The Death of Meaning: Islam and Nihilism - Session 3 | Yusuf Ponders (2021-04-08) ​

0:00:11 welcome brothers and sisters ladies and
0:00:14 gentlemen
0:00:15 to lecture three of nihilism
0:00:18 as a poison uh
0:00:21 we've been going through this series so
0:00:23 we're just making our way through it if
0:00:25 you haven't seen
0:00:26 the previous two lectures don't worry
0:00:29 you can still watch this one
0:00:30 the other two will be put on to both the
0:00:33 website at sapience institute org
0:00:36 and also on the on the sapiens institute
0:00:40 youtube
0:00:40 channel so do make sure to check those
0:00:44 out inshallah so
0:00:47 first of all uh for those of you new
0:00:49 here uh
0:00:51 i won't kill this out because i i've
0:00:52 done this at the beginning of each of
0:00:54 the
0:00:54 lectures but who am i so my name is
0:00:56 yousef ponders
0:00:58 i have a youtube channel pondering soul
0:01:00 uh feel free to
0:01:02 check the content out that i have over
0:01:03 there and uh a website
0:01:04 ponderingsoul.blog
0:01:06 you can also find me on social media
0:01:08 twitter facebook at
0:01:09 yousef ponders my background i've got a
0:01:11 ba in philosophy
0:01:13 my focus was specifically in things like
0:01:15 nihilism ethics
0:01:16 matter ethic um metaphysics things like
0:01:19 that
0:01:19 and philosophy of religion my
0:01:22 dissertation was on nihilism and i did a
0:01:23 series with
0:01:24 sabor ahmed from darwinian delusions
0:01:28 also working with sapiens institute in
0:01:29 iaera and you can find that playlist on
0:01:32 my youtube channel and that basically
0:01:35 goes through the dissertation which was
0:01:37 further reading for this lecture series
0:01:40 which explores the idea of the meaning
0:01:41 of life or the negation of it
0:01:44 from a different angle to what we've
0:01:45 been going through specifically in these
0:01:47 lectures
0:01:48 and with the associated essay that i
0:01:51 have written
0:01:52 specifically for the savings institute
0:01:55 which you can find on their website as
0:01:56 well
0:01:57 and inshallah we're going to be well i
0:02:00 plan on
0:02:00 continuing my master's in philosophy and
0:02:03 kind of want to continue my
0:02:05 education down this particular route
0:02:07 concerning um
0:02:09 nihilism ethics and such
0:02:13 uh so just to kind of recap um
0:02:16 now just as when you're traveling it's
0:02:18 good to kind of check out your local
0:02:20 area
0:02:20 and see what's immediately in front of
0:02:22 you but it's also good to have a look at
0:02:24 the map
0:02:24 to zoom out a little bit and see where
0:02:27 you've come from where you're going to
0:02:30 and look at the the journey as a whole
0:02:32 and so we'll do that
0:02:34 at the beginning here uh so lecture one
0:02:37 we went over the the concepts just to
0:02:39 recap and instill that in the people's
0:02:41 minds that already did this
0:02:42 and to sort of give a a bit of an
0:02:45 insight to those who haven't yet done
0:02:46 this
0:02:48 uh in lecture one we asked the question
0:02:50 what is nihilism exactly
0:02:51 and we do this by exploring the the
0:02:53 concept itself
0:02:55 um and that which presupposes it so we
0:02:57 have a look at the meaning of meaning
0:03:00 and we try to kind of wrap our heads
0:03:02 around what it means
0:03:04 to do that we look at the ideas of
0:03:07 meaning being something presupposed in
0:03:10 asking that question
0:03:11 so you already seem to have to have an
0:03:13 understanding in order to be able to ask
0:03:15 it
0:03:16 and then we seem to have some sort of
0:03:17 precognitive understanding of meaning we
0:03:19 seem
0:03:19 ready loaded to deal with the world in a
0:03:21 meaningful way
0:03:23 and you know this seems to be an innate
0:03:25 part of our being
0:03:26 and much more so to an extreme extent in
0:03:29 the human being than in
0:03:31 the general animal that you see in the
0:03:32 animal kingdom um like it is with many
0:03:35 things you see with the human being we
0:03:36 take things above and beyond
0:03:38 what other animals are capable of and so
0:03:41 from there we move on to asking well
0:03:43 what does meaning mean
0:03:44 in relation to life therefore asking
0:03:46 what is the meaning of life and what do
0:03:47 we mean when we ask this question
0:03:49 and then we had a look at or what do we
0:03:51 mean now by nihilism or the negation
0:03:53 of the meaning of life to deny that life
0:03:56 has any meaning or purpose
0:03:58 and so after exploring that we then went
0:04:00 on to lecture two
0:04:01 having a look at the the environmental
0:04:04 conditions or the
0:04:05 sociological conditions that may give
0:04:07 rise to the phenomena which is
0:04:08 nihilism and we did that in two parts
0:04:12 first part was looking at nietzsche's
0:04:14 kind of approach to this
0:04:16 with reference to higher values
0:04:18 undermining themselves
0:04:20 and with pessimism as being the the
0:04:23 prototype
0:04:24 for nihilism and this sort of underpins
0:04:26 this idea of nihilism as a sickness
0:04:29 or nihilism as a poison um which is the
0:04:31 theme of these
0:04:32 particular lectures and we
0:04:36 basically we explored that the pessimism
0:04:38 itself is sort of what underpins
0:04:40 the the approach of nihilism um and it's
0:04:44 sort of like a foundational
0:04:46 gateway as it were to the onset
0:04:49 of the experience of nihilism and
0:04:53 in this exploration we hone in on the
0:04:55 idea that pessimism is a state of being
0:04:58 um one of many states of beings but that
0:05:00 it colours all
0:05:01 um affects the world in which you look
0:05:04 at
0:05:05 prior to your evaluation and obviously
0:05:07 if you're suffering from pessimism
0:05:09 and begin to evaluate the world while
0:05:11 suffering from it
0:05:12 um that it can lead to these nihilistic
0:05:16 outlooks and ultimately it's kind of
0:05:18 underpinned by this
0:05:20 sort of hopelessness you know this
0:05:21 having a bad opinion
0:05:23 of the world and of um
0:05:26 yeah a lack of hope in general and then
0:05:29 after that we looked at
0:05:31 a particular book which was the realms
0:05:34 of meaning
0:05:36 by a particular author mr phillips i
0:05:38 think his name was
0:05:39 uh mr phoenix philip phoenix uh i may
0:05:42 have
0:05:43 gotten that a little bit wrong but from
0:05:45 what i remember that's his name
0:05:46 and the book was called realms of
0:05:47 meaning and in this book
0:05:49 uh it's specifically a philosophy of
0:05:51 education book but it focuses on the
0:05:52 idea of meaning being integral
0:05:54 uh to the education of the human being
0:05:57 and fundamentally important
0:05:59 and in that he explores also threats to
0:06:02 meaning
0:06:03 and there were four specific threats we
0:06:04 looked at
0:06:06 the first one i can't remember them in
0:06:09 order but there was the overabundance
0:06:13 problem so there being too many things
0:06:16 or too much information too much going
0:06:18 on and the the human being being
0:06:20 unable to process it uh there was
0:06:22 industrialization and
0:06:24 alienation so kind of the onset of this
0:06:26 sort of hedonistic slash
0:06:28 capitalistic and materialistic worldview
0:06:31 that sort of dominates modern culture
0:06:33 and the problems that come along with
0:06:34 that
0:06:35 uh in isolating and alien oh yeah
