REACTING TO DAWKINS & JOE ROGAN INTERVIEW (2020-08-16) ​

0:00:00 [Music]
0:00:05 assalamu alaikum today we're going to be
0:00:08 responding to
0:00:09 joe rogan and richard dawkins talking
0:00:11 about how islam and religion is dying
0:00:14 and atheism is taking over the world
0:00:18 is there any evidence that that is
0:00:20 reaching the muslim world as well
0:00:22 and that people are well as i was saying
0:00:24 um uh
0:00:25 the the the downloads of of
0:00:29 my books have been encouraging we have
0:00:31 this thing called cfi has a thing called
0:00:32 the translation project
0:00:34 so in this clip dawkins says religion's
0:00:37 dying
0:00:37 as a general point would you agree with
0:00:39 that well
0:00:41 first of all we'd have to be very clear
0:00:42 about how we define religion
0:00:44 okay in terms of atheism actually
0:00:45 becoming more popular
0:00:47 or the kind of atheism which richard
0:00:49 dawkins himself espouses
0:00:51 as i mentioned in my book which is free
0:00:53 to download the book is called the
0:00:55 scientific deception of the new atheists
0:00:57 that's a very subtle plugin yes yes you
0:00:59 can put it you can see in the
0:01:00 description box
0:01:02 but i've referenced in that book it's
0:01:04 very small very very small booklet
0:01:05 really
0:01:06 that you can download free of charge um
0:01:09 all of the demographic data indicates
0:01:11 that most people in the west
0:01:14 according to pew research 90 percent of
0:01:16 people still believe in a higher power
0:01:18 according to linda woodhead only 5.5
0:01:21 of people believe in the strident
0:01:23 atheism that richard dawkins believes
0:01:26 in which is actually quite interestingly
0:01:28 from a british perspective
0:01:30 the same number of people amount of
0:01:32 people that are muslim in this country
0:01:34 so there's about the same amount of
0:01:36 muslims in this country as there are
0:01:38 atheists yeah strengthen atheists of
0:01:42 richard dawkins kind so here dawkins
0:01:44 he's basically saying look guys
0:01:46 i can tell you atheism is rising in the
0:01:48 muslim world
0:01:49 and islam is dying because people are
0:01:51 downloading my book
0:01:53 a really rigorous scientific argument
0:01:55 isn't it
0:01:56 well it's methodologically flawed from a
0:01:58 demographic and sociological perspective
0:02:00 not least because the religious
0:02:03 switching
0:02:04 cannot and has not been sociologically
0:02:06 identified by downloads
0:02:08 of the atheistic uh of atheists we can
0:02:10 say after 9 11
0:02:11 millions of people say they downloaded
0:02:13 the quran because they're like okay
0:02:14 what's this about
0:02:15 yeah does that mean they automatically
0:02:16 became muslim yeah exactly
0:02:18 i mean first of all 13 million people
0:02:20 might have downloaded the book but it
0:02:22 doesn't mean all of them number one read
0:02:23 it and number two agreed with it
0:02:25 or it could be actually it could be a
0:02:26 vaccination right because
0:02:28 the book has such weak arguments like
0:02:30 michael roos says
0:02:31 um i'm embarrassed to be an atheist
0:02:33 because of this book right this book
0:02:35 makes me embarrassed
0:02:36 and uh you know he makes the conflation
0:02:38 between between metaphysical naturalism
0:02:40 and methodological naturalism there's
0:02:42 fallacies pointed out
0:02:43 by eliot sober by massimo piglucci
0:02:47 yes by michael roos by all these people
0:02:49 right so it could be that muslim
0:02:51 picks up the book and is like okay this
0:02:53 is atheism is about
0:02:55 uh actually it's quite poor and then
0:02:56 they're like i'll never touch atheism
0:02:58 again maybe
0:02:58 he's spreading islamism in the muslim
0:03:01 world absolutely because a lot of the
0:03:02 time when people want to increase their
0:03:03 cultural capital by
0:03:05 learning about new ideas of the west
0:03:07 which is obviously
0:03:08 the um demographic heartland of
0:03:11 the new atheist movement it doesn't it
0:03:14 that
0:03:14 sometimes actually acts as a counter
0:03:16 current yeah
0:03:17 people think oh this if this is what
0:03:19 it's about then we have nothing to do
0:03:20 with it
0:03:21 absolutely but in terms of recent
0:03:23 history i mean we should look at is the
0:03:24 fact that in the 60s and 70s
0:03:26 uh in countries like the countries that
0:03:28 he mentioned iran and egypt
0:03:30 the countries that he mentions in
0:03:32 countries like those you'll find that
