not believe in Him, isn’t it? At least in the Semitic religions it is the case that God can’t be seen and also in religions like Hinduism deep studies show that in their religion as well God is invisible, the sculptures they make is a representation of God, not God itself. So, the case is pretty much clear everywhere, believing in God has to be a blind or in other words totally ‘a belief’ or ‘faith’ and not a visible belief system. So, atheism makes sense? Does it? let’s discuss it rationally then. 4.13. Naturalistic Viewpoint: Natural forces, physical forces, natural laws and physical laws are unexplained in the naturalistic viewpoint in a nutshell. In naturalism, when it is believed that the universe came into being as a result of natural forces or nature making it happen, the question still remains who made that nature? Did nature create itself? How did the basic fundamental force of creation is given no value in the naturalistic viewpoint? The biggest question still remains unanswered that when it is said that nature is responsible for creation then the beginning, making and coming into being of that nature must be discussed first, 105

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how can it be said that it came out of nothing and nothing created that everything including nature. Even the nature of human or animal is effected by its surroundings so how the nature of the universe was not influenced by the environment around it? Those forces which surely effected and influenced nature were made as such purposefully indeed! 4.14. Is Realism the Way to Go? What can be deemed as real and where realism takes you to? We know that the naturally occurring forces are actually not ‘naturally occurring’ but they became natural with the passage of time, they weren’t the same from day one. For example, the earth gradually developed its gravity, electromagnetic waves and the ozone layer. They were not the same always but underwent changes to be developed as natural sources after the big bang. Not only these but all of those natural forces, of course they weren’t formed before the big bang so how can they be considered natural or real at first place? The only point that can explain is that their creation made them natural and real rather than their occurring. We can safely say that everything becomes natural after it undergoes the processes of creation. 4.15. Is Ultimate Scientism Justified? Did the human beings learn everything from the beginning up till now through science? If yes, then why didn’t the human beings explored everything before Mr. Dawkins and he have to come up front to make every one learn about God and its alleged delusions? If no, then why apply this method to learn about divinity as well which is absolutely a different field of work. If everything has to be proved with science including God, then why science and scientists use conjunctures, guess work or even sometimes failed theories, experiments and 106

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hypothesis comes up too. That gives us an indication that both proving and disproving God through science is not justified as science is limited, it has its own drawbacks, it can never be infallible, and it doesn’t offer you any proper theory, process or scientific method to know about God, its existence or similar divinity related issues. At this point, it’d be safe to say the ultimate scientism in every phenomenon is not the way to go. Every idea and science develops with the passage of time and science also learns, adds, invents and discovers new things every day. In that case, for the sake of argument if we do agree that science hasn’t found, discovered or confirmed God, how can we say that it’ll not do that in the future? So why does science and scientists get decisive on God so early? Does it have to do something with personal ideas, likings dis likings, affiliations, and belongings? Probably it is because there’s no other way around! 4.16. Spirituality and Nature: One of the most interesting point regarding nature is the spiritual instincts of human beings. The human beings have inherited spirituality from their forefathers. It can’t be said that it was nonexistent in the predecessors but came through as a sudden enigma in the human race. Right from the beginning, the human beings have had their spiritual needs and the same instincts there with. If the naturalistic viewpoint of accidental creation is to be held right, how does this nature brought spirituality with it? why not something else? It gives a clear indication that it is from the cores of human creation to have that spiritual touch in him, this is undeniable to be the least. Coming to the main discussion, so if to be able to see something is the criteria of believing in it or its existence, then there would arrive a problem in many universally accepted believes/facts. For example, we all know that wind exists, but 107

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has anyone seen it ever? Yes, it can be felt, its speed can be measured with the anemometer but it can’t be seen which is our point of discussion here. So, can we say that because wind can’t be seen then it doesn’t exist? Another example is that of pain, it can be felt by the individual, but can’t be seen and in many cases can’t be measured as well. So, can we say that pain also doesn’t exist? We found out here that to be ‘visible’ is not the right criteria for a thing to be accepted as existent or nonexistent. Secondly, does the criteria of being heard is the right one then? The answer to it can be very simple, in vacuum, anything can’t be heard, so would we say that everything is nonexistent in vacuum? That was a simple one. The third possible criteria, something has to be touchable to be able to exist? Well you can’t touch the sun, so is it nonexistent? It was the simplest of them all. Here, we come up to a point that being able to see, hear or touch is not the right criteria for a thing to exist. But then a question arises, what is the right criteria then? Well this would be explained in the next few paragraphs, but at the moment we’re discussing that if atheism makes sense or not, is it rational or not. The biggest belief, yes belief in atheism is evolution, Darwinian evolution to be exact. That’s why it is said and believed in atheism that because human beings evolved from other organisms so there is no need for God in that case, they say the same about the big bang that it happened as a result of an accident and the universe and galaxies were made so it is all accident and no God. To analyze these two points, there have to be a proper understanding of ‘assigned jobs’ to employees and existence of their boss. In any company, the employees are assigned some jobs on regular basis, the recruitment staff does recruitment regularly as well, new employees keep on joining and old keeps on leaving. As a whole the affairs of company are run smoothly without any obstructions on daily basis. Did you notice that by now I 108

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haven’t taken the name of the boss yet the company is running perfectly! Not mentioning the boss here doesn’t mean that he doesn’t exist as well. If you say that because by now there was no mentioning of the boss so, he doesn’t exist as well so how did the company came into being? Who made the company and hired the initial staff then? Quiet naturally there is a boss who made the company, invested hi capital and left the works to the staff to do, now even if he doesn’t work himself even then he’ll keep receiving the benefits and the company will be still called “His”. One can’t say that because the boss doesn’t come to the office, I haven’t seen him working ever so he doesn’t exist! If someone says like that he’ll be labelled as fool and rightly so! Similar is the case with God, the universe can be considered His company and He’s the sole beneficiary of everything it contains. God made the universe perfectly and left some of the work on automated mode like the pilot leaves the aircraft on autopilot when it stabilizes in the air, while some of other special works are still performed by His staff namely the angels. The concept of angels is unanimously agreed upon in all the Semitic religions and their functioning is described there off as well. Life and death, natural disasters and similar stuff are dealt specially with the orders of God by the angels with specified duties. Does it take any credit away from God if He has created the universe and let it function itself? How does it make someone deny the existence of God then? If one can’t deny the existence of a boss in the company, why and how can someone deny the existence of God then? If the person who denies the existence of boss in the company is called a fool, what would the person who denies the existence of God be called then? Intelligent? For the rational thinkers, a teaser is enough to give the idea about the full picture. To draw the complete picture, you need to look at the canvas and its quality as well. In this case, the quality of argument has to be seen for grading the quality of 109

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picture. The canvas of atheism is a very thin layered paper which can be torn pretty easily with a strong wind, hence by no means it can be considered or labelled as rational when the basic thought process in atheism lacks depth and provides only a trace paper sketch of some scattered thoughts of anonymous people! 4.17. Where does Dawkins’ and Darwinian Stance Stand in Epistemology? Other than the cosmological arguments which are purely undermined and undelivered on the point of creation. The Dawkins’ and Darwinian stance on God and His creation doesn’t stand any ground in epistemology. We have to agree and the knowledge provided by these two personalities on God is not sufficient by any means. Mr. Dawkins has mostly used social arguments not anywhere near epistemic stance and late Mr. Darwin proposed a theory, yes only a theory which again stands nowhere in epistemic methodology as it lacks one basic side of arguments on testing of hypothesis and putting forward the right method to judge. In any case Darwinian evolution theory is a part and study of biological sciences and it is not the study of God or divinity. Even if we do agree completely with Darwinian evolution for the sake of argument, it is but biology, where does it proves that there is no God? Does this theory have anything or even a hypothesis regarding God? It is biology and revolves around that branch of science and it doesn’t anywhere talk about divinity or God. Does an assumption taken and carried through from one to discipline to another, research was on something else and judgment of something else, does it carries any weight in epistemology?