0:06:39 as it says in the title alienating the
0:06:40 human being um
0:06:42 we also looked at i remember the other
0:06:46 two
0:06:46 let me get the book
0:06:56 bear with me
0:07:06 yeah so the the first one sorry was the
0:07:08 spirit of criticism
0:07:11 and uh skepticism and how this
0:07:14 underpins much of the the scientific
0:07:16 endeavor and
0:07:17 very much in the the realm of philosophy
0:07:20 as well
0:07:21 and the pro obviously um not to
0:07:23 bastardize that
0:07:25 uh approach to the world completely
0:07:27 because obviously it has its benefits
0:07:29 even from an islamic perspective we
0:07:31 should be critical of the information we
0:07:33 begin
0:07:33 we're being given about the religion um
0:07:35 you know there's much
0:07:37 false information being spread by
0:07:40 those who wish to destroy islam or those
0:07:42 who are against it
0:07:44 and even from within from those who sort
0:07:46 of deviate from
0:07:47 the the sunnah and the quran and they
0:07:50 wish to sort of
0:07:51 input or implement their own sort of
0:07:54 concord innovations
0:07:56 i'm not quote-unquote they are in many
0:07:57 cases innovations
0:07:59 um and so you know you need to be
0:08:00 careful when approaching these things
0:08:02 and be somewhat skeptical
0:08:04 verify your sources look into it think
0:08:06 um
0:08:07 about what you're being presented and go
0:08:09 through it
0:08:10 um patiently and but it can have its
0:08:13 negative effects as well when it
0:08:15 um expresses itself in the form of a
0:08:17 severe skepticism
0:08:18 um that can never be let go off to the
0:08:20 point where it just
0:08:22 can you know everything can be
0:08:23 questioned at infinitum uh to the point
0:08:26 where you end up having to
0:08:28 although many don't when they suffer
0:08:30 from this but having to even question
0:08:32 the skepticism itself um but this
0:08:35 underlies that many of the problems that
0:08:36 sort of give rise to
0:08:37 nihilism and then finally
0:08:41 um the the last one was rates of change
0:08:45 uh so we were looking at how
0:08:48 the the speedy sort of changes that take
0:08:51 place in modern society how um back in
0:08:54 the day maybe someone could live
0:08:56 in a the same world that their great
0:08:58 grandfather lived in
0:09:00 without there having been much change
0:09:02 that isn't even the case for one
0:09:04 generation that
0:09:05 the same person today can be born
0:09:08 in one decade um and then every decade
0:09:12 experience a complete
0:09:13 revolutionary transformation of the
0:09:14 society that they live in
0:09:16 to the point where in the end uh
0:09:19 you know the the final sort of decade
0:09:21 that they are alive in it there's no
0:09:23 resemblance
0:09:24 to the the first decade in which they
0:09:25 grew and this gives rise to
0:09:28 a lack of a sense of security of
0:09:31 impermanence
0:09:32 and all of these for particular um
0:09:35 threats to meaning
0:09:38 uh right grounds for the
0:09:41 uh the increase in the feeling of
0:09:43 nihilism both individually and as a
0:09:45 society
0:09:47 and today we're going to look rather
0:09:50 than what the cause is what
0:09:52 leads to nihilism we're going to be
0:09:54 looking at
0:09:55 the the sort of what um follows from
0:09:58 nihilism what are the consequences for
0:10:00 nihilism and then next week
0:10:02 uh in the the last lecture lecture four
0:10:04 we'll be looking at
0:10:05 islam as a potential antidote to
0:10:07 nihilism
0:10:09 and how to approach the the issues that
0:10:11 we've been
0:10:12 outlining in the the first three
0:10:14 lectures and how islam can
0:10:16 offer itself as a resolution to the
0:10:18 problems that are raised here so
0:10:20 today we're going to focus specifically
0:10:22 on what are the consequences of nihilism
0:10:24 with the name of four particular
0:10:26 categories that is uh the four
0:10:29 methods in which uh sorry the four areas
0:10:31 in which
0:10:32 we can consider things uh in terms of
0:10:35 nihilism so this
0:10:36 epistemological nihilism which is to do
0:10:38 with our study of knowledge
0:10:40 moral nihilism which is to do with
0:10:42 ethics and morality
0:10:43 cosmic nihilism which is as it suggests
0:10:46 to do with the cosmos
0:10:48 and existential nihilism uh which is to
0:10:50 do with the experience
0:10:52 of an individual going through nihilism
0:10:55 or the
0:10:55 the nihilism of existence and uh
0:10:59 so yeah these are they're set out in
0:11:01 terms of
0:11:02 um in two ways so we've got these sort
0:11:05 of reasoned justifications but these are
0:11:07 very
0:11:08 um loose reasonings uh keep in mind this
0:11:12 is the sort of
0:11:13 thinking that the average person may go
0:11:14 through when
0:11:16 looking into this on the internet or on
0:11:18 youtube not necessarily what the
0:11:20 academic is
0:11:22 reading and writing about although there
0:11:23 will be mention of
0:11:25 the academic work on this as well
0:11:27 briefly here and there
0:11:29 um but it's kind of just to show what
0:11:31 the
0:11:32 the typical person when they start
0:11:35 suffering from nihilism the kind of
0:11:36 conclusions they may come to
0:11:38 and the simple sort of reasoning that
0:11:39 they use to kind of get there i will
0:11:41 highlight certain problems with this
0:11:43 reasoning as we go through
0:11:44 um but it's by no means extensive
0:11:48 um nor exhaustive in terms of the
0:11:50 explanations
0:11:51 and by no means does it mean to be we've
0:11:54 only got a limited amount of time in
0:11:55 these essays
0:11:56 everything can always be sort of
0:11:57 extended into a series on its own
0:12:00 uh so we will be running through these
0:12:02 rather
0:12:03 um briefly so to speak compared to what
0:12:07 what we
0:12:07 what can be said on the matter and and
0:12:10 so we're going to look at
0:12:11 this sort of simple reasoning but also
0:12:13 on the the consequences
0:12:14 in terms of the the sickness uh that is
0:12:17 the
0:12:18 sort of knee-jerk reaction to the
0:12:20 experience of nihilism so to speak now
0:12:22 all of this does contain within it
0:12:24 its own presuppositions and axioms uh
0:12:26 these are inescapable
0:12:28 um and obviously we'll relate them also
0:12:31 to this
0:12:32 uh sort of societal exhaustion and
0:12:34 pessimism
0:12:36 uh but inshallah i should give you an
0:12:37 insight
0:12:39 into what someone who's sort of
0:12:40 inclining to what nihilism
0:12:42 might be thinking but again it's uh
0:12:44 simple reasoning
0:12:45 uh countless back and forth uh can be
0:12:48 had on this
0:12:49 particular conversation it's also
0:12:53 expressive of the problem itself the
0:12:54 fact that these back and forth can go on
0:12:56 ad infinitum um relates to this issue of
0:12:59 overabundance of
0:13:01 information um and
0:13:04 can ironically give rise to the feeling
0:13:06 of nihilism as well
0:13:08 um knowledge independent of god and its
0:13:11 problems um so
0:13:12 it will give rise to this these are all
0:13:14 points to consider while we're going
0:13:15 through this by the way
0:13:16 um so the idea of attaining knowledge
0:13:19 that isn't revealed
0:13:21 so when engaging with the world and
0:13:23 trying to figure things out about it
0:13:25 um the difficulty of this um
0:13:28 especially with the the absence of god
