Moral Argument for God’s Existence -by Dr Isa Jahangir-Monday 17/01/2022

10 Bekeken· 24/07/12

Lebanese Youth Foundation
abonnees

Weekly Webinar on Islam & Contemporary Issues

Talk by HIWM Dr Isa Jahangir

Topic: “Moral Argument for God’s Existence “

️ Monday 17th January 2022

Time: 6:00 p.m.

Laat meer zien

Transcript

[0:03]dear brothers and sisters and welcome to today's webinar on islam and

[0:08]contemporary issues i'm miss marihoon here in london hosting this discussion where

[0:14]the topic of today is on the moral argument for god's existence

[0:19]to discuss this topic we are joined today by our respected scholar

[0:23]islam al-muslimeen dr isa jahangir dr issa jahangir has held positions as

[0:30]principal senior lecturer researcher and head of the academic department for over

[0:36]two decades in the united kingdom and overseas he has been actively

[0:41]involved in the development and establishment of educational programmes for youth in

[0:47]the uk and europe he is currently the principal of the islamic

[0:50]college of london in collabora in collaboration with the university of middlesex

[0:55]sheikh isa jahangir will be talking to us for the first 40

[1:00]minutes of the webinar and in the final 20 minutes our audience

[1:03]will have the chance to ask questions please feel free to ask

[1:08]your questions in the chat box on the site at any time

[1:10]during the program and we'll try our best to answer all your

[1:15]questions now can i ask our respective scholar issa jahangir to begin

[1:21]his talk with asylut on the holy prophet and his holy progeny

[1:52]thank you very much and i would like to thank all of

[1:58]the viewers and listeners and those who are attending this webinar as

[2:03]mentioned the topic of the webinar is a moral argument for the

[2:11]existence of god let me start with a point that it is

[2:19]a fact and it seems to be true to say and to

[2:24]claim that uh what are the most important parts of religion if

[2:32]not the most important part of religion is morality and it seems

[2:44]to be right to say that religions and most more specifically abrahamic

[2:53]and monotheistic religions have come to guide human being from a moral

[2:59]perspective of course that doesn't mean that religions do not tackle other

[3:05]social cultural economic and political issues and angles but in my understanding

[3:16]morality would be in the heart of religion probably because of it's

[3:22]because of that that our prophet says i have been appointed to

[3:33]accomplish and to complete the moral nobles of of of the nobles

[3:47]of bafla so he has been appointed as prophets to teach morality

[3:53]and to help humanity to be morally better people good people in

[3:59]their lives so one of the questions that nowadays we could be

[4:07]asked and we can ask ourselves is this question about the morality

[4:11]and religion and more specifically morality and god and the question is

[4:20]this is religion or does religion need sorry does morality need religion

[4:29]does morality need god or it doesn't so that's a very good

[4:35]question so in other words we can ask ourselves if we want

[4:41]to be morally good people do we need to have religion do

[4:47]we need to be believers there are many believers out out there

[4:50]who are not religious but who are spiritual who are moral people

[4:57]so what is the role of religion where is the rule of

[5:01]of of of god of faith of iman do we really need

[5:09]to have the iman and faith to be morally good if we

[5:16]don't then why they should be religion why there should be faith

[5:21]in god because we said that's one of the most important functions

[5:24]of religion is to give us some guidelines and instructions in the

[5:29]field of love in the field of morality so if we say

[5:36]that without religion and without god without faith human being by their

[5:42]intellects by the angel that all of them have by their adult

[5:45]they can find their own moral path they can find their own

[5:48]spiritual way they can be spiritually and morally good people if that's

[5:57]the case then what is the place of religion what is the

[6:02]place of of god so that that's a very important discussion one

[6:08]of the arguments for the existence of god which we do have

[6:13]a lot of arguments we have for example cosmological arguments we have

[6:17]ontological arguments we have teleological arguments for example arguments based on november

[6:27]arguments from the zion arguments based on contingency and necessity or brahmana

[6:32]and khan what these are among the best arguments which have been

[6:41]suggested and and proposed by muslim and christian theologians in motekel for

[6:48]the existence of god one of the recent arguments which have been

[6:56]mentioned by muslims and non-muslims to prove the existence of god is

[7:01]moral arguments moral arguments and from non-muslims probably the most famous scholar