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4.18. Where does they Stand in Ontology? Yes, Mr. Dawkins do provide some ontological arguments to prove his thesis but is it that easy to disprove God and call him a delusion on the basis of some ontological arguments? What methodology is it? or is it even a sound approach? We have discussed that guess work assumptions and hypothetical statements may not disprove a historical, circumstantial and repeatedly tried and tested fact, i.e. God. But to put forward your arguments in a way which will only entice a profanity and nothing else. And about standing, the ontological arguments are weak too. When presenting a thesis, you can’t afford to gamble on second or third party involvement or secondary or tertiary arguments, you should always have to provide the primary arguments and there should be only first party involvement. In this case, the party is God and the only way to discuss him should be through His own words i.e. the sacred scriptures. Talk about the texts, talk about what’s in the scriptures, why talk about the pros and cons go about here and there and keep beating about the bush! 4.19. Is Divinity Rational? The word selected for counter discussion on atheism is not theism but divinity. Theism is a word often used as a reciprocal to atheism while divinity is the real creed, belief, doctrine and faith of the believers in God. It is to believe that there is a divine power which runs the affairs of the world and that same divine power had made the universe. The knowledge of divinity is derived from the divinely revealed knowledge. Primarily this knowledge is not taken from the opinion of a person but is believed only by divine revelations which comes on prophets in the Semitic religions. To describe a simplified approach towards the understanding of divinity, a scientific example would do the job pretty well. Everyone believes that DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) exists, and rightly 111

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so. But how many people have seen the DNA with their own eyes? (The real DNA not the diagram). Except from a very few people who belongs to the field of genetics themselves have seen the very strands of DNA but other majority common people haven’t ever seen the DNA, but all of us do believe that it DOES exist. The reason why we all do believe that the DNA exists is because the experts of the field of genetics who are of course very trustable says so, and we believe in them and their abilities. Similarly, this is how divinity works as well, no one has ever seen God but all do believe in His existence because the masters and experts of the field of divinity said so i.e. the Prophets, and they of course are the most trustable persons to have walked on the face of the earth. If the previous approach is a rational one, then the later approach is identically rational as well. 4.20. Creationist’s Viewpoint: Creationism and creationists have a clear ideology regarding the events of the creation of the universe. In Islam, a Prophetic tradition quotes “And don’t abuse time because Allah created time”. This is a pretty clear explanation of the making of the natural and physical laws that govern the universe. This viewpoint is very much clear in providing the answers to the events occurring before the Ice age and the creationist can still and always ask how ‘nothing’ was made even if naturalists provide details of the later events they still can’t answer the beginnings. When there is an entity that has created the nature, the nature becomes a creation itself. On that regard, the creationist viewpoint, have a clear edge over the naturalistic viewpoint because if nature’s works can’t be explained right from the beginning then what’s the point of naturalism at first then? If you say it all came out of the blue and created everything afterwards whose explanation can’t be given how, then ask yourself first are you being rational to begin with? 112

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On the other hand, it is also very important to bring the counter argument against the people Mr. Dawkins quoted who allegedly, according to him helps proving his point on atheism. Mr. Dawkins have provided some of the quotes from some people of the past like Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Sean O’ Casey and Victor Hugo etc. He has tried to established his case on their words in the beginning of all ten chapters of his book. It’ll be extremely important and intriguing to analyze what these personalities said and what they were in reality. Firstly, Albert Einstein, Mr. Dawkins literally put the gun on his shoulders to shoot but let us see what Einstein really believed, Albert Einstein himself said: “But what really makes me angry is that they (atheists) quote me for the support of such views” on another place he said “I’m not an atheist” (2) (Ronald N. Clark, Einstein: The life and times, New York World Publishing Company: 19/1 – 425) So, in the basket where Mr. Dawkins put all his eggs is leaking from inside. Einstein, first of all is furious over the people who quote him to prove his point on atheism and also he unequivocally said that he’s not an atheist. So what’s the point quoting him to prove and support your atheistic views? The second important personality pretty frequently quoted is Thomas Jefferson, just to give an idea about Jefferson, he was a deist, a Christian deist who believed in Jesus but didn’t just believe him to be the son of God or God himself, which by the way is an idea very close to Islam, as Muslims also believe in Jesus but don’t believe him to be the son of God or God himself. So why doesn’t Mr. Dawkins start to believe the same himself as well if he likes Jefferson and is convinced with his ideas and quotes him again and again because of that! Another personality he quotes is Sean O’ Casey, who by the way didn’t have anything to do with divine knowledge himself because he was dramatist. O’ Casey surely seems to 113

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have lacked historical knowledge as well because he misquotes history by saying that politics killed thousands and religion killed hundreds of thousands. Just to fix a historical fact, let’s take an example of two great Prophets whose followers dominates the world population i.e. Jesus Christ and Muhammad (peace be upon them both). Let Mr. Dawkins ask himself and answer this question himself that how many wars did Jesus Christ fought? How many People did Jesus killed? I’m sure by now Mr. Dawkins would have said “Zero” to himself. Secondly, it is a historical fact that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) fought the wars in selfdefense when he migrated to Medina from Makkah, and even in modern day self-defense is considered a basic right of every individual/country. Moreover, history proves that the total number of casualties in all the wars fought by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was not more than a thousand, while just have a look at the number of casualties in world war 1 which is 40 million! And number in world war 2 is staggering 85 million people dying in the war! (Source: Wikipedia) (3) What these world wars were? Religious wars or political wars? Even if you add up the number of casualties of all the ‘religious wars’ that’ll be way lesser than only the number of deaths in world war 2 alone! So, Mr. Casey clearly got the stats and facts wrong! Lastly, let’s have a brief look on what Victor Hugo said as well. Mr. Dawkins himself seems to have a lots of problems with clergymen, for the same purpose he brought a quote to satisfy himself. But it is very important to clarify this point. As mentioned before, deeds of a single person should not represent the whole society, while wrongdoing of a clergyman shouldn’t defame the whole religious community either. If an employee does something wrong in a company, would you target the whole company or just fire the employee and move on? If these simple common sense things also have to be explained the I don’t know where this world is moving,