0:13:30 and the human being trying to do it
0:13:32 uh independently from that i'm also
0:13:35 going to be looking at nihilism as a
0:13:37 form of madness as we go through this
0:13:39 that embraces chaos
0:13:40 um which is to say that it's by no means
0:13:43 um
0:13:44 does the appearance of a contradiction
0:13:47 necessarily deter the nihilist
0:13:49 from being a nihilist um you know and
0:13:52 we'll go through this and it should
0:13:54 inshallah become a bit more
0:13:55 obvious why towards the end of it um
0:13:58 or part way through it but yeah so the
0:14:02 nihilist itself
0:14:03 is is chaos there's no duty to anything
0:14:06 um be that reason logic and things like
0:14:08 that
0:14:09 it arises out of this um
0:14:13 this sort of the higher values turning
0:14:16 their sting upon themselves and even the
0:14:18 tools which may even give rise to
0:14:20 nihilism themselves
0:14:21 becoming undermined by the processes um
0:14:25 in which they are being used um but
0:14:27 again this will become more clear but
0:14:28 just keep these kind of things and again
0:14:30 by this by no means an exhaustive
0:14:31 account so we
0:14:33 shall begin inshallah with part one
0:14:38 which is epistemological nihilism
0:14:41 let me just check the uh
0:14:45 everything just to be sure can you all
0:14:47 hear me
0:14:50 um and just you know the recordings
0:14:54 they will be released on the youtube so
0:14:55 just keep an eye on the youtube channel
0:14:57 um
0:14:58 which is the sapience institute youtube
0:15:00 channel and also on the sapiens
0:15:02 institute website
0:15:03 um they're not as far as why they've not
0:15:06 been published yet
0:15:07 but they will be so do not worry and
0:15:10 obviously feel free to continue watching
0:15:12 this one um as i think you'd still find
0:15:15 it insightful even if you haven't
0:15:16 watched the first two
0:15:17 lectures inshallah
0:15:20 so bismillah i'm just going to assume
0:15:24 you can all hear me because no one's
0:15:25 saying that you can't
0:15:28 epistemological nihilism so first of all
0:15:30 what is epistemology
0:15:31 epistemology so epistemology is the the
0:15:34 theory of knowledge
0:15:37 the study of knowledge especially with
0:15:39 regard to its methods
0:15:42 its validity and its scope
0:15:45 and the distinction between justified
0:15:47 belief and opinion
0:15:49 so it's really just a you know the the
0:15:52 academic
0:15:53 study of how we know what we know you
0:15:56 know what is knowledge exactly
0:15:58 um how do we attain it how do we how can
0:16:00 we confirm that something is knowledge
0:16:02 um that is something is known and not
0:16:05 merely just
0:16:06 as it says here opinion what is a
0:16:08 justified belief
0:16:11 and so how does this relate to to
0:16:12 nihilism so
0:16:14 epistemological nihilism is a severe
0:16:17 form of
0:16:17 skepticism which can go as far as
0:16:20 denying the existence of truth
0:16:21 altogether
0:16:23 and obviously you can see here that
0:16:24 would be a necessary consequence
0:16:26 insofar as you deny truth um as you
0:16:29 would also be
0:16:30 denying here our ability to gain any
0:16:32 true knowledge
0:16:33 that is if you can't get hold of truth
0:16:37 how can you know anything about the
0:16:39 world
0:16:41 so the question here is why be severely
0:16:44 skeptical
0:16:46 what kind of things might give rise to
0:16:48 this so
0:16:50 first of all there's issues with
0:16:53 evolutionary reliabilism so obviously in
0:16:56 the the mainstream it is taught that we
0:16:58 evolved
0:16:59 from um lesser beings
0:17:02 and this isn't specifically an islamic
0:17:04 position um
0:17:06 we believe adam alaihissalam was created
0:17:09 independently
0:17:10 he was a miraculous creation whether or
0:17:12 not other things
0:17:13 evolved we're happy to leave that to the
0:17:15 scientific community but insofar as they
0:17:18 make mention of
0:17:20 adam alaihi salaam being a myth we just
0:17:23 say simply
0:17:24 if we believe in allah and he was
0:17:27 capable of creating the universe as it
0:17:29 was
0:17:30 as beautiful and intrinsic and as um
0:17:33 complex as it is
0:17:34 then is it not possible for him to have
0:17:36 been able to create
0:17:38 a independent being and place it within
0:17:41 that creation
0:17:42 regardless of whether or not everything
0:17:43 else had experienced um
0:17:46 an evolutionary process be that from a
0:17:48 common ancestor or multiple
0:17:50 um beginning points or multiple
0:17:52 ancestors
0:17:53 um all of this is you know fair game for
0:17:56 the scientific community
0:17:57 um but it from this study they cannot
0:18:01 um completely write off the the
0:18:03 possibility
0:18:04 that adam alaysalam was a miraculous
0:18:06 creation
0:18:08 um but you know this we we will go into
0:18:10 it in a little more detail as well
0:18:13 when it comes to understanding how
0:18:15 science sort of approaches things when
0:18:17 we make mention of thomas kuhn
0:18:20 and paradigm shifts and things like that
0:18:22 um
0:18:23 but for the time being we're just going
0:18:24 to focus on the the consequences of this
0:18:27 type of thinking
0:18:28 uh and how this can lead to a sort of
0:18:31 epistemological nihilism
0:18:33 so certain questions arise uh with this
0:18:36 this idea evolutionary
0:18:38 evolutionary reliable reliabilism is an
0:18:42 understanding
0:18:42 of our cognitive faculties
0:18:46 being reliable as a consequence of a
0:18:48 particular understanding
0:18:50 of the evolutionary process so the
0:18:52 question is is
0:18:53 does evolution give rise to the
0:18:56 likelihood
0:18:57 that a species will continue to exist if
0:19:01 it favors
0:19:02 truth or if it is more capable of
0:19:05 attaining a true picture of
0:19:07 its environment or off the world in
0:19:09 which it again
0:19:10 engages with uh that is it are
0:19:14 our cognitive faculties um
0:19:17 capable of achieving truth and is this
0:19:20 truth
0:19:20 uh reliably known
0:19:24 now there's a um a double-edged sword
0:19:27 sort of issue here
0:19:29 so the first one is with reference to
0:19:32 the jewel beetle so the dual beetle is a
0:19:36 beetle in australia that nearly went
0:19:38 extinct uh because of an embarrassing
0:19:41 little
0:19:42 mistake that it made so
0:19:45 the australians really liked their beer
0:19:48 and
0:19:48 they liked well they at least they did
0:19:51 they liked the beer in
0:19:53 brown shiny bottles and they would often
0:19:56 litter these on the floor
0:19:58 and unfortunately for the jewel beetle
0:20:00 it involved in such a way
0:20:04 not necessarily to achieve true um
0:20:09 truth about the world not necessarily to
0:20:12 achieve
0:20:13 a um a complete picture
0:20:16 about the world that it was living in
0:20:19 and but it
0:20:20 kept sort of it evolved with certain
0:20:22 traits
0:20:23 um and shortcuts that would help it
0:20:26 and this unfortunately when it came to
0:20:28 the australians throwing their bibles
0:20:30 on the floor uh led to a disadvantage
0:20:33 and that was that the jewel beetle
0:20:34 confused the
0:20:36 the shiny brown bottles to be potential
0:20:38 mates
0:20:39 and what they ended up doing is
0:20:41 basically mating with these
0:20:43 glass bottles um to the point of death
0:20:46 and they weren't reproducing and it's a
0:20:50 genuine
0:20:51 problem uh that was recognized by the