0:03:33 there's been a movement from
0:03:35 uh pan arabism or nationalism and
0:03:38 secularism towards
0:03:40 yeah towards islam religiosity
0:03:43 practicing observance of the religion
0:03:45 and that's visible i mean for anyone who
0:03:47 just sees pictures
0:03:48 okay i'm not saying that's the only
0:03:50 yemen afghanistan
0:03:52 all these areas they were secular and
0:03:53 communist in terms of even dress code i
0:03:55 mean
0:03:56 the dress code has shifted completely
0:03:57 look at pictures of egypt in the 1670s
0:03:59 look at pictures of iran
0:04:01 women were probably wearing miniskirts
0:04:03 and these kind of things now
0:04:04 there's a big chunk of the population
0:04:06 yeah in egypt where it's not compulsory
0:04:09 i mean no one's going to get attacked if
0:04:10 did it
0:04:11 that that observed the hijab that
0:04:13 masajid mosques have increased
0:04:15 um i mean even from a from a from an
0:04:18 internet
0:04:19 data point perspective we look at google
0:04:21 trends we look at the
0:04:23 duat or those individuals who call to
0:04:25 islam and their sermons
0:04:27 and their preaching has become extremely
0:04:29 popular especially in the
0:04:30 after 2000 so all the data points
0:04:34 that we can look at and tangibly see
0:04:36 indicate there's been a trajectory move
0:04:38 towards
0:04:39 religiosity rather than the opposite so
0:04:41 he says he's very hopeful
0:04:42 right he's very hopeful of atheism
0:04:45 basically taking over
0:04:46 but i have this question and i don't
0:04:49 know if you thought about this but
0:04:50 uh atheists in general they don't really
0:04:54 have many kids
0:04:55 muslims have a lot of kids and dawkins
0:04:58 entire world view is based on
0:04:59 pondarwanism and the ultimate rationale
0:05:01 according to him in the selfish gene is
0:05:03 the preservation of our genes
0:05:04 reproduction and survival so
0:05:06 could it be that natural selection
0:05:08 darwinism actually causes islamism
0:05:11 because muslims actually have the most
0:05:12 amount of children as you know
0:05:14 and islam is growing faster than actual
0:05:16 the world population is the fastest
0:05:18 growing demographic
0:05:19 so is it possible that that's why islam
0:05:22 is growing and that's why
0:05:24 his hope that atheism is going to
0:05:26 actually prevail is going to fail
0:05:27 because of the theory that he proposed
0:05:28 to believe in
0:05:29 i'll leave that to you because i think
0:05:31 you're that you're the expert on on
0:05:32 issues to do with darwinism but
0:05:34 what i think is that richard dawkins has
0:05:38 delusions of grandeur yeah in his one of
0:05:40 his interviews with the
0:05:42 sun he was asked do you think you're
0:05:43 winning or something that effect and he
0:05:45 says yes we're winning
0:05:46 nothing of the information that we have
0:05:49 from pew research on apostasy which by
0:05:52 the way is methodologically flawed
0:05:53 because they
0:05:54 they in they they interview like 30 or
0:05:57 um iranians
0:06:01 who don't speak english as a first
0:06:02 language and don't represent the bulk of
0:06:03 muslims in america
0:06:04 but even if we look at that and we look
0:06:06 at other data points like the the japan
0:06:09 study on dao and so on we'll find that
0:06:11 really darwinian
0:06:12 arguments which is really the thrust of
0:06:14 his of his book right
0:06:16 as being darwinian the darwinian
0:06:18 mechanism replaces the god's thesis
0:06:20 really that's what he's trying to argue
0:06:22 is not one of the reasons why
0:06:26 people are leaving religion if it is a
0:06:28 reason if if there is a reason
0:06:30 i think in your research you were trying
0:06:32 to in your book uh
0:06:33 you're basically talking about moral
0:06:36 issues yes yeah that being the cause
0:06:38 not not not exactly in terms of if if
0:06:41 there's an intellectual reason which is
0:06:42 not always the case people leaving islam
0:06:44 for example or even christianity
0:06:46 in the case of islam it's usually
0:06:47 morality yeah which is not the exclusive
0:06:50 property of the new atheist argument
0:06:52 well actually they don't have a
0:06:54 um justification for morality in first
0:06:56 place exactly right and that's that's
0:06:58 something else
0:06:58 in the sense that they make these
0:06:59 arguments against religion but so do
0:07:01 other people
0:07:02 many different people who are not new
0:07:03 atheists christians can make arguments