[7:11]and personal philosopher and theologian who is famous for this argument is

[7:17]the german philosopher famous philosopher who is the god founder of modern

[7:24]philosophy and who is emmanuel kant so emmanuel kant is a very

[7:28]famous figure for this one and among the muslim uh philosophers and

[7:32]theologians we can see that this and the ideas of so many

[7:36]including in the ideas of recently imam khamenei and others i would

[7:45]like to start basically the arguments based on an ayah from the

[7:49]quran and this ayah is a very beautiful ayah this is ayah

[7:54]number 10 of surah number 30 surah rum in this then the

[8:10]fate of those who committed morally bad actions was that they denied

[8:16]the signs of allah the fate the outcome of those who were

[8:23]doing morally but actions was what was that they denied the signs

[8:29]of allah the existence of allah will be highest and they were

[8:34]making fun of the ayaats of allah from the signs of interestingly

[8:41]the quran doesn't say that if someone loses faith becomes morally bad

[8:50]person so i would like to grab all of your attentions to

[8:54]this very important point the quran doesn't say if someone loses faith

[8:58]if someone becomes let's say kafir loses his or her faith in

[9:05]allah becomes morally that person know exactly the opposite the quran says

[9:11]if someone commits morally indecent actions if someone becomes morally bad person

[9:19]the outs come from they would deny the signs of allah so

[9:32]it's not the case that the loss of faith would result in

[9:37]the loss of morality no the loss of morality would result in

[9:44]the loss of faith we have a logic a term at terminology

[9:48]which we call it yes so the counter the counter positive so

[9:59]absent means that exactly if we turn the sentence basically around that

[10:06]also be true what does that mean it means that if the

[10:10]outcome of those who commit morally bad actions is to be is

[10:15]to lose faith the outcome of those people who do morally good

[10:24]action would probably be to find faith did you get did you

[10:29]pay attention let me repeat it again so the quran says if

[10:34]someone becomes morally a bad person there's high chance that that person

[10:40]would lose would lose faith would become coffee what about the opposite

[10:45]if someone commits morally good action decent actions follows and commits himself

[10:53]and herself to the standards of morality this type of person is

[10:57]much more likely to find the faith to find religion to find

[11:02]the truth to find god this is exactly the the point that

[11:07]emmanuel kant also says he says of course of course part of

[11:16]what he says could be criticized but in a good point he

[11:21]says that let me let me basically read what he says exactly

[11:27]from his own book he says on its own behalf morality is

[11:34]no way needs religion however morality inevitably leads to religion and through

[11:43]religion it extends itself to the idea of a mighty moral law

[11:48]giver outside the human being so he says that by itself morality

[11:55]is doesn't need religion but inevitably automatically morality would lead to religion

[12:04]if you become a moral person inevitably automatically yes necessarily you will

[12:13]become a believer you will become a believer you'll become a believer

[12:17]in god so morality and moral action would lead you would guide

[12:23]you to towards being a believer so this is the gist of

[12:27]what emmanuel khan says and we would like to basically elaborate on

[12:33]this arguments uh uh a bit more so before i would elaborate

[12:38]on the arguments let me again re-emphasize that in this lecture we

[12:46]don't want to say that we don't want to say that those

[12:50]who are morally good people but they don't have religion the moral

[12:56]actions of them do not have value no we don't want to

[12:58]say this of course moral standards of humanity would highly be appreciated

[13:09]by anyone who does if someone commits themselves to the moral standards

[13:16]of humanity that is appreciated that is respected that is good but

[13:24]the point is that can this morality have a kind of link

[13:31]to faith emmanuel can't or cans and also some muslim philosophers and

[13:36]theologians they would believe that yes inevitably and necessarily at the end

[13:44]of the day following moral standards would leave would would lead the

[13:49]person who follows these standards of morality to have faith exactly what

[13:55]the quran says so the quran says the opposite but this side

[13:59]is also the truth the quran says the other side of this

[14:01]coin what is the other side of this point the quran says

[14:04]those who commit morally by actions they would lose basically they would

[14:10]lose uh faith but the other side of the coin is that

[14:14]those who do morally good actions they would find faith they would

[14:23]find god but the question is how how morality helped us to

[14:30]find god how morality would guide human being to to to help

[14:39]god number one again this is in the muslim theologians and also

[14:43]in the uh in the moral argument which is proposed by cans

[14:48]and others number one is that it is said that if ethics

[14:53]wants to be meaningful if morality wants to be a system of

[14:58]meaning and meaningful there must be standard otherwise morality and ethics would

[15:05]be some personal preferences no morality is not about some perfect some

[15:13]personal preferences because if it's a if it's personal preferences the preference

[15:18]of me might be different from yours from others and everyone could

[15:23]have their own uh basically moral choices and moral preferences and they

[15:29]may clash with one another so morality and ethics if it wants

[15:37]to be meaningful it needs some standards it needs some solid foundations

[15:43]and benchmarks in the terminology of manufact that's solid standard is what