0:20:53 scientific community
0:20:54 with the jewel beetle but this itself
0:20:56 was um
0:20:57 a good evidence to suggest that the
0:21:00 evolutionary process doesn't necessarily
0:21:02 fade the truth um but rather that the
0:21:05 process
0:21:05 itself can give rise to faculties
0:21:09 not um and not the product of
0:21:11 truth-seeking
0:21:12 but simply of survivability of what is
0:21:15 you know it
0:21:16 here in this case with the jewel beetle
0:21:18 uh it involved to look for shiny brown
0:21:20 objects in the the desert in australia
0:21:24 um obviously when something came in the
0:21:26 way of that
0:21:28 that whole world that whole ecosystem
0:21:31 nearly collapsed
0:21:32 um and so you can see here that the the
0:21:35 the system itself um it didn't involve
0:21:38 to having an accurate picture of the
0:21:40 world because if it did
0:21:41 it would have been able to recognize the
0:21:43 distinction between a jewel beetle
0:21:45 and a glass bottle but they weren't able
0:21:48 to do that
0:21:49 now if the case is that the
0:21:52 evolutionary process does not give rise
0:21:54 to cognitive faculties
0:21:57 which favor truth or are capable of
0:21:59 recognizing truth
0:22:01 then what does this say about the human
0:22:02 being and
0:22:05 obviously if that is the case how can we
0:22:08 even
0:22:09 trust our own cognitive faculties in our
0:22:12 exploration of the world how do we know
0:22:14 when we're engaging in
0:22:15 the scientific method um if
0:22:18 the evolutionary process does not favor
0:22:20 truth but rather just simply
0:22:22 survivability
0:22:23 how can we know um that anything we
0:22:26 think is true about the world is
0:22:28 so this is one part of the um quote
0:22:32 the double-edged sword problem and
0:22:35 the other issue is is well say for
0:22:38 example we disregard this and we say
0:22:39 that no
0:22:40 truth does favor survivability
0:22:43 um on that having cognitive faculties
0:22:46 which are capable
0:22:47 of attaining uh true information about
0:22:50 the world
0:22:51 are going to give rise to more likely
0:22:54 to give rise to the species being more
0:22:56 likely to survive
0:22:58 um you have another big issue here the
0:23:00 most successful species on the planet
0:23:02 has been across the board religious
0:23:06 richard dawkins himself has been
0:23:07 documented saying on the joe oregon
0:23:10 podcast
0:23:10 that there hasn't been an atheist
0:23:13 society
0:23:15 and so the question is well why if the
0:23:17 evolutionary process
0:23:19 um is something which favors truth
0:23:23 then does that not in some way suggest
0:23:27 that there is a severe amount of truth
0:23:29 to be found in the religious mindset now
0:23:31 obviously there's varying opinions on
0:23:34 the different religions in terms of what
0:23:37 it means to be religious
0:23:38 but they do follow a common theme they
0:23:40 do understand that there is a sort
0:23:42 a supernatural entity that is
0:23:45 transcendent in nature that created
0:23:47 everything um or entities in some cases
0:23:51 they believe in this mind body dualism
0:23:53 they believe in
0:23:54 the existence of a soul in life after
0:23:56 death
0:23:57 um they believe in
0:24:01 many things in common um
0:24:05 and if you if you believe that the the
0:24:07 evolutionary process gives rise to
0:24:09 sort of this um truth-bearing faculties
0:24:12 um then why is it that the most common
0:24:15 species on the planet
0:24:16 has this in common and why is it that it
0:24:18 seems to be
0:24:20 or you seem to be able to make the
0:24:21 correlation between this
0:24:23 and it's being hyper successful in
0:24:25 relation to every other species you see
0:24:27 on the planet
0:24:28 um there's no species like the human
0:24:30 being that can completely transform its
0:24:32 environment
0:24:33 the way we do so this is an issue
0:24:36 evolutionary reliabilism does evolution
0:24:39 give rise
0:24:40 to reliable cognitive faculties yes or
0:24:43 no
0:24:44 either way you have these problems
0:24:47 but the case is is that those who are
0:24:50 pessimistic
0:24:51 um those who have a low opinion of the
0:24:54 world
0:24:54 um or of you know low expectations and
0:24:57 consider the worst of everything
0:25:00 as we mentioned in the uh the second
0:25:04 lecture um we're talking about nihilism
0:25:07 being characteristic of a state of being
0:25:09 that is the person is feeling
0:25:10 pessimistic
0:25:11 they're not likely to have a high
0:25:13 opinion or have a
0:25:14 have hope that the world is
0:25:17 going to um have this
0:25:21 sort of fundamental beginning with a
0:25:22 creator that's all powerful etc
0:25:25 um and so there's going to be certain
0:25:26 things being written off here
0:25:28 they're not necessarily going to be
0:25:29 looking at um you know the fact that the
0:25:32 most
0:25:32 successful species is religious they may
0:25:34 just simply be willing to say
0:25:36 yeah well it's not true you know and
0:25:41 evolutionary faculties do not give rise
0:25:44 to truth-bearing
0:25:44 cognitive faculties but rather they
0:25:48 they do favor falseness or falsehood
0:25:51 and so the human being being a prime
0:25:54 example of that something that is
0:25:56 majorly inclined to falsehood and
0:25:58 therefore
0:26:00 has been able to be majorly successful
0:26:02 because of that
0:26:03 this is characteristic of a particular
0:26:07 state of mind but obviously this stings
0:26:09 itself
0:26:10 in that if that is the case how then can
0:26:13 the one making these decisions
0:26:15 the one making these um observations
0:26:19 how can they trust the the path in which
0:26:21 they've taken
0:26:22 if this path itself relies on those
0:26:24 faculties in which they are now
0:26:25 criticizing
0:26:27 but as we said earlier as well the
0:26:29 nihilist
0:26:31 isn't necessarily going to be committed
0:26:35 to reason or to autologic at all
0:26:39 and this is based on this again idea of
0:26:41 the higher values
0:26:43 um turning their sting upon themselves
0:26:45 or in other words undermining themselves
0:26:49 and reason and logic are among those
0:26:52 values
0:26:53 so why does the epistemological nihilist
0:26:56 not necessarily have to stick to
0:27:01 logic or reason um you know obviously
0:27:04 they're already suffering from nihilism
0:27:05 at this point
0:27:07 um and it just becomes a case of sort of
0:27:09 explaining
0:27:11 or reinforcing that pessimism
0:27:14 it's a nasty feedback loop in shorter
0:27:16 terms
0:27:17 and so you guess you get to this point
0:27:20 you're like well how do we justify
0:27:21 reason we've made reason a higher value
0:27:24 and uh we've made logic and reason a
0:27:26 high value
0:27:28 but you know if again we've been these
0:27:31 creatures that have evolved
0:27:33 then does that not mean that these
0:27:35 faculties evolved with us
0:27:38 and there's a really good quote by the
0:27:41 philosopher the german philosopher
0:27:42 edmund hussell
0:27:44 he wrote this in his book the idea of
0:27:47 phenomenology
0:27:48 um translated by lee hardy uh the
0:27:51 references at the bottom there
0:27:53 so if you want to check it out you're
0:27:53 welcome today i think you can get a pdf
0:27:55 of this book really good book
0:27:56 it's one of my favorite ones and it's
0:27:58 like an introduction into phenomenology
0:28:00 this man