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would be absolutely dumb without common sense wouldn’t it? Now, moving to the part of counter quotes, Mr. Dawkins presented some quotes, 10 to be exact in the beginning of each chapter, so why can’t we provide some as well! So here are 10 counter quotes in answer to Mr. Dawkins’ quotes. But yes one thing that our quotes makes sense, it’ll be made sure! 1. “It is better to go along with the stories about gods than give in to

what the natural philosophers call Fate. If there are gods there is some hope of appeasing them with a little worship; if not, we are ruled by something that no one can appease” - EPICURUS, c. 300 BC So, it becomes evident that if there is no God then the world is a cruel place to live with no hope or enthusiasm of justice and good reward for good deeds and a just punishment for bad deeds. Even the ancient Greek philosophers knew it but the modern day “Scholars” don’t know it. Then a question might arise that in ancient times people didn’t have a choice but to believe in God but now the time has advanced, people have more choices, but the question arises again, what are those choices? To reject God and become rebellious on the society? To start believing in Darwinism as a ‘faith’ but the reject other faiths, on what basis do they reject the other faiths then? Just take and accept what pleases you and reject what doesn’t! To develop a ‘belief’ on a theory but deny circumstantial evidences on God’s existence! Is this rational thinking? Or hatred! This hate is called misanthropy by the way and it is defined as “The general hatred, dislike, distrust or contempt of the human species or human nature. A misanthrope or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings.” (4) (Source: Wikipedia) 2. “I Certainly recognize that it (religion) is a major phenomenon

for people in general, and you can understand it why it would be. It 115

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does, apparently, provide personal sustenance, but also bonds of association and solidarity and a means for expressing elements of one’s personality that are often very valuable elements. To many people it does that. In my view, there’s nothing wrong with that” - NOAM CHOMSKY (IN AN INTERVIEW) (5) Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, Harvard alumni, one of the most famous personalities of the world with his writings and books. He was voted among the top three intellectuals of the world as well. He is often taken as an agnostic and his religious views hasn’t been often on the side of religion itself. But even then his views on religion and spirituality are very clear and straightforward that if someone and most of the people follow this path and no one should have a problem with that. He’s pretty clear on the fact that it has benefitted many people and this is a very important part of life as well. So, when one of the biggest intellectuals of the world who’s not himself practicing religion but still don’t have any issue with people following it and says unequivocally and clear cut that ‘there’s nothing wrong’ in following this path and it is many times very valuable for a person, so what problem Mr. Dawkins have then? Why does he keep on criticizing God and religion, why can’t he let people live in peace? Why does he wants to take people’s peace away from them? Why is there a need at first place to interfere in people’s lives and be critical of the most emotional matter of their lives! 3. “God of Israel is not a mere tribal God but it is someone who is Creator of the world and is concerned for universal humanity”

- EMIL L. FACKENHEIM (GOD’S PRSENCE IN HISTORY) (6) Here’s a political aspect of the side of God. Emil L. Fackenheim, a philosopher, and a survivor of the Jewish holocaust from world war 2. He’s been critical in his writings 116

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about religion and considered sometime the situation getting disastrous because taking God’s name and acting violently in the world. But still giving explanation for it establishing God’s continuous existence and saying that God cares for everyone (from his perspective, the Jewish God, because of his background), God sees everything and He is concerned about the whole of humanity all the time. If a person with a big stature in philosophy, who has struggled and suffered at the hands of religious stereotypes, got jailed, but is still defending the cause of God, then what problem does Mr. Dawkins have for fighting against God when God hasn’t affected him negatively in any way or disturbed him physically as sometimes happens to other people who get affected in that manner at the hands religion, then why don’t Mr. Dawkins do the same and defend God? If not for himself then for people at least around him! 4. “Our origins could be said to reconcile the general principle of the

creation of man by God, according to the form He willed, with all the organizational improvements that have appeared in the course of time in living beings… Having said this however, we can’t rule out the possibility that, in one or several related but independent lineages of hominids, fully developed human groups may have appeared owing to certain genetic modifications arising from God’s creative genius” - DR. MAURICE BUCAILLE (WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF MAN? – P 199-200) (7) Dr. Maurice Bucaille, a French doctor finds the origins of man in his thought provoking research work ‘What is the origin of man?’. Dr. Bucaille perfectly sums up the idea of creation that the perfect human design couldn’t have been possible without a divine intervention. Though he argues on the creation process and phases but affirms the view that God organized everything in the perfect manner and there’s a high possibility that human came down in his current form directly from heavens, in turn from God. This idea presented 117

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by a scientist dents the anti-creationists badly enough that the answers to the creation problems lies in one word i.e. God even according to highly qualified professionals. Now only one thing remains in the course of the deniers of creation, either to provide the answers of every ifs and buts or accept that answer to be God! 5. “When one considers the need for a program to control the

behavior of cells, the problem is aggravated. Everyone who has actually set up a sophisticated program for a normal computer (not using provided languages like Basic or Fortran) will agree, we think, with our experience that the writing of sub-routines is the least part of the job. The hard part lies in the logic of the main program. In the biological case, the enzymes, histones, are only the sub-routines. The main program remains, and likely enough this is the really awkward part, a part that is probably much less likely to be discovered by the random processes than the complex biosubstances on which our probability estimates have been based, much less likely than one part in 10^40,000” - FRED HOYLE – CHANDRA WICKRAMASINGHE (EVOLUTION FROM SPACE – P 141) (8) Sir Fred Hoyle, an English astronomer, widely renowned for formulating the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, and Chandra Wickramasinghe (Gold medalist), astronomer and mathematician, professor at the University of Cardiff (Wales), known for his work along with Hoyle on the interstellar dust (interstellar matter). Both co-wrote a book on the cosmic and cellular creation of matter and life named ‘Evolution from space’. Both these highly qualified scientists concluded with the remarks that they have written this book on an antiDarwinism ideology. They gave examples from the origination of the primal matter and how the proteins were first made from amino acids, and how the structures of these amino acids came into being. They founded that the basic programing of gene came from outside the world (i.e. God) and proved it with an example of a computer language 118

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program which doesn’t creates or programs itself but is fed in by the programmer. This magnificent work gives a jolt to Darwinian evolution theory and debunks the claims made by Mr. Dawkins based on that very theory! 6. “The existence of a Supreme Being is demonstrated by infinite

adjustments, without which life itself would be impossible. Man’s presence on earth and the magnificent demonstrations of his intellect are part of a program being carried out by the Supreme intelligence” - A. CRESSY MORRISON (MAN DOES NOT STAND ALONE – P 9) (9) Cressy Morrison, was an American chemist and president of the New York Academy of Sciences. He wrote an extensive book ‘Man does not stand alone’ on proving that faith is proved from science. According to Morrison, faith in God can be proved from science and the experimental part of science which provides information about different parts of creation of the universe and life on earth, this very information leads to the knowledge about the creator, God. He provides example from different disciplines of science regarding it including astronomy, chemistry and genetics etc. His work at that time in the 1940’s was a huge induction in the field of science and religion as shortly after Darwin’s theory at that time, no significant work was done on scientific basis for religion, he was the first to provide those scientific proves on God’s existence and this line is followed till date. Mr. Dawkins was only one-year old when this book was written and only ten years old when Cressy Morrison passed away. Imagine Mr. Dawkins claiming that after the formulation of the Darwin’s theory of evolution, faith in God got dismantled scientifically! And this book was written when even Einstein was alive and had moved to the US! Does Mr. Dawkins find his faith in God restored scientifically?

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7. “According to preformation, God alone was responsible for the

ultimate act of creation”

- BILL MESLER – H. JAMES CLEAVES || (A BRIEF HISTORY OF CREATION – P 53) (10) Bill and James, two learned men of the modern age wrote a book on the history of creation. Bill is a journalist who lives in the Washington D.C. and James is the vice president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life and a professor at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he also lives in Washington D.C. This precise history of creation gives the ultimate idea of how life came into being and how wrong is the perception of atheists on the absence of God generally and in the creation specifically. What this book tells us is that creation is a reality and it emphasizes on the fact that how did life begin, what is the relation of Darwinism and evolution with creation, Watson and Crick’s model of DNA and the origin of life scientifically proving creation. It’d be highly interesting to see how Mr. Dawkins negate the scientists of his own era on this!