0:07:05 against islamic morality
0:07:06 uh liberal secularists can make
0:07:08 arguments as they
0:07:09 we wouldn't be able to pinpoint whether
0:07:12 their arguments
0:07:14 for islam using morality is the exact or
0:07:16 the reason for the for the switching
0:07:18 do you see what i mean yeah there is
0:07:20 that and you can also sort of argue that
0:07:21 you know he's talking about
0:07:23 atheism taking off in the muslim world
0:07:25 but has it
0:07:26 even really taken off in the western
0:07:28 world because the soviet union
0:07:30 you know they had this massive atheism
0:07:31 project for decades
0:07:33 and when they collapsed people went back
0:07:34 to religion we're finding
0:07:36 new age paganism we're finding these
0:07:38 spiritual movements
0:07:39 rising all across europe rising all
0:07:41 across north america
0:07:42 so it's not even working here why would
0:07:44 it be working in the muslim world well
0:07:46 looking at new atheism
0:07:47 new atheism in particular people like
0:07:49 richard dawkins people like sam harris
0:07:51 and when we look at the the interaction
0:07:53 or the engagement or the numbers
0:07:55 because joe rogan used that term the
0:07:57 metrics the actual internet metrics
0:08:00 with uh for example 10 years ago 15
0:08:03 years ago to now
0:08:04 you'll realize that actually people are
0:08:06 losing interest in their arguments
0:08:07 it's like old arguments that have been
0:08:10 regurgitated
0:08:12 yeah meaning of life and nihilism and
0:08:14 you know these are these people are
0:08:15 irrelevant
0:08:16 yeah i mean richard dawkins is a 78 year
0:08:19 old man
0:08:20 who now has produced a book called is
0:08:23 this your new target now
0:08:24 no no he's not he's not a target because
0:08:26 really and truly
0:08:27 he's an irrelevant person i mean we have
0:08:29 to be honest 78 years old
0:08:31 has just produced a book i'm not going
0:08:33 to even name the title
0:08:34 and if you compare the hits that he has
0:08:37 on that book and
0:08:38 we've used google trends to do so before
0:08:40 and after compared to the god delusion
0:08:42 you realize that it's not even one-fifth
0:08:44 the amount of interest that he got
0:08:45 before
0:08:46 yeah so people are not interested
0:08:48 anymore they've heard what he has to say
0:08:49 some people were convinced who probably
0:08:51 were agnostic in the first place
0:08:53 uh but most people are not and his
0:08:56 broken record arguments are just
0:08:58 becoming a thing of the past they're
0:08:59 gonna go to the dustbin
0:09:01 of uh history really so what about this
0:09:04 joe guy i mean he's just nodding along
0:09:06 like you know one of those puppets and
0:09:08 you know he's also
0:09:10 been trying to promote atheism a lot i
0:09:11 mean do do you see him as an atheist
0:09:13 evangelist as well
0:09:15 i don't know if he's an evangelist i
0:09:16 actually mentioned joe rogan in my book
0:09:18 as a point of comparison to show the
0:09:20 irrelevance of people like richard
0:09:21 dawkins
0:09:22 oh interesting yeah i mentioned him in
0:09:23 some of the the the um
0:09:26 the internet data that i picked up
0:09:27 because he's he's a cultural figure now
0:09:29 and i think he is an influencer and i
0:09:31 think he is extremely relevant
0:09:33 like comparing joe rogan with uh richard
0:09:35 dawkins
0:09:36 is like comparing michael jackson with
0:09:39 uh
0:09:40 i don't know one of these people who
0:09:41 have started a youtube channel smiles
0:09:42 agenda or something
0:09:43 yeah yeah for example yeah exactly
0:09:47 but so the point i'm making is that um
0:09:50 joe rogan though he's an atheist and
0:09:53 for the most part he's just brought
0:09:55 atheists into his podcast he's spoken to
0:09:57 sam harris box and richard dawkins
0:09:59 he he's engaged with ben shapiro
0:10:03 you know softly on judaism he's not
0:10:06 really had someone who
0:10:07 represents the religion an abrahamic
0:10:09 religion
0:10:11 talk to talk them through their
0:10:12 rationale which is why we say it's very
0:10:15 important that
0:10:16 you know uh that he calls someone you
0:10:18 know to
0:10:19 to his podcast who is a muslim and uh
0:10:21 we're always here our service is always
0:10:23 uh
0:10:23 absolutely so as you heard from hijab
0:10:25 for us zahabi we really ask you to make
0:10:27 sure you turn up
0:10:28 again on the joe rogan show yes and do a
0:10:31 good job of representing
0:10:32 islam he did last time martial