0:28:01 was sort of the farther off the
0:28:03 philosophy of phenomenology
0:28:05 and this led to many of the
0:28:07 existentialist thinkers
0:28:08 so he was um martin heidegger's teacher
0:28:12 martin heidegger ended up taking over
0:28:14 his position in the german university
0:28:16 that he was
0:28:18 leading and not teaching in
0:28:21 and this eventually had a huge effect on
0:28:24 other existentialist thinkers
0:28:26 such as albert camus satra
0:28:29 uh simon de beauvoir um and the likes of
0:28:32 them
0:28:33 so he was a very central figure although
0:28:35 he's really unknown
0:28:37 in relation to the the people that he
0:28:38 influenced um but on this particular
0:28:40 issue that is on the
0:28:41 the idea of reason turn into turning its
0:28:44 sting upon itself
0:28:47 uh he says the following so he says but
0:28:49 what is
0:28:50 the use of appealing to contradictions
0:28:53 if logic itself
0:28:54 is in question and becomes problematic
0:28:57 indeed
0:28:58 the real meaning of logical lawfulness
0:29:00 which natural thought would not dream of
0:29:02 questioning
0:29:03 now becomes questionable and even
0:29:05 dubious
0:29:06 biological lines of thought now crowd in
0:29:09 upon us we are reminded of the modern
0:29:12 theory of evolution
0:29:14 according to which man has developed
0:29:15 through the struggle for existence
0:29:17 and the process of natural selection and
0:29:20 with him
0:29:20 of course also his intellect this is key
0:29:23 here
0:29:24 it's not just the man that evolved
0:29:26 according to this theory
0:29:27 but his intellect also his mind
0:29:31 developed and changed as time went
0:29:33 through
0:29:36 with him of course also his intellect
0:29:38 and with the intellect
0:29:40 the forms that belong to it especially
0:29:43 the logical forms
0:29:45 do not logical forms and logical laws
0:29:48 then simply express the contingent
0:29:50 peculiarities of the human species
0:29:53 but couldn't they have been different
0:29:55 and won't they become different in the
0:29:56 course of future evolution
0:29:59 knowledge then is just human knowledge
0:30:02 bound to the forms of the human
0:30:04 intellect
0:30:05 incapable of making contact with the
0:30:08 very nature of things
0:30:09 with the things themselves he was um
0:30:14 very influenced by emmanuel kant
0:30:19 um with regards to the quote things in
0:30:21 themselves
0:30:23 and it's it's a very interesting quote
0:30:26 because it does
0:30:27 really highlight a a huge problem if
0:30:30 what what is logic and reason
0:30:32 what do we understand by these things
0:30:34 now from this sort of
0:30:36 materialistic presupposition this
0:30:38 materialist
0:30:39 reductive um position
0:30:43 or reductive materialism and if you're
0:30:47 kind of just looking at the world as
0:30:48 fundamentally just being sort of
0:30:50 lifeless
0:30:51 and literally just material atoms or
0:30:54 energy quantum fluctuations whatever you
0:30:56 want to call it
0:30:56 you're not saying that the the
0:30:58 fundamental
0:31:00 uh underpinning of this is
0:31:03 consciousness it's just dead matter
0:31:05 bouncing off each other like pool walls
0:31:07 um then how are we to understand this
0:31:11 idea
0:31:11 of this concept of logic or this concept
0:31:14 of reason is it not something
0:31:16 that develops with life is it not
0:31:18 intrinsically connected
0:31:20 to consciousness and
0:31:24 as consciousness developed did these
0:31:26 logical not laws
0:31:27 not develop with it are they not simply
0:31:31 descriptions
0:31:32 of how we see the world or are they
0:31:36 independent and if they are independent
0:31:38 what does what does it mean to say they
0:31:39 are independent
0:31:40 in a world that is fundamentally
0:31:43 underpinned
0:31:44 by a lack of consciousness how how do we
0:31:47 come to understand these laws
0:31:49 and this becomes a huge predicament
0:31:52 because we we're not
0:31:54 as as edmund hustle here you know are
0:31:57 they not just
0:31:58 human peculiarities
0:32:02 can they not become different and if you
0:32:03 know
0:32:05 logic evolved with the with the being
0:32:07 and developed
0:32:08 to what it is today today what we
0:32:11 consider logical is that not different
0:32:13 from the past
0:32:15 many principles are becoming undermined
0:32:16 you've got the mind the the rise of
0:32:19 things like um post-modernism
0:32:22 which seek to undermine these
0:32:25 quote-unquote eurocentric ideas um
0:32:28 that developed in the west of what logic
0:32:31 is you know they seek to undermine the
0:32:33 logical principles and this was a
0:32:35 philosophy funnily enough
0:32:36 um that also developed in europe
0:32:39 many of the post-modern philosophers uh
0:32:42 they began to question
0:32:43 logic and reason and things like that um
0:32:45 came out of france
0:32:47 uh with the likes of i can't remember
0:32:49 their names exactly but
0:32:50 the french philosophers um the the more
0:32:53 famous ones
0:32:58 these times um and they were very much
0:33:01 behind this sort of movement
0:33:03 called the post modernist movement um
0:33:06 which starts to question all of these
0:33:08 western assumptions
0:33:09 the the this um enlightened
0:33:13 european enlightenment enthusiasm
0:33:16 um with the the ability of the human
0:33:18 being but it was the same enthusiasm
0:33:20 that ended up
0:33:21 ironically undermining itself which is a
0:33:23 common feature um
0:33:24 of philosophy and so yeah we've got
0:33:28 these
0:33:28 problems with this reductive materialism
0:33:30 we've got these problems of
0:33:31 consciousness
0:33:32 how do we go from this quantum world to
0:33:35 life
0:33:36 how do we get from this dead matter
0:33:39 uh these atoms these quarks or whatever
0:33:42 these
0:33:43 are to the the conscious
0:33:46 being which looks upon the universe
0:33:50 and tries to understand it that has the
0:33:53 experience of qualia
0:33:55 as it has a subjective experience how do
0:33:58 we
0:33:58 how do we jump this gap how do we go
0:34:00 from there to here
0:34:02 and you know it's very common when you
0:34:04 hear you know the physicists
0:34:06 or the biologists talking about all of
0:34:08 this
0:34:09 when it comes to trying to explain life
0:34:10 there's ted talks and
0:34:12 science festival um conversations that
0:34:16 take place on youtube and
0:34:17 they whenever it gets to the point of
0:34:18 you know how do we describe life
0:34:20 they funnily enough to start referring
0:34:23 to words like oh it's like magic to us
0:34:24 they obviously don't mean literally
0:34:26 magic
0:34:27 but it's a mystery to them it's a huge
0:34:29 mystery consciousness itself is a
0:34:31 massive problem
0:34:32 um and they're not quite sure how to
0:34:35 jump these gaps
0:34:36 and this is itself something that
0:34:38 motivates this epistemological nihilism
0:34:40 this
0:34:41 um this doubting that we have an ability
0:34:45 to
0:34:45 to achieve knowledge this hyper
0:34:48 skepticism
0:34:50 um and this is also a consequence of our
0:34:52 daunting
0:34:53 fine attitude and you know again the
0:34:55 fact that we can just keep asking
0:34:56 questions we can keep
0:34:57 applying skepticism with no end that
0:34:59 infinitive we can keep asking what if
0:35:03 what if this what if that what if the
0:35:06 universe
0:35:07 uh was created five minutes ago 10