8. “It also became clear to me that science, despite its unquestioned powers in unraveling the mysteries of the natural world, would get me no further in resolving the question of God. If God exists, the He must be outside the natural world, and therefore the tools of science are not the right ones to learn about Him” - FRANCIS S. COLLINS (THE LANGUAGE OF GOD – P 30) (11) Francis S. Collins, a famous geneticist, and a longtime leader of the all famous Human Genome Project. Collins grew up as an agnostic and then later on became a committed atheist. He worked at the University of Michigan as medical geneticist and helped discovering the treatment of many genetic diseases like Huntington’s disease and cystic fibrosis etc. He 120

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writes his journey from atheism to belief in God in his book. This book became the international bestseller and the idea of a scientist giving the evidences of belief in God was alluring. One big question arises that what Mr. Dawkins says and thinks about the idea of a scientist of the highest caliber giving evidences of God’s existence and narrating the story of his journey from atheism to belief. Mr. Dawkins himself has done a lots of storytelling in his book, so what does he says about this huge real life incident in a scientist’s life! Doesn’t it shake him! Another important point which Francis Collins raised as mentioned above in his own words is an intelligent approach towards understanding and knowing about God. He mentions that the existing criteria of knowing about God is not the right one as God is supernatural so you can’t know about supernatural things with natural methods and processes. There got to be a distinctly different criterion for knowing about God according to us, what can be better than a divine revelation by God Himself! Again, only if common sense is used! It has to prevail isn’t it! 9. John Clover Monsma: Moving from single quotes to group reference, John Clover Monsma, compiled a book named “The Evidence of God in an Expanding Universe” in which he gathered the research and views of 40 scientists of the modern day on existence of God. This work created such an immense impact that this book got translated into many languages from English to Arabic and Urdu etc. In order to create more impact of the work, despite of quote for quote, the list of the scientists is given below who argued in approval of God’s existence: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Frank Allen – Biophysicist Robert Morris Page – Physicist Merritt Stanley Congdon – Natural Scientist John Cleveland Cothran – Mathematician and Chemist 121

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5. Donald Henry Porter – Mathematician and Physicist 6. Edward Luther Kessel – Zoologist and Entomologist 7. Walton Oscar Lundberg – Physiologist and Biochemist 8. Paul Clarence Aebersold – Biophysicist 9. Marlin Books Kreider – Physiologist 10. George Earl Davis – Physicist 11. Thomas David Parks – Research Chemist 12. John William Klotz – Geneticist 13. Oscar Leo Brauer – Physicist and Chemist 14. Irving William Knobloch – Natural Scientist 15. John Leo Abernethy – Research Chemist 16. Russell Lowell Mixter – Zoologist 17. Gerald T. Den Hartog – Research Agronomist 18. Laurence Colton Walker – Research Forester and Plant Physiologist 19. Walter Edward Lammerts – Geneticist 20. Russell Charles Artist – Biologist and Botanist 21. George Herbert Blount – Applied Physicist 22. Donald Robert Carr – Geochemist 23. Peter W. Stoner – Mathematician and Astronomer 24. Claude M. Hathaway – Consulting Engineer 25. Merlin Grant Smith – Mathematician and Astronomer 26. Edwin Fast – Physicist 27. John Adolf Buehler – Consulting Chemist 28. Albert McCombs Winchester – Biologist 29. Olin Carroll Karkalits – Chemical Engineer 30. Edmund Carl Kornfeld – Research Chemist 31. Earl Chester Rex – Mathematician and Physicist 32. Malcolm Duncan Winter Jr. – Medical Internist 33. Dale Swartzendruber – Soil Physicist 34. Lester John Zimmerman – Soil Scientist and Plant Physiologist 35. Robert Horton Cameron – Mathematician 36. Elmer W. Maurer – Research Chemist 122

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37. Wayne U. Ault – Geochemist 38. Paul Ernest Adolph – Physician and Surgeon 39. Cecil Boyce Hamann – Biologist 40. Andrew Convey Ivy – Physiologist The details of these scientists, their places of work, majors and contributions can be seen in the book “The Evidence of God in an Expanding Universe” itself in detail and all their articles can be read in detail there. (12) Worth noticing thing is that all these scientists belongs to the United States of America, the country which and whose scientists Mr. Dawkins cherish so much. So, now what does Mr. Dawkins would have to say about these American scientists? They’re all also unlearned, religious fanatics and stereotypes Mr. Dawkins? 10. Dan Graves: Another distinct work has been done by Dan Graves who compiled the biographies of 48 scientists from the past and present in the book named “Scientists of Faith”. The compiler presented the biographies of famous scientists from the past starting from the 16th century and coming up to the 20th century C.E. According to Graves, all these 48 scientists had Christian faiths and provided proofs from history, their works and quotes for this. It’ll be indeed interesting again to have a look on how Mr. Dawkins comment on the historical chain of ‘believing’ scientists. The book is available online for the readers and the link is provided in the footnote below 7. The above given quotes, references and citations are meant to give a balancing counter argument for Mr. Dawkins approach of giving quotes, though the ones given by us are far more rational and historically proved without a doubt. Another thing to be noted is that no Muslim references are given intentionally because Mr. Dawkins don’t have a grip on 7

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Islamic sciences and knowledge so perhaps to be fairer to him we skipped those references for not making him feel dumb. But this is what Mr. Dawkins have done in his book, have commented on something which he doesn’t know as an ethologist, while whatever we have quoted above is all in the light of our knowledge form science and different religions. Hence, for a better understanding and as a food for thought, we provided a complete scientific and religious picture of God which certainly lacked in God delusion. Critical Analysis: 4.21. Gathering and Analyzing all Views: 4.22. Findings: We hope, believe and understand that Mr. Dawkins have written God Delusion in the right spirit to find the truth. In other case, if the book is written to show hatred towards a specific belief, group of people or ideology, and to promote personal likings and disliking, then we’re afraid that purpose has failed big time. As for the previous purpose, if it is meant to promote a discussion and to address an intellectual debate only then an opinion can be made on it, otherwise an opinion can’t be given on hatred (which seemed the case in the book). But we think good of Mr. Dawkins and consider his case is a literary debate, so let us gather all the information and analyze it later.