[15:52]he says categorical imperative we have in the literature of the hadith

[15:58]as the golden rule in ethics what is that called the group

[16:02]treat others in the way you want to be treated and don't

[16:07]treat others in the way that you don't like to be treated

[16:11]we have been so many terminologies i would like to refer to

[16:16]one hadith from ali in which he says as the standard yourself

[16:39]and others so how you should put yourself like and love for

[16:51]others whatever you like and you love for yourself and don't like

[16:59]for anyone else for others what you don't like for yourself lovely

[17:03]don't do injustice don't do wrong to anyone because you don't want

[17:12]to be to to to be done any wrong in your home

[17:16]on you any injustice on you be benevolence be good come out

[17:23]to him in the word you like to be to be done

[17:28]to you enough if you think that something is ugly for others

[17:36]so make it ugly for yourself so yourself is the standard if

[17:42]again in the terminology of this is in the hadith and they

[17:47]can't can't what says what can't in the categorical imperative says that

[17:51]if you do an action think that this action is going to

[17:57]be a universal law is going to be a standard for the

[18:03]whole universe do you like everyone in the world to do the

[18:10]same act if you like everyone else to do the same then

[18:13]yeah do it if you don't like everyone else in the world

[18:19]to do the same then don't do it so if you don't

[18:23]want others to do it then don't want don't like it for

[18:26]yourself as well very similar to this golden rule and we have

[18:31]in so many hadith like this one treat yourself in the way

[18:40]treat others and the way that you like to be treated or

[18:43]treat others in the way that you like yourself to be treated

[18:47]and don't treat others in the way that you don't want to

[18:49]be treated so this is the category of imperative this is one

[18:53]of the main standards so and this is based on the duty

[18:56]in the terms of the again kant and other philosophers and theologians

[19:02]so and then the next step of this argument is this if

[19:08]ethics wants to have if this categorical imperative wants to be established

[19:15]wants to be many basically for it to be meaningful there must

[19:22]be justice otherwise immorality would prevail there must be justice because if

[19:33]you don't treat others in the way you want to be treated

[19:36]and nothing happens to you or if someone else does wrong to

[19:42]you and nothing happens to them no justice no idallah so immorality

[19:49]would prevail in the world but the question is that what would

[19:55]be necessary for justice to be real how we can make how

[20:00]we can assume that the justice is going to be real for

[20:04]there to be the ultimate justice there must be a lie after

[20:09]death this is this is in the core of moral arguments so

[20:11]if you want the justice to make the ethics established and meaningful

[20:17]there must be life after this why because in this dunya we

[20:21]can see that so many people are doing wrong actions morally indecent

[20:27]actions injustices but nothing happens to them in the same way that

[20:33]more many people would do morally good actions again they don't get

[20:35]the reward for them same is true for those people who do

[20:38]indecent actions but sometimes they don't get the punishment so for the

[20:46]akhlaq to be there we need categorical imperative we need standards and

[20:51]also we need justice for the justice to be meaningful we need

[20:56]we need hereafter we need the life after this life not this

[21:00]done yeah after this why because the full measurement of justice would

[21:04]not be actualized it would not be experienced in this life we

[21:10]can see that the justice is not implemented in this one year

[21:14]so then we need another life but the existence of another life

[21:22]is not enough no there should be judgment proper judgment proper hakamiya

[21:27]judgment and also not only they need to be judgment they need

[21:33]to be a proper and fair and most knowledgeable judge who knows

[21:39]all of the facts who knows all of the the all those

[21:44]who are righteous and all those who are wrongdoer all the intricacies

[21:49]all the details of people who knows all of them if we

[21:56]want the justice to be there we need the judgment day we

[22:00]need proper judgment for the proper judgment we need the proper judge

[22:04]are they hacking for the proper judge to be there he needs

[22:11]to be fully aware of all of the the deeds of people

[22:18]who have gone so we need of an all knowledgeable church and

[22:25]that all knowledgeable charges god without this perfect judge there's no ground

[22:31]there's no base for morality so that's the gist of the argument

[22:38]so basically this is the way that he tries scans and some

[22:46]muslim philosophers and theologians try to guide us that's basically if we