0:35:10 minutes ago 20 minutes ago
0:35:11 all of these possible is everything
0:35:13 equally possible
0:35:14 you can keep asking these questions and
0:35:17 how can we be sure we have any real
0:35:18 knowledge
0:35:19 problems have been you know these
0:35:21 problems in particular have been very
0:35:22 interesting
0:35:23 um for both theists and atheists alike
0:35:27 we have tried to develop our own
0:35:29 epistemologies
0:35:30 and there are a number of them the field
0:35:32 of epistemology
0:35:34 is a very in-depth one one that someone
0:35:36 if they wish to could
0:35:37 dedicate their life to studying and
0:35:39 still probably not get through the
0:35:41 all of the literature or comes to a
0:35:43 comprehensive understanding epistemology
0:35:45 um there's a very interesting field of
0:35:47 study
0:35:49 and there's a lot of debate going on
0:35:50 here and it doesn't seem to be getting
0:35:52 settled but it only seems
0:35:54 um in secular academia to be getting
0:35:57 more
0:35:58 and more complex the the you know the
0:36:01 differences seem to be increasing rather
0:36:02 than decreasing
0:36:04 um yeah and so with reference to the the
0:36:07 thing in itself
0:36:09 um this is a this is a kantian concept
0:36:13 and nietzsche was also fond of uh
0:36:16 talking about this
0:36:17 and in his essay on truth and lying in a
0:36:19 non-moral sense
0:36:21 um which you can find in a few books
0:36:23 that contain a collection of his essays
0:36:26 he says the following so he says the
0:36:27 thing in itself
0:36:29 which would be precisely pure truth
0:36:32 truth without consequences
0:36:34 is impossible for even the creator of
0:36:36 language to grasp
0:36:38 and indeed this is not at all desirable
0:36:42 he designates only the relations of
0:36:45 things to human beings
0:36:47 and in order to express them he avails
0:36:49 himself of the boldest
0:36:50 metaphors so for him language is
0:36:53 he you know he's only going to refer to
0:36:55 it as metaphors but not only that
0:36:57 um the whole development is a jumping
0:36:59 from one metaphor to another as you'll
0:37:01 see
0:37:01 he says the stimulation of a nerve
0:37:05 is first translated into an image first
0:37:08 metaphor
0:37:09 the image is then imitated by a sound
0:37:13 second metaphor and each time there is a
0:37:16 complete
0:37:17 leap from one sphere into the heart of
0:37:20 another
0:37:21 new sphere so here
0:37:24 if we look at that transformation from
0:37:26 the first metaphor to the second
0:37:27 metaphor when he's talking about
0:37:28 language
0:37:29 we we see something we see this cup
0:37:33 um and when we see it
0:37:36 this uh you know the light hits it
0:37:39 bounces into our eyes
0:37:41 and we produce an image or a concept an
0:37:44 idea of what it is to be a cup
0:37:46 and then we associate a noise to it
0:37:49 and this noise we then throw around
0:37:54 and so i'll shout it out i'll say cup
0:37:56 and you'll hear it
0:37:57 and your brain has got its own little
0:38:00 idea of what a cup is
0:38:04 and it will present this idea to you
0:38:07 and this is what he's saying is that
0:38:09 he's saying that there's this
0:38:10 transformation
0:38:12 from one sphere to another and this
0:38:15 is shown so he's got a good example here
0:38:18 to kind of explain this he says one can
0:38:20 conceive a very profoundly deaf
0:38:22 human being who's never experienced
0:38:24 sound or music
0:38:26 just as such a person will gaze in
0:38:27 astonishment at the chandelier sound
0:38:29 figures in sand
0:38:31 uh find their cause in the vibration of
0:38:34 a string so these
0:38:35 chandelien sound figures is you've
0:38:38 probably seen it where there's like a
0:38:39 plate
0:38:40 put on top of speakers or on top of a
0:38:43 subwoofer
0:38:44 and then there's sand put on it and then
0:38:46 noises are played
0:38:47 and patterns appear on the
0:38:50 the sheet or on the the plate and um
0:38:54 and so he's saying here that someone
0:38:55 might find they'll be looking at these
0:38:58 images
0:38:59 appear on top of the plate with the sand
0:39:01 and the base etc
0:39:03 and then he might find some string
0:39:05 because obviously i don't think
0:39:06 in each time they had subwoofers um but
0:39:09 you might find some string vibrating and
0:39:12 swear that he might now must know what
0:39:14 they call what men call sound
0:39:16 this is precisely what happens to all of
0:39:18 us with language
0:39:20 that you know we're communicating these
0:39:22 concepts and these ideas with these
0:39:23 noises
0:39:25 and we feel as though that these noises
0:39:28 um are communicating or transferring
0:39:31 information completely but they're not
0:39:34 that they're going through these
0:39:36 incredible transformations that is he's
0:39:39 referring to them as metaphors
0:39:40 and this problem got deeper than
0:39:42 language and this is something that can
0:39:44 points to with this idea of the thing in
0:39:46 itself so you have
0:39:48 the sun the sun gives off its light rays
0:39:51 which hit objects and these objects
0:39:55 reflect
0:39:56 certain light so you have information
0:39:58 that is light traveling
0:40:00 in the form of waves from the sun when
0:40:02 it hits the object
0:40:04 a number of these light waves are
0:40:06 absorbed
0:40:08 and a few of them are let go this
0:40:11 determines the color
0:40:13 and so with a yellow rubber ducky for
0:40:17 example
0:40:18 or with a yellow duck duckling the
0:40:21 the only color that's released here all
0:40:23 the colors are being absorbed by the
0:40:25 duck
0:40:26 but what is being released is
0:40:29 the yellow light waves or the the light
0:40:32 waves that are of a particular frequency
0:40:34 that when they are picked up by the
0:40:35 eye we experience them as yellow
0:40:39 and so this information hits the duck
0:40:42 bounces off it
0:40:43 hits our eye which then runs through
0:40:45 nerves
0:40:46 so you have transformations here these
0:40:49 radical transformations you have
0:40:51 light bouncing off pure light white
0:40:54 light from the sun bouncing off a duck
0:40:57 the duck steals quote-unquote steal some
0:40:59 of that light and lets some of it go
0:41:01 and this information off the object that
0:41:04 is hit
0:41:05 is being carried through the air now
0:41:07 that it's hit the object
0:41:09 the eye picks that up and transforms the
0:41:12 light
0:41:12 into electrical signals that run through
0:41:15 nerves
0:41:15 so you have a complete transformation
0:41:17 when it hits the dock
0:41:19 you have another transformation when it
0:41:20 hits the eye so it goes from being just
0:41:23 light waves
0:41:24 to being electrical signals which
0:41:27 follow through the nerves
0:41:30 then once it goes through the nerves the
0:41:33 mind
0:41:35 processes it what does that mean exactly
0:41:38 it's the mind is picking up this
0:41:41 information
0:41:42 that it's being fed from the eyes and it
0:41:44 processes it
0:41:45 do you have any um say in that process
0:41:49 do you have any idea how that process
0:41:50 takes place
0:41:52 what mechanisms are
0:41:55 like running you know how certain things
0:41:57 are neglected
0:41:58 in that data and discarded because
0:42:00 there's a lot of information coming
0:42:02 through these eyes
0:42:03 there's a lot of things going on in the
0:42:04 vision and