4.23. Social Sciences: 1. Morality and Ethics: First and foremost, making a decisive statement as Mr. Dawkins has done is unprecedented on the given topic. The 124

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debate on God has always been a delicate, touchy and emotional debate. Scholars from the past has been very cautious about commenting on this topic and have always been respectful when they’ve done so. But Mr. Dawkins has been very disrespectful in his approach on commenting on this topic and that too without any reason or provocation. No wonder why there’s a popular opinion that atheists are mostly immoral and unethical. This basically is because there’s no parameter and no guidelines in atheism which bounds a person to be moral and ethical according to the social norms. Atheists because are rebellious to the society at first, they don’t consider abiding by the social norms because of that and reject and oppose those norms which results in a moral chaos and disturbance of ethics in the society. Whereas, why religion has been so successful in bringing peace, harmony, brotherhood, ethics and high moral values in the society is because the very basis of every religion is high moral values and it binds its followers to be good and follow the moral values strictly. Hence the more a person becomes religious, more high he gets on moral grounds. While there’s distinctly no framework of morality in atheism because of the belief in the ‘Survival of the fittest’ which makes them do whatever is right for them distinctively without looking on the morality of the act. This gives us the first finding atheism destroys morality and creates a mess in society because according to them, they’re but evolved animals and animals doesn’t have any morality! 2. Anthropological Argument: As Mr. Dawkins dedicated a great part of his book to the anthropological arguments, maybe unwittingly, specially the last three chapters consists of this great social science but surprisingly to oppose the idea of God, whereas, anthropology deals with the society’s major habits and 125

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norms, and we know the world is a majority theistic world at the moment and it has always been like that. So, to introduce and provide a sense for atheism in the society, atheists have to introduce a new anthropological science and I’m afraid a new society as well. Only then can the atheistic definition can be formed for the society, otherwise in a theistic society, Mr. Dawkins’ or atheist’s approach won’t work. Just to add another point, the bad acts in a society are ‘always’ caused by a breach of a religious teaching, not to lie, not to steal, not to cheat, not to be abusive, not to rape and not to kill, are all teachings of religion. When one of the before mentioned evil acts happens in a society, the adherent of the religion is a condemned and said to have committed a breach of religious teaching, while in atheism again, no one cares if a person is morally corrupt or is abusive or is rude because only commercial ethics are adhered to in atheism as for gaining benefits, but there’s no lower limit of an atheist and to be a good member of society because he’s got no reason to do so, when you’ve got no reason, encouragement of reward to do good, why would you do good as well. And to show that through statistics, we provide the ratios of crime rates among non-religious people to blow your minds of and to show the hazards of leaving religion in the society. According to reports, the averages of different crimes in nonreligious people are: -

Assault rate ~ 46% more than average Murders ~ 41% more than average Rape ~ 26% more than average Total Crimes ~ 67% more than average8 - The question which still arises is that if Mr. Dawkins is very much interested in rape victims, violence, murders etc. then why don’t he

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/groups/Non--religiouscountries/Crime 8

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addresses to rectify this epidemic in the atheistic society! What these crime rates tells us is that the more non-religious you get, the more morally corrupt you become, and the more religious you become, the more morally sound you become. Like one of the lowest crime rates in the world is in Saudi Arabia, which is a religious country of course. (Source: Wikipedia) So, the question again arises, what Mr. Dawkins was trying to prove by quoting some incidents of black sheep of the religious community while missing hundred and millions of good, in fact great examples! Whatever he tried to prove from it, unfortunately he couldn’t and it backfired indeed! 3. Archeological Argument: With the last major part of social sciences, the cultures have to be discussed as well which Mr. Dawkins somehow missed in his book. Archeology deals with that study of cultures in humans all around the world and it’d be befitting to discuss that to have a better idea of what Mr. Dawkins missed (unintentionally hopefully) and how important it is to discuss that at first. Cultures and studies of cultures plays an extremely important part in the upbringing of a human being and know about him in specifically and his race at a specific area and at a specific period of time in general. The part of archeological sciences which deals with this study are taxonomy and the fossil studies. What taxonomy tells us is the origins and the study of fossils tells us about the times and cultures of different organisms, specially the human beings which is our specific point of discussion here. Mostly, the fossil study was used to be done to know about how the previous humans lived, what their cultures were like and how they used to survive in the society as a whole. Now, our point of discussion would be one part of this study, and that is 127

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religious culture, which in turn gives ethical, moral and survival culture of the society in study as well through it. Over the past course of time, human culture always had a religious culture among them which promotes their ethical upbringing and steadfastness as good persons of a society. The study of human social fossils such as Egyptian, Mohenjo Daro and Harappa fossils etc. have shown that these civilizations always had a religious belief and religious culture though they’re some 2500-3100 B.C old civilizations (Source: Wikipedia) (13). These studies also reveal that a human civilization is always built on beliefs and practices on those beliefs. Religious believes made animal like humans into civilized human beings. And it is a great sight to witness for the beholders today. On the other hand, what has atheism brought to the civilizations? Has it ever had a part in upbringing a culture and making the inhabitants and their area civilized? Any society, even with belief in pagan gods had made a social conduct code in their habitat. But has atheism paved way for any civilization to bring a social conduct to live a life with specified values? The answers to it are very simple, atheism didn’t have any roots in any organized or civilized society of the world, rather even in today’s world it doesn’t offers any organized customs while even the devil worshippers have their rituals. This leads us to a point that atheism has never been a part of a society, neither does it have any place in the society till date because it doesn’t offer anything to the people apart from conjunctures on God and hatred towards the followers of God no matter what religion they follow. A haphazard or zig zag communal framework which allows everyone to do everything they want, go astray intellectually as far as they’d like and think or act on anything which comes in their mind would end up in a chaos as if a person goes in the jungle and burn it saying this is my right to do anything which comes in my mind, if anyone doesn’t stop him, everyone will suffer to the hands of that person with their 128

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food, fuel and oxygen would all get burnt, imagine the situation then! So, the socio-archeological argument gives us a clear cut indication that atheism and atheists never had a program or conduct in the society neither they do have any now, we can make a statement that atheism is not a group of beliefs but an unorganized set of individuals who doesn’t offer any good to the society and are good for absolutely nothing let alone benefitting the society in any way. 4.24. Biological and Physical Sciences: 4.25. Experimental Sciences: 1. Evolution: One of the core beliefs, in fact ‘the belief’ of modern day atheism is evolution. Naturally, if you deny the existence of God, you have to provide a substitute for it as well, and the modern day atheists came up with the idea of evolution and started to believe in it as a ‘faith’. But quite interestingly, even the Darwinists are not sure about anything in and about evolution, neither they have solid/irrefutable grounds or proofs of Darwinian evolution. Yes, there are proofs of evolution, but that’s not Darwinian evolution, it doesn’t even fall under the definition of Darwinian evolution. So, here we get a lead to draw a line and differentiate between what biological evolution really is and what impossibilities Darwinian evolution teaches. Profoundly, the approach which have to be followed to cope with this problem should be the differentiating approach, the differentiation between Darwinism and evolution have to be done and that is where the theological-atheistic problem gets solved. When it is made clear that evolution is evolution not a theological or atheistic statement, then a picture gets clear that it is but science, biology, genetics or whatever branch of science you may call it, but at the end of the day it is experimental science, 129

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not a divine statement or some philosophy of an intellectual. As it’d be not right for a layman in science to comment on its principles and various disciplines, similarly, it is not right for an unspiritual person to comment on spirituality and similar related issues without knowledge, it’s not a rocket science, it’s just about using common sense! 2. Cosmological Events: One of the big ‘go to’ argument of the atheists is the cosmological argument. Let us consider the argument presented as such, the atheists claim, a big bang occurred and the universe came into being (itself). How do they know that God didn’t cause that big bang to happen? It will be such an irony if they’re not able to answer this question. They were not present at the time of big bang, in fact no one was because there was no human race or ‘life’ effectively and allegedly present at that time, so, how do they deny know that God wasn’t responsible for that? Have they seen it that God didn’t make it happen and it happened itself or everything up there happened itself (knowing how awful and ugly it looks to quote this kind of a statement but we’re compelled to do so). There are laws of nature, agreed, they run the universe precisely and smoothly, agreed, but God is not behind making these laws of nature (physical, biological or any), how can one agree to such an understatement! If it was that easy, the scientific and philosophical processes to comment on, then every passerby in the street would’ve been a scientist or a philosopher. If it’s the other way around, that it’s the modern way to deal with things or a fashion in the market, then God has never been out of fashion and religion has always been the hottest thing in the market. To just give an example, many atheists have their bread and butter associated with just criticizing on religion and spreading hatred about it. This is how hot religion has been in every aspect of life, social and family life and values, politics, and most importantly, it feeds 130

