Wahhabi Contention: What happens if kalam arguments are undermined rationally?

Wahabi contention: What happens if these kalam arguments are undermined rationally? In the West these antiquated arguments have basically been rejected since the time of Kant; isn’t it therefore a terrible mistake for a person to base his faith on them?

Answer: The argument I presented in “The Foundations of the Religion” is not false, and it is not antiquated, and will never be undermined. Formulated by men yes, but solidly agreeing with the scriptures and sensory reality, because all it says is that anything with a beginning needs a Creator, simply based on the existence of events; the changes we see around us. It is a simple and logically sound argument based on premises that no reasonable person would deny. I can tell you that I know of philosophers in this day and age that have been silenced by these types of arguments. A friend of mine has a Phd in math from Berkley, for example, and he converted because some of his students presented such proofs.

Kant, the miserable kaafir, may Allah give him what he deserves along with his ilk, did not bring anything new that the scholars had not already faced. In fact they have faced worse. What you are referring to are the philosophers who deny certainty of any knowledge, or certain types of knowledge. If they were right, then it would mean that scriptures also do not provide certainty of knowledge, so you cannot say that the Kant managed to prove his point without falling out of Islam – but you did not know that about Kant I am sure, so this is not an accusation. The scholars called these people the “I don’t Knowers” and the like. They are of several different kinds. They are very dangerous so please do not go down this path, or even dwell on it. Their sole purpose is to cause doubts, and they are very, very good at it. This is one of the reasons why the scholars considered it haram to read philosophy unless you were doing it to attack them and was highly qualified, and even for this purpose a rather significant number of scholars considered it haram.

You see, the philosophers were and are in general haughty, proud of their intelligence, and showing this was important to them, so they engaged in debates to win, even if it meant denying their own mother, and one of the ways to do that is to simply engage in producing doubts. As a general rule, a debate is won for many reasons, and sometimes the person being right actually loses a debate, because his debating skills were poorer, and fell in traps, or because he was not knowledgeable enough. There are ways to deal with “doubt strategists” like Kant, and I have personally dealt with them, but it is better not to let an opponent raise this issue at all.

I generally avoid anybody taking me on this ride by having them agree with me on every premise and every step of the argument as I present it. I do not continue unless they verbally express agreement. That way it will be much less tempting to employ a doubt-spreading strategy, as it will not benefit their personal image, since they will clearly be contradicting themselves. Instead you will find them simply keeping silent, or saying “I’ll think about it”, or even “you are right” (followed by no action) and then you never see them again. Which is a good thing.

If they have problems with the first premise in the argument in “The Foundations of the Religion” which states, “we are here today,” then one may start what I like to call “current event enlightenment therapy” by kicking the “patient” hard in the shin and see if you can’t have him admit that he was surely kicked in the shin. If you find him resisting the idea that events follow each other, you could apply “serial event enlightenment therapy” and kick him several times, but before you do all this you may need a government license, and make sure that he won’t be able, once enlightened to the existence of series of events, to apply one right back at you, like a lawsuit procedure.

Authored by Sheikh Abu Adam al Naruiji