0:42:06 even psychologists themselves will say
0:42:07 that the brain is is
0:42:09 actively removing most of that
0:42:10 information because it would just be too
0:42:12 overwhelming for the subject if it
0:42:14 didn't
0:42:15 but the brain is doing this the brain is
0:42:16 going through the process
0:42:18 of processing this information and then
0:42:20 it presents
0:42:22 to the subject it presents to the
0:42:25 consciousness
0:42:26 an image and this consciousness assumes
0:42:31 that what is being presented to it is
0:42:33 identical
0:42:35 to the thing in itself that is the
0:42:38 experience of the thing
0:42:40 is an accurate representation of the
0:42:43 thing in itself now the problem is is
0:42:44 how do we identify
0:42:46 that that is true if every piece of
0:42:49 information
0:42:50 that we ever receive is constantly being
0:42:54 processed and played about with before
0:42:56 it's presented to us
0:42:58 and we can't get in the way of that we
0:43:01 have no way of knowing for sure
0:43:03 whether or not the objects of our
0:43:04 experience resemble
0:43:06 the things in themselves and this is a
0:43:09 problem that can't
0:43:10 highlighted
0:43:14 and it's a very interesting problem and
0:43:17 it makes you think well does it like
0:43:20 how what is the world really like and
0:43:24 you know is science really giving me
0:43:27 a genuine picture of the world even the
0:43:29 picture of the atom
0:43:31 this is art i wrote an article on it
0:43:33 science as art
0:43:35 science uses metaphor constantly to
0:43:37 teach us things
0:43:38 it's very pragmatic this isn't to say
0:43:41 that you should stop valuing science
0:43:43 there's a lot of valuable things that
0:43:44 come from it but it is to say that you
0:43:46 should understand the process in which
0:43:48 science
0:43:50 develops you know you understand science
0:43:52 is what i'm telling you to do
0:43:54 not just um take it as a given that it
0:43:57 gives you truths
0:43:58 as though they are biblical truths um
0:44:01 which is quite funny considering the
0:44:03 subject matter so
0:44:05 this is a problem for the empiricist
0:44:07 it's a problem for the empiricist
0:44:09 because it cannot get in the way
0:44:11 of the mind processing the information
0:44:13 and it has no way of verifying
0:44:16 the the two it has no way of sitting
0:44:19 the the qualia or the you know the the
0:44:22 objective experience
0:44:23 beside the objects that gave rise to the
0:44:26 experience
0:44:27 and seeing to what degree these actually
0:44:29 correlate or to what degree
0:44:31 these things match what has been lost in
0:44:33 that transfer of information in that
0:44:35 transformation
0:44:36 of information so what can we say we
0:44:39 know about the world
0:44:41 when we have to suffer from these issues
0:44:43 um in any absolute sense
0:44:47 this can be quite overwhelming and this
0:44:48 touches on the the cause again that we
0:44:50 mentioned in lecture two that
0:44:52 being overwhelmed by overabundance and
0:44:54 overabundance of information and over
0:44:56 abundance of problems
0:44:58 how do we deal with this the notion of
0:45:00 truth
0:45:01 uh begins to feel undermined here
0:45:05 um for the person going through this
0:45:07 process of pessimism they have a very
0:45:08 low opinion
0:45:10 of the world and of their abilities to
0:45:12 sort of seek and gain knowledge
0:45:14 um and this is a consequence of the fact
0:45:17 that truth and knowledge themselves are
0:45:19 intimately connected
0:45:20 um now if the the notion of truth
0:45:24 is being lost um let's have a look at
0:45:26 one second
0:45:30 yeah so again this is underpinned by
0:45:32 these ideas of
0:45:33 pessimism etc um and truth and knowledge
0:45:36 are
0:45:36 intimately connected so as i mentioned
0:45:38 before
0:45:39 and when it comes to things like truth
0:45:42 as a
0:45:43 moral value so we see here
0:45:46 um nietzsche says in the worlds of power
0:45:49 this is a quote i've
0:45:50 brought up a number of times but it's
0:45:52 very relevant the logic of pessimism
0:45:54 leads ultimately to nihilism but what
0:45:56 motivates it
0:45:57 the notion that everything is worthless
0:45:59 meaningless
0:46:01 the way that moral judgments lie behind
0:46:04 all other high ideals
0:46:06 now this is very much going to touch on
0:46:09 the the following
0:46:10 section when we move on to moral
0:46:13 nihilism
0:46:15 um but it's this idea that truth itself
0:46:17 is a moral judgment
0:46:19 and once you get to a point where
0:46:22 you've undermined truth you undermine
0:46:25 your ability to achieve knowledge
0:46:27 um you undermine a lot of
0:46:30 things and it sort of just tumbles from
0:46:33 there especially when you keep in mind
0:46:35 you've
0:46:35 undermined like we mentioned even the
0:46:37 idea of reason
0:46:38 of rationality of logic through this
0:46:42 sort of um looking glass through this
0:46:44 way of seeing the world
0:46:46 um now there's a very interesting book
0:46:49 that talks about
0:46:50 the the scientific process and it's
0:46:53 written by
0:46:54 an author called thomas kuhn and the
0:46:56 book is called the
0:46:57 structure of scientific revolutions
0:47:00 and in this book which i highly
0:47:02 recommend he talks about
0:47:04 these shifting paradigms or how
0:47:07 science goes through
0:47:10 transformations in terms of its
0:47:13 understanding of the world
0:47:14 in terms of the paradigm that it looks
0:47:16 upon the world um through
0:47:19 and he describes this as moving through
0:47:22 two phases
0:47:23 first phase being normal science moving
0:47:26 into a phase of extraordinary science
0:47:28 now normal science is sort of seen as
0:47:31 the the typical view that everyone
0:47:32 sort of understands of science you see
0:47:34 sciences this um
0:47:37 conglomerate of geniuses collecting
0:47:40 facts data and information about the
0:47:43 world
0:47:44 and developing theories and the major
0:47:47 contributions the geniuses
0:47:48 the einsteins uh the newtons that give
0:47:52 data just seems to be adding to this
0:47:54 pile of facts that we're collecting this
0:47:56 this absolute knowledge um and this is
0:47:59 the general view that i think many
0:48:00 people have
0:48:02 off the world um it's just this idea of
0:48:05 collecting data information and
0:48:06 developing theories
0:48:08 and then they have their instruments
0:48:09 which they use to collect
0:48:11 more and more data more accurately more
0:48:13 finely
0:48:14 in more detail um and as these
0:48:17 instruments improve
0:48:19 as these instruments themselves develop
0:48:21 and are
0:48:24 fine-tuned the this gives rise
0:48:27 to problems these problems arise in the
0:48:30 the form of gaps in our knowledge
0:48:32 in the forms of anomalies
0:48:35 and all of these problems anonymous
0:48:38 anomalies and gaps
0:48:39 uh themselves motivates the the
0:48:42 undermining of the
0:48:43 initial um paradigm
0:48:47 that is they they see the world in a
0:48:48 particular way filled with particular
0:48:50 assumptions
0:48:51 and when certain problems arise they
0:48:54 first begin to view them
0:48:55 through particular assumptions through
0:48:57 certain axioms and presuppositions
0:48:59 in order to try to overcome the problem
0:49:01 now in many cases the problem does
0:49:03 become
0:49:04 overcome through this method but