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its friends and enemies alike! It’s an economic and financial boom! 3. Genetic Genealogy: These two distinct words are inter related to each other in terms of study of human genes and DNA and finding out their lineages. All the human roots traces backs to a specific region, race, ethnicity and color. On the other hand, the DNA and chromosomes tell characteristically the story of traits which a human being possesses right from the beginning. Factually, the genes and lineage of human beings matches no other living being in any term, neither do they share a common ‘ancestor’ with any other being as no descendants are alive today for the beholders of that being for a proof for that, all that has been said is a guess work based on conjuncture. Yes, humans have shared a common region with other beings but no racial or ethnic commonality has ever been in place. Similarly, no other being or specie has a same DNA, chromosomes or genetic structure like humans i.e. 23 pairs of chromosomes, 46 in total. But surprisingly, even then the atheists boast on genes and genetics about the structural similarities with other beings as no identical structure is there in any other living creature like humans, if you want to see or study what an identical thing is, just see at human identical twins! 4.26. Concluding Remarks: 1. Where does Mr. Dawkins Stand Axiologically? In quest for God and any information about Him, the historic and contemporary both types of knowledge, axiological norms and practices must be kept under consideration at first. The biggest question that arises after the book of Mr. Dawkins is that did he kept anything like this consideration while writing the book or did he only picked up black sheep of the 131

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community, some out of context quotes and some unproved theories to prove his point keeping aside what consequences would it have on a society which heavily believes in God (all the global world) and Mr. Dawkins went on out if the way to call God a Delusion? Isn’t it too outrageous? Where does it makes Mr. Dawkins stand in an axiological environment and on the verge of an axiological argument? We would have to accept it that going out of the way and making such a claim leaves Mr. Dawkins in bad axiological company! 2. God Delusion on Literary Scale? We shall not be a judge here to quote a rating but we can certainly analyze God delusion on a literary scale as anyone else can analyze Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion as well. A literary work generally consists of arguments and counter arguments on a specific topic. In fiction it can be otherwise but in non-Fiction it has to be the case. We notice, Mr. Dawkins shows outward analysis of some of his personal life experiences and of some of the news he came to know. There’s a big question that do personal life experiences carry any significance in the literary world? Do they make the argument any strong or just fills the pages for no good? Also, irrelevant quotes from the persons already carrying or have carried an ideology like Mr. Dawkins limits the work as a whole to one side of the picture. It becomes only a criticizing material rather than a literary work. To be on the literary side of affairs, you have to be unbiased at first and be reasonable rather than showing your hatred towards something, it is not literature my friend in that case, if you spread hatred and entice sentiments of people, what you’re going to gain by it! 3. Inviting Mr. Dawkins to Study Divinity: First of all is my question. Have you studied divinity at all Mr. Dawkins? Have you studied the Qur’an? Why not start now if 132

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you haven’t! Why not ask an expert of divinity about your doubts and questions, have a session, talk to him and see where does it takes you. It’s never too late my friend, you can start it even now, but the important thing is learning and learning for good with a pure intention. If you haven’t even studied divinity in depth already, then I’m afraid how did you write a book denying it! What a massive blunder it was to do something like that only on the basis of the things which comes in your mind not realizing this topic effects all of the societies of the world. Regardless of the results and consequences which this book had, we can still revisit it to make it nice, a teaser and a point to ponder for the reader rather than to force them to accept your point of view on whatever cost. Hence it’ll be ideal if Mr. Dawkins accept our invitation and start to study divinity form the beginning for a better understanding of it. 4.27. The Middle Path: In order to achieve a common solution to a problem or even to solve it at first place, a better and commonly agreeable approach has to be adopted. In this case, to settle the ‘quarrel’ among the theists and atheists, a common approach has to be adopted as well with all sincerity. Now what is and what can be a commonly and evenly agreeable approach in this case? A very viable solution is suggested in the Quran regarding that: “Come to common terms as between us and you” (3:64) (14) This verse of the Quran is directed towards the non-Muslims in order to convince them to come at a common point of discussion and agree to the things which are common between Muslims and non-Muslims and leave the disagreeable parts. It is an ideal point to agree to indeed as the differences can be resolved later but at least come at a point of agreement first! And you’ll see many differences will get solved automatically as well without any hard work.

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4.28. We Only Ask for the Right Methodology! It can’t get solved until we adopt the right methodology. My whole concern in this book has been that. We can’t reach to an ideal common point if we’re a carpenter and try to be a Goldsmith, or working on iron and expect diamond as the product. Similarly, if one is a biologist and talks about divinity would always adopt an undermined approach or unspecified references to prove his point. There have to be an unparalleled approach! So, in our case, what is our common point? What can be the commonalities between the theists and the atheists? We made an Eight Fold path for this, let us try and solve our issue this! 4.29. The Eight Fold Path: -

Adopting the right method Rationality Utmost sincerity to solve the problem Staying unbiased Taking help of whatever provable science available Leaving everything illogical Getting to the right conclusion Accepting whatever it is

We indeed think and expect that both the parties would accept this agenda because it is what any reasonable person would do. So, now let us make a case for both sides and implement this agenda on the case for God as of our discussion: • Adopting the Right Method: The case for God demands to adopt the right method first of all and most of all. Because if the right method is not adopted from the beginning, the right results 134

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can’t be achieved, in fact worst consequences would be faced in the end courtesy a wrong method. Let’s take an example of applying the scientific method to search for God. God is not observable, so by scientific method we can’t judge God right from the beginning because God is not the primary debate of science, science is experimental in nature and God is permanent, while everything which is not observable doesn’t necessarily have to be absent, like the example of thoughts, feelings and atoms for that matter. What process is adopted for atoms? Their presence is accepted by seeing its observable effects. Why can’t it be done for God? So, this is the right method in this case, affirm God with its observable effects. Right, so what an observable effect be for God? The creation of course! Look for Him in the horizons, the sun, the moon, the stars and their primary nebula, and find Him out in the depths, the life and its origins from cells and their structures, you’ll notice many Godly things! It’s just about noticing. •

Rationality:

After adopting the right method, the next step is to be rational in your approach as a whole. What does it mean to be rational? It is about taking the proofs and leaving conjunctures. When you see a point in creation where you’re answerless on from where the primary nebula came from or how did a living come into being, you realize this is all caused by an intelligent supernatural all powerful and ‘creating’ supreme being, you accept it, you’re being rational, you reject it, you just committed something irrational. • Utmost Sincerity to Solve the Problem: We can’t say that after someone rejects the wonders of creation although he’s answerless, that he’s being 135

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honest to solve the given problem. This honesty and sincerity is required to solve the problem otherwise it’ll reside in forever and would just leave an impact of insincerity and biased hatred. •

Staying Unbiased:

It is a demand specially for a researcher to stay unbiased and a demand in the given process as well to solve the problem. As we are searching for God and we have already made up our mind against Him and have hatred associated to this topic then we guess it wouldn’t be possible to find the truth. Unfortunately, Mr. Dawkins have this hatred and biasness against God which he had announced many times on air and showed several times in his books. If you’re being judgemental right from the beginning to God, how do you expect to reach the right result unbiased! •

Taking help of whatever Provable Science Available:

The important point in the given statement is the word provable. Any scientific process that is not experimentally provable must not be involved in the search for God at all. If involved it’ll create huge doubts and questions over the authenticity of the overall process and would give rise to many controversies. To avoid this negative impact, only the scientific facts must be involved in the discussion rather than theories. One of the biggest problem is bagging your money on an unproven theory like Darwin’s theory which creates a deadlock between both the parties. So, to avoid this situation, only mutually agreeable scientific points must be added to discussion without a sense of point scoring. •

Leaving Everything Illogical: 136

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What does imply on leaving the illogical things is that to stop putting your weight on the unprovable things specially, scientific. But it is seen that unfortunately those things are even made the basis of arguments and ideologies are laid down on those. If it is said that because there’s a Darwinian theory of evolution available in the market so we say with certainty that there’s no God, then it is the vague and illogical argument given which should be avoided. When there was no Darwin and his theory, there were civilized people before that as well so did they use to believe in, if there was an atheist at that time what arguments did he give? Or the ones who used to believe in God what did they say about God? Yes, the theist today is firmer than ever because he’s got backing of science, he’s got philosophy and he has the backing of history on his side too. So, what implies really on being logical, is to compliment the science with philosophy and history! •

Getting to the Right Conclusion:

After the all scrutinized and hectic process, the demand of the hard work is always finding the solution to your problem and more importantly the right one. But how do we know that we’ve reached the right conclusion? It is never easy to make such a statement but it is not impossible either. If all the process is followed precisely, strictly and profoundly, then the chances of the right conclusion raises much higher. To put it in a nutshell, the right conclusion is the one which is free from doubts, biasness, hatred, hiding the truth and closest to reality. For example, we make a statement that there’s no life present on mars, first of all we make sure to follow the right method to start with, we’d have to study NASA’s mars missions and then move to reasoning point rationally 137

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on the collected data. The next step we should be sincere enough to comment on it lest, one wants fame and comments without knowledge or honesty about solving the problem. Being unbiased here means to don’t have any hatred towards NASA or a tilt against it so that it looks the researcher just wants to deny whatever NASA says without reason. Now we should study the telescopes, the Hubble telescope and the other unmanned mars missions of NASA. After the thorough study, it’s time to leave every unproved, conjuncture and guesswork and only take whatever is proved. From here you’d find yourself to the right conclusion without a doubt that there’s no life on mars, yes, if only the process is adopted and followed as such and as it is. So, in our case, the same methodology has to be adopted as well. The prime study on God should be done from the primary sources on God, i.e. the religious scriptures, and find put is there something illogical or proved unscientific statement in those scriptures, if you find one then leave it and move ahead, if you don’t find it then accept it. Let us make the Quran as the test case for that, when it is claimed that there’s no mistake or unscientific statement in the Quran, so check that out yourself and if you find it perfect and infallible, then accept it! And 14 centuries had passed, it is exactly the case, it’s just about accepting it now! For God! Accepting Whatever it is: All the process, all the hard work would go in vain if the results are not accepted wholeheartedly. It is extremely important to accept whatever conclusion is drawn or whatever are the findings being found after the following the procedure. Impartiality demands accepting the found facts whether they’re against your preconceived ideas. So, for that and to solve •

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problems i.e. in our case the findings on God, you have to have an impartial mind and an impartial approach to accept the facts on God. If we have found that there is a God and it He who runs everything and this is the ultimate conclusion drawn here, even then if you reject it, it is only because the results are against your wishes and your preconceived ideas (which is poison for a researcher), so now, that is indeed and completely up to you but if you don’t accept, you just can’t claim that at least that you’re being impartial, because you’re not! Findings: After the research proposal being presented on the “Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion”, and going through the whole book, following different research patterns, collecting all available data and critically analyzing it all, the following findings have been drawn in the light of this research and the dissertation finds: 1. It was found, belief in God has always been an integral part of the human race. It was further found that in history, the first developed core in human beings was the belief in God. Moreover, biologically and genetically a human being have natural belief in God encoded in him. Adding to it, it was found that in every religion, especially in the Semitic religions, the belief in God’s existence has been the base of each of the religions and the foundations of further teachings are based and revolve around the belief in God’s existence. 2. It was found, the book written by Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion” have two kinds of approaches, a philosophical approach and a 139

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scientific approach. A distinction and basic differentiation was done between both types of points. After scrutinizing all the ten chapters, many discrepancies and contradictions were found both philosophically and scientifically. 3. It was found, the theory of evolution has been a controversial theory right from the beginning of its formulation. It was found that Richard Dawkins have made this theory of evolution as his basic ideology but hasn’t put on any research material on the theory whether critical or supportive. It was further analyzed that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution lacks evidences of the level with which it can be made a base for formulating a belief, scientific or ideological. It was found that no direct evidence exists for Darwinian evolution, neither did Darwin provided any. 4. It was found, God and debate on God has been the most important and valuable intellectual discussion among the philosophers and scientists alike. The reasoning on both philosophical and scientific grounds was done on God’s existence and it was found that the existence of God has a strong case from both aspects in both the disciplines. It was further found that the beliefs in atheism and divinity are both claimed to be rational but the approach adopted in atheism is partial and on the side of intellectual wilderness, while the divinity grounds more rationality based on the sacred scriptures and creation evidences. Furthermore, the viewpoints of various scientists and intellectuals were examined on God’s existence after which the belief in God’s existence was found to be firmly engraved in the society among both common and learned people. 140

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5. The hypothesis of God being the ultimate reality is adopted. 4.30. Conclusion: We can get to the conclusion that the work of Richard Dawkins’ in God Delusion lacks direct and circumstancial evidences on God’s existence and only provides a theoretical aspect of chance as a proof. His most of the work revolves around philosophy and science, through Greek and modern philosophy and through modern science his ideas were proved to be unrealistic. It can be claimed that God is actually not a delusion but an ultimate reality.

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References: 1.

References to embryology in the Qur'an", Article for The Journal of the Islamic Medical Association, Vol. 18, Jan-June 1986, pp. 1516.

2. Ronald N. Clark, Einstein: The life and times, New York World Publishing Company: 19/1 – 425 3. En.Wikipedia.org > Misanthropy 4. En.Wikipedia.org > World > War|| 5. Quora.com > Does-Noam-Chomsky-believe-in-God 6. Enotes.com > God’s-Presence-in-History 7. Bucaille, M. (1989), page 199-200, What is the Origin of Man?, Lahore: Al-Falah Islamic Books. 8. Hoyle, F – Wickramasinghe C. (1981), page 141, Evolution From Space, Great Britain: Granada Publishing. 9. Morrison, C. (ND), page 9, Man does not Stand Alone, New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 10. Bill Mesler – H. James Cleaves ||, A Brief History of Creation – P 53. 11. Francis S. Collins the Language of God – P 30. 12. John Clover Monsma, The Evidence of God in an Expanding Universe. 13. En.Wikipedia.org > Old > Civilizations 14. Al Quran, Surah Aal e Imran, Chapter 3, Verse 64 (Sahih International).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY • •

Aliki, (1994), The Gods and Goddesses of Olympus, Harper Collins Publishers, USA. Alimardi, Mohammad Mehdi, (2013) Religious Inquiries – God in Sikhism, Vol. 2, No. 4, Summer and Autumn, 77-92.

