"The Dawkins delusion lecture tour" IAW 2010

Well, I have come to the end of ‘the Dawkins delusion’ lecture tour and it has been a great experience, all praise to Allah (swt). The tour visited over 15 universities around the UK with a variety of great audiences; I’ve had fantastic feedback from people of all faiths and backgrounds, including from Lancaster University where a Christian majority audience really enjoyed the lecture and found it in the words of one physics student to have been “excellent”. I was also pleased to receive an email from an atheist student who said that the lecture had helped him address his preconceived ideas.

Lastly, I want to thank all the university Islamic society members for inviting me.

Post-event thoughts - Debate: Are morals without God a delusion ?

Ahh, another debate and another experience. I was pleased to notice my latest debate “are morals without God a delusion?” attracted a majority non Muslim audience. At times, I felt like I wasn’t just debating my opponent Andrew Copson (a true gentlemen I might add) but the public also. I’ve debated many different topics, but this one seems to always rattle the atheist cage. If our encounter could be described as a pantomime, then Andrew was the charming prince and I was the villain. (Luckily noone shouted out, “He’s behind you.) Historically atheists have been on the attack and theists on the back foot, accused of believing in ideas that have no rational grounding and as a result, have taken their assumptions for granted. But here the tables were turned. For a change, it was a theist holding an atheist to intellectual account. What basis did they have to claim morality without God? Was Nietzsche right all along?

In this debate, my argument was that there is no sound foundation of objective morality without God, hence morality becomes unbinding, invalid and illusory. So in the spirit of a good theatrical scene, Andrew had two fights on his hands in order to win the hand of morality. On one side, he had the theist who maintains that morality is grounded in God and on the other, the Nihilist , who maintains that morality has no grounding what so ever and is completely meaningless without God ( a position championed by Nietzsche). As I pointed out in the debate, Andrew did not have the default position, so he had to provide positive arguments to argue for Humanism, the idea that morality is grounded in human beings independently of God.

Andrew, rather than address my points in his opening speech, went on the offensive and attacked the notion of morality grounded in God. He presented the atheists secret weapon, the theist’s kryptonite, Plato’s dilemma, also known as Euthyphro dilemma. Sadly for Andrew, I was expecting this argument and I had an apt answer waiting for him, which he never managed to rebut. Having said that, even had he been successful in showing a logical flaw in morality grounded in God, at best all he would have demonstrated was that the theist was wrong, but that would in no way have shown that humanism was true !

Surprisingly, in his defence Andrew adopted the brave position that morality is relative to society and culture. I think most people would agree with me that there are some things that are good and evil that transcends culture, time and society. But when I asked Andrew “was the holocaust objectively morally wrong?” He astonishingly could not simply say “yes”, whilst staying consistent with his stance of relativism. He desperately tried to cling onto a degree of moral high ground, despite the fact his claim is clearly beyond relativism. The more I pressed on with the question the weaker Andrew’s answers got. At one stage in the debate, judging by the expressions on peoples faces, they were somewhat at a loss as to where Andrew was going with his argument.

If the debate was to be decided on charm and eloquence then I would say that Andrew put up a great fight, however he failed to provided any real substance or rigour in the debate. I think his assumption that humanism was the default position was clear and was his misgiving in his presentation. He lacked positive arguments for Humanism to convince us that morals without god are actually real.

Click to watch debate

Post-event thoughts - Ethics without God ? Canada

I have just arrived back today from Canada - the jet lag has taken the best out of me. Home, sweet home. . Canada was a fantastic experience. It was great to spend time with such warm brothers. I thoroughly enjoyed the company and all the discussions we had. It’s been a long time since I experienced such amazing warmth and hospitality. The Muslim students seem to be on top of things and very eager to learn and to be proactive, Macha’Allah.

So, what be of the event. The event seemed to attract a mixed bunched, Muslim and non Muslim. This particular topic is a sensitive one, I was pretty much expecting the non Muslim i.e. atheists to think I was about to condemn them for being a bunch of immoral infidels and that hell had a room with their name on it. This was pretty much confirmed from the body language, i.e. crossed arms and telling expressions on the faces of such members of the audience. I didn’t even get the glimpse of a smile from those who presumed I’d come all the way from the UK to attack their characters.

However they were in for a surprise. I did not take the usual root of attacking life without God by labelling them with degrading terms, which I agree would be simplistic and incorrect. But this different approach, of claiming that we can observe atheists and agnostics exhibiting patterns of moral behaviour without God, caused quite the stir. It was clear they were not expecting this line of argumentation which led to a state of confusion on their part, some leaving still scratching there heads. This was palpable in the Q and A session. The questions and comments that were posed were essentially claims to justify that Atheists are good people. However, this was not my objection and I had to reiterate this many times.
Discussions after the event were equally interesting. One young woman obviously grappling internally with the ideas presented that evening, being herself a relativist, when pushed, had to admit that logically, torturing a child for fun was not objectively wrong but relative, according to her frame of reference.

If there was one thing I can mention as a classic case of irony, it was when, in the middle of the event, I made a joke that someone found offensive, to the point that she felt the need to interrupt me. I immediately apologised for any offence caused (usually my jokes tend to be cheesy rather than offensive), but what struck me was the irony of this atheist lady crying offence, when there is no objective grounding for that very offence. In addition, if morals are reduced to subjectivism , then how could she impose what she found offensive on me or anyone else!

From the response I received, I think I managed to fulfil my aim, regardless of whether people agreed - objective “get people thinking” was achieved....

Watch here