[22:52]are with our alcohol if we try to find the categorical imperatives

[22:57]or the most fundamental principles of aflac which is treat others in

[23:06]the way that you want to be treated and don't treat others

[23:09]in the way that you don't want to be treated if we

[23:12]want to to oblige ourselves to these fundamental principles of love and

[23:18]this is one of the most if not the most fundamental principle

[23:20]of love there need to be a justice so that people can

[23:25]get rewards and punishments based on how much they have committed to

[23:28]this one and if we want to be justice then justice doesn't

[23:35]happen in this world we can see that so many people are

[23:42]doing morally decent or indecent actions but there's no chance that they

[23:46]can reward and the punishment and dystonia so there should be another

[23:50]life in the hereafter but another life is not enough there should

[23:55]be proper judgment perfect judgment perfect judgment means that there should be

[24:00]a per proper and perfect george and who's the perfect judge the

[24:07]perfect god is is the person or is the being who is

[24:09]fully aware all knowledgeable and that is the existence of god so

[24:13]without this existence of god without religion there's no ground there's no

[24:21]base for that morality which can be established on that main principle

[24:25]i would like to basically refer to a point in this and

[24:34]inshallah we can conclude and we can go to the questions and

[24:40]and answers when we say treat others in the way you want

[24:42]to be treated and don't treat others in the way that you

[24:45]don't want to be treated as others it is also a good

[24:52]question to ask about this scope of otherness who do we mean

[24:59]by others is it other people from the community of believers the

[25:04]community of muslims or community of jews and christians you can you

[25:10]can make the community as a local community like you know a

[25:12]very small sheer community or the widest community of faith like you

[25:18]know the community of all believers and god so what is the

[25:24]scope of rei is it the others of the community of faith

[25:27]or no others miss that anyone from the community of human being

[25:34]not community of faith but also from the community of any faith

[25:38]and none apparently in the when we say treat others this means

[25:47]that anyone not only from the community of faith but also from

[25:51]outside of the community of faith anyone so in terms of a

[25:58]lot of course you know in the 30 issues things could be

[26:02]different but as far as concerned when we are recommended to to

[26:07]treat others and the way that we ourselves want to be treated

[26:11]when you say others the scope of otherness is as wide as

[26:16]possible as inclusive as possible including all human beings so don't treat

[26:23]anyone anyone means anyone anyone anyway any human being basically if you

[26:29]don't like yourself to be treated in that way and treat others

[26:33]again when you say others it doesn't mean other members of your

[26:37]own local community no from the widest human community so treat them

[26:42]in the way that you want to be treated so this is

[26:47]the gist of that argument and there are people who have tried

[26:55]to basically to explain the arguments in a different way as well

[27:03]let me explain another way of the arguments kind of reformulated and

[27:07]reformed kind of diversion of this argument for example they sometimes said

[27:13]that a humanistic morality might well demand promoting the general verb a

[27:19]humanistic a secular morality again like any type of minority might demand

[27:26]and might ask to promote the general welfare the welfare of the

[27:35]general public but there might be some situations in which the general

[27:42]welfare requires the sacrifice of the welfare of yourself so what would

[27:46]you what would you do here from a million and purely humanistic

[27:51]perspective such of a self-sacrifice are strictly irrational so if you think

[28:02]only from a circular perspective making a self-sacrifice because of the general

[28:10]welfare because of the welfare of others sometimes may not be may

[28:16]not be seem rational but in the context of faith as believers

[28:22]this makes it basically irrational this is another version of this argument

[28:29]so basically the argument tries to say that there might be sometimes

[28:34]clashes between the interests of one person and interests of the general

[28:39]public or others so how do you want to make sure that

[28:44]that's self-sacrifice and sacrificing your interest in the favor of the interest

[28:50]of others would be rational faith and belief in god and religion

[28:58]can have a pivotal role to play here to make it basically

[29:03]seem justifiable and rational so i would like to stop here and

[29:06]hopefully we can have some questions and answers uh so brothers and

[29:17]sisters um if you have any um questions please um type them

[29:21]in their chat box um or on zoom or on youtube as

[29:27]well um yeah so i want to ask a question um so

[29:32]you know you said to treat people um how you want to

[29:36]be treated so you know for example in islam um we have

[29:41]like we have like capital punishment like an eye for an eye

[29:47]so suppose you know someone murders someone um so what do you

[29:52]have to say about that because obviously we don't we you know

[29:54]we don't want to be murdered ourselves i mean surely we should

[29:59]treat other people how we want to forget what i mean um

[30:05]so the question is about the thoughts retaliation yes yeah what what

[30:10]is the problem of the sauce with regards to this golden rule

[30:15]where you see the problem basically um well for example like to

[30:25]you know if someone kills someone in your family and um obviously

[30:30]you don't want to be killed yourself um shouldn't we just leave

[30:35]that to god in the next life okay that's a good question

[30:40]basically so of course there's a philosophy behind the issue of the

[30:44]sauce and retaliation of the quran have said basically as a rule

[31:09]would prevent has got provincial and prevents basically power in preventing the