•

Bakewell, J. (2014), Belief in God, 218, 17-21.

•

Bbc.co.uk > Bitesize > Guides > Zwvpsg8 > Revision

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Bill Mesler – H. James Cleaves ||, A Brief History of Creation – P 53.

•

https://www.bethinking.org/does-evolution-disprovecreation/is-it-possible-to-be-a-christian-and-believe-inevolution

•

Bucaille, M. (1989), page 199-200, What is the Origin of Man?, Lahore: Al-Falah Islamic Books. Bucher, H. The Causes of Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon, Enrique, Chapter 1. Challenge to the special theory of relativity, NAC Society, Published on Physics Essays. Chomsky, N. (2011), page 128, How the World Works, USA: Soft Skull Press.

• • • •

Crean, T. (ND) God is No Delusion, Marathon, UK, P 160.

•

Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design". Rabbinical Council of America. 2005. Dawkins, R (2006), God Delusion, The Preface, Great Britain: Bantam Press. Dawson, J. (1996) The Demon-Haunted World, Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Enotes.com > God’s-Presence-in-History En.Wikipedia.org > Misanthropy En.Wikipedia.org > Old > Civilizations En.Wikipedia.org > Pschological-benefits-of-Prayer En.Wikipedia.org > Wiki > God_gene En.Wikipedia.org > World > War|| Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist, evolutionandchristianfaith.org Flew, A. (2010), There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind. 3,36-54.

• • • • • • • • • •

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•

Francis S. Collins the Language of God – P 30.

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Guessoum, N. (2018), Oxford University Press, 250, 117-139

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Haqiqatjou, D. (2017), The Yaqeen Magazine, 17, 2-18.

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harvard.academia.edu › DanielHaqiqatjou Healthline.com > Human-body-maps > Coccyx

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Holt, J. (2013), Beyond Belief, 88,19-28.

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Hoyle, F – Wickramasinghe C. (1981), page 141, Evolution from Space, Great Britain: Granada Publishing. Hoyle, F – Wickramasinghe, C (1981), page 163, Evolution from Space, Great Britain: Granada Publishing. Hoyle, F – Wickramasinghe, C (1981), page 164, Evolution from Space, Great Britain: Granada Publishing. John Clover Monsma, The Evidence of God in an Expanding Universe. Medicalnewstoday.com > Articles Merriam-Webster.com > Dictionary > God Morrison, C. (ND), page 9, Man does not Stand Alone, New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026801-500-whyeinstein-was-wrong-about-relativity/ Pbs.org > Wbgh > Evolution > Library Quora.com > Does-Noam-Chomsky-believe-in-God References to embryology in the Qur'an", Article for The Journal of the Islamic Medical Association, Vol. 18, Jan-June 1986, pp. 15-16. Ronald N. Clark, Einstein: The life and times, New York World Publishing Company: 19/1 – 425

• • • • • • • • • • • •

Sarfati, J. (2008), Refuting Evolution, Wellington, NZ, 2008, P 50.

•

Sciencedaily.com

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Tzortzis, H.A (2017) The Divine Reality, WS, USA, P 7.

* Varisco, D. (2010), Social Anthropology, 73, 91-102. • https://yaqeeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/CanIslam-Object-to-Evolution.pdf • •

Vocabulary.com > Dictionary > Theory Yahya, H. (2003), Allah is Known through Reason, Goodreads India, P 110. 144

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Yahya, H. (2003), Crude Understanding of Disbelief, Goodreads India, P 111.

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Yahya, H. (2003), Darwinism Refuted, (2nd Edition) Goodreads, India, P 23.

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Yahya, H. (2003), The Disaster Darwinism brought to Humanity, Goodreads India, P 11.

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Yahya, H. (2003), Evolution Deceit, Goodreads India, P 89.

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Yahya, H. (2003), The Miracle of Human Creation, Goodreads India, P 17.

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Yahya, H. (2003), The Nightmare of Disbelief, Goodreads India, P 69.

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INDEXES Sr. No. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Words

Page No.

Abraham Adam Albert McCombs Winchester Alfred Russel Wallace America Andrew Convey Ivy Apollo Argentina Aristotle Aryeh Carmell Aryeh Kaplan Bakewell Bill Mesler Brahma Bulgaria Canada Carl Sagan Cecil Boyce Hamann Chandra Wickramasinghe Charles Darwin China Cressy Morrison Cyril Domb Dale Swartzendruber Damon Linker Dan Graves

45 23 122 69 92 123 22 78 22 71 72 5 14 28 78 38 51 123 80 35 77 119 71 122 08 123

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27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

Daniel E. Friedmann Daniel Haqiqatjou David Bohm Denis R Alexander Donald Henry Porter Donald Robert Carr Earl Chester Rex Edmund Carl Kornfeld Edward Luther Kessel Edwin Fast Egypt Einstein, A. Elmer W. Maurer Elon Musk Emil L. Fackenheim Epicurus Flew Francis S. Collins Frank Allen Fred Hoyle Galileo Galilei Gautam Budh George Earl Davis George Herbert Blount Gerald Schroeder Gerald T. Den Hartog Germany H. James Cleaves Harappa Hera 147

71 72 99 72 122 122 122 122 122 122 31 39 122 99 116 115 5 14 121 80 101 29 122 122 72 122 78 14 128 22

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57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

Holt Ibn Warraq Irving William Knobloch Israel Italy Jean Baptiste Lamarck Jeffrey P Jerry Coyne Joan Roughgarden John Adolf Buehler John Cleveland Cothran John Clover Monsma John Leo Abernethy John William Klotz Jonathan Sacks Keith L. Moore Laurence Colton Walker Lebanon Lester John Zimmerman M. Hathaway Mahavir Malcolm Duncan Winter Mark Buchanan Marlin Books Kreider Maurice Bucaille Merlin Grant Smith Merritt Stanley Congdon Mohenjo Daro Muhammad PBUH Myanmar 148

05 39 122 27 78 69 55 08 72 122 121 121 122 122 72 102 122 78 122 122 21 122 63 122 117 122 121 128 28 77

Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion

87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

Natan Slifkin Nathan Aviezer Nathaniel T. Jeanson Noam Chomsky Northern Ireland Olin Carroll Karkalits Oscar Leo Brauer Paul Clarence Aebersold Paul Ernest Adolph Peter W. Plato Poland Pythagoras Richard Dawkins Robert Horton Cameron Robert Morris Page Russell Charles Artist Russell Lowell Mixter Sean O’ Casey Shiva Spain Stephen Hawking Steve Jobs Stuart Clark Taiwan Thomas David Parks Thomas Jefferson Victor Hugo Vishnu Walter Edward Lammerts 149

72 71 55 16 37 122 122 122 123 122 22 77 22 05 122 121 122 122 113 28 78 100 99 63 77 122 113 113 20 122

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117. 118. 119. 120. 121.

Walton Oscar Lundberg Wayne U. Ault Yehuda Levi Yoosuf bin Moosaa al-Qattaan Zeus

150

122 123 72 08 22

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