[31:17]criminal acts to happen again this is one thing so there's a

[31:21]philosophy behind it and it shows that basically the value because you

[31:30]know the quran says uh that if you kill someone a person

[31:36]it is as if you have killed the whole humanity if someone

[31:42]kills only one person never stand a person any it is as

[31:50]if the person has killed all human beings so because the quran

[31:55]doesn't want the killing of people and murders would happen easily and

[32:03]people take easily can basically injure people and god fulbert cheap kill

[32:09]people and if there's no casaus if there's no basically no no

[32:13]compensation of course there will be basically people might be i'm not

[32:21]saying encourage but people might have my dare more easily to act

[32:26]brutally so there's a there's there's there's hayah there's philosophy behind it

[32:33]number one number two but the same quran says that doesn't mean

[32:40]that you know it's much better to re-target the quran says that

[32:44]if you forgive that's much better for you the same quran says

[32:48]that of course it's the right of the people it's the right

[32:54]of the people to go for pasars yes so as a lawgiver

[33:00]is there to prevent similar brutal acts to happen again in the

[33:07]society but it says that's one terraform if you want the goodness

[33:12]for yourself forgive exactly so as you said that you know we

[33:19]can leave it to allah of course if someone can forgive yes

[33:25]and there are ways to think if someone can forgive the quran

[33:30]says this is much better for the people yeah okay so does

[33:36]that mean like for example if someone forgives in this life um

[33:40]for example if they if someone kills murder someone in the next

[33:45]life um god won't punish them the thing is that is that

[33:49]fair then because they you know so if someone forgives in this

[33:54]life in the hereafter what happens yeah maybe the family or the

[33:58]person forgave them um so like in the next life i mean

[34:02]so god is not going to do anything he's not going to

[34:05]punish them yeah we don't know we don't know about those issues

[34:09]that you know that what would happen upon in the year after

[34:13]what will happen to the to the person who has committed the

[34:16]murder what would happen to the forgiving person so we can't we

[34:21]don't know all of these what we know from the quran is

[34:25]that forgiving the person is basically uh is is good forgiving the

[34:33]person is good says this is much more helpful much more beneficial

[34:37]for you but also what we know is that even if the

[34:42]person has been forgiven those who have committed morally baractious there's natural

[34:49]impact on the morals and the lifestyle of the person even if

[34:54]the person has been forgiven but if someone let's say for example

[35:00]if someone is used to commit morally bad actions and one of

[35:04]them for example could be basically injuring people or or doing some

[35:12]basically big wrongs to people even if the people you know didn't

[35:20]want to go for compensation and forgave so that doesn't mean that's

[35:24]you know this type of a person those who had done something

[35:27]wrong uh basically in terms of the morality they can have a

[35:32]basically perfect life no if someone especially if someone has been doing

[35:38]some moral bad actions even if he if he's forgiven if it's

[35:44]happened by the people who has done basically wrongs to them but

[35:47]these basically the natural impacts the natural moral impacts are there in

[35:51]the life of that person and that person is less likely to

[35:58]have basically morally decent life unless you know that's uh brutal actions

[36:03]you know had happened accidentally only once that's of course different thank

[36:12]you um it was interesting um what um what's uh emmanuel um

[36:19]can't what he says um regarding morality leading to religion um because

[36:29]we can actually yeah we can actually see that like for example

[36:32]like people become for example a muslim or they they convert to

[36:38]you know a godly religion um normally you can see someone who's

[36:43]you know very m morally um well-mannered and well-behaved normally they you

[36:50]know they go for um um yeah maybe they convert to a

[36:58]religion or so yeah it's very true in what what you're saying

[37:01]about what emmanuel kant has said yeah thank you very much and

[37:09]i would like to thank all of the viewers and the listeners

[37:12]and i hope to uh say everyone once again in the webinars

[37:24]um okay sorry i'm afraid that's all we have time for today

[37:35]if you have any more questions or would like to give feedback

[37:40]please don't hesitate to contact islamic center on zero zero four four

[37:44]two zero seven six zero four two two no sorry zero zero

[37:51]four four two zero seven six zero four five five one six

[37:54]thanks and jazakallah to our respected scholar shah issa jahangir as well

[37:59]as all our participants see you in a week's time at the

[38:03]same time of six o'clock p.m inshallah

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