0:49:06 sometimes it doesn't
0:49:07 sometimes looking at the world through
0:49:11 those initial presuppositions through
0:49:14 those initial axioms
0:49:16 doesn't fix anything in fact it only
0:49:19 causes
0:49:19 more problems and so he says this
0:49:23 motivates a period of
0:49:26 creativity or of chaos it's like the the
0:49:28 wild west in trying to
0:49:30 understand the anomalies leading to
0:49:32 revolutions
0:49:34 um and this is what opens up the
0:49:36 transition from
0:49:37 the first paradigm that is normal normal
0:49:40 science
0:49:40 to extraordinary science or
0:49:43 revolutionary
0:49:44 science and where the people involved do
0:49:46 become a lot more creative
0:49:48 the process becomes a lot more random
0:49:50 they have to mix things up
0:49:52 maybe try different assumptions and this
0:49:54 is where science
0:49:55 becomes a lot more philosophical it
0:49:58 it has to start to look into the
0:50:00 philosophy of science what are the
0:50:01 assumptions we've been making here
0:50:03 what is the the metaphysics that have
0:50:04 been used that have led us to these
0:50:07 anomalies in the first place
0:50:08 which particular assumptions are up for
0:50:11 doubt now
0:50:13 um because we can't deal with this and
0:50:15 and you see this
0:50:16 um happen there's two famous cases of
0:50:19 this is the
0:50:20 the issue of flodgestan flogistan or the
0:50:23 phlogiston theory
0:50:25 is one that was it's a superseded
0:50:27 scientific theory that postulated
0:50:29 the existence of a fire-like element
0:50:32 which they named flodgestone hence the
0:50:34 phlogiston theory
0:50:36 and it was contained within combustible
0:50:38 bodies and released during
0:50:40 combustion and this was an accepted
0:50:43 theory
0:50:44 for a while and the scientists you could
0:50:46 catch them
0:50:47 but you know these were the the geniuses
0:50:49 of the time you know the
0:50:50 the top dogs and you would catch them
0:50:51 talking to each other
0:50:53 um and discussing lodgestone
0:50:56 and had you been a lame and observing
0:50:58 these conversations you might
0:51:00 um come to think oh these guys mashallah
0:51:03 they're very clever aren't they look at
0:51:05 all these things they know
0:51:06 and if you were to hear about it you
0:51:08 might even propagate it and talk
0:51:10 oh you know the scientists recently are
0:51:11 talking about this new thing they've
0:51:13 discovered for just on
0:51:14 um but then you know as we kind of go
0:51:17 through this
0:51:18 period that i've been mentioning to you
0:51:20 so you've got normal science
0:51:21 the anomaly started to arise and more
0:51:23 and more anomalies began to arise
0:51:25 um and this forced them to have to
0:51:29 completely relook it and it
0:51:30 this led eventually to the discovery of
0:51:32 oxygen
0:51:34 um which ultimately undermined it like a
0:51:36 very
0:51:37 particular paradigm where people looked
0:51:39 at the world in terms of a minimal
0:51:41 number of elements
0:51:42 um and it opened up the possibility that
0:51:44 maybe there was many
0:51:45 elements and eventually you get the
0:51:46 development of the periodic table and
0:51:48 the scientific understanding we have now
0:51:50 but that was a shift
0:51:52 from one paradigm to another and it
0:51:53 wasn't the only one you had the
0:51:54 copernican
0:51:55 revolution um that is you know this idea
0:51:58 that the earth was the center of the
0:52:00 universe
0:52:01 moving to this idea of the sun as a
0:52:02 center of the solar system
0:52:04 and this helped scientists to explain
0:52:06 the movement of the planets
0:52:08 but again it was a paradigm shift it you
0:52:10 know it held a number of assumptions
0:52:12 and a lot of these were given up
0:52:15 and this wild wild west period of
0:52:18 extraordinary science had to
0:52:20 really um run its ground in order to
0:52:24 allow that paradigm shift to occur and
0:52:26 then you get the same thing when you
0:52:27 have this movement from the newtonian
0:52:30 paradigm uh so the newtonian
0:52:32 understanding of gravity
0:52:34 to einstein's theory of general
0:52:36 relativity these are all
0:52:38 these um periods
0:52:41 of transformation of shifting paradigms
0:52:45 but it also it also really reveals how
0:52:48 science operates
0:52:49 it operates under a number of
0:52:50 assumptions it is guided
0:52:52 by the experiment experimentary process
0:52:57 what it is that we are looking into
0:53:00 guys the narrative guides the the
0:53:03 principles that we're
0:53:04 holding on to and so what this
0:53:08 shows is that science itself is um it
0:53:11 deals with the best working models
0:53:13 until they are falsified that isn't to
0:53:15 say that they are false or that
0:53:17 everything that we hold on to is going
0:53:18 to be falsified
0:53:20 um but that we can't generally know or
0:53:23 we can't make absolute knowledge claims
0:53:26 with the scientific method
0:53:28 we can only make the um appeal to the
0:53:30 best explanation
0:53:32 and we hold on to the best explanation
0:53:34 until it gets to a point where
0:53:35 certain things are undermined this
0:53:37 touches on the the notion of
0:53:39 um understanding about the malaysia
0:53:41 being a miraculous creation for example
0:53:43 um science just cannot offer absolute
0:53:46 truths
0:53:47 and so if you have very good reasons to
0:53:49 accept
0:53:50 the idea of the concept of there being
0:53:52 one god
0:53:53 um if you have very good reasons to
0:53:56 accept the the islamic notion
0:53:58 of revelation of prophethood et cetera
0:54:01 um and to believe the truth of this
0:54:03 then the issue of adam alaikum the issue
0:54:06 of evolution
0:54:07 ceases to be a problem again you know
0:54:09 we're not to say
0:54:10 it's not even to say that you have to
0:54:11 deny evolution absolutely if we all came
0:54:14 from adam how else do you explain the
0:54:15 different
0:54:16 races how do you explain the differences
0:54:18 between the people of nigeria
0:54:20 and of china or of the you know the
0:54:22 native americans or of
0:54:24 the the northern europeans there's clear
0:54:26 distinctions between all of these groups
0:54:28 of people
0:54:29 yeah if we all came from adam alaysalam
0:54:31 this must have been the process
0:54:33 of some form of evolution we just
0:54:36 refused to refer to adam alaihissalam as
0:54:38 a lesser being
0:54:39 or as a monkey or as overblown any of
0:54:41 these kind of things
0:54:42 he was a human he was capable of speech
0:54:45 we believe these because we derived
0:54:47 these from our teachings from the quran
0:54:48 and the sunnah
0:54:49 and we come to believe these through
0:54:51 particular reasoning but
0:54:53 back on to the subject matter so
0:54:55 epistemological nihilism
0:54:56 when you if you if you're suffering from
0:54:58 this sort of pessimism
0:54:59 you're looking at the world through this
0:55:01 sort of hopeless lens
0:55:02 um and nihilism no it has arrived
0:55:07 all these causes that we mentioned in
0:55:09 lecture two um
0:55:10 are acting upon you and you're reading
0:55:13 about this
0:55:14 and you know subhanallah you're getting
0:55:17 to a point where it's like
0:55:18 how then if science can't even offer me
0:55:20 truth
0:55:21 you've got this this hope i guess you
0:55:23 would maybe it was fueled by this naive
0:55:26 optimism to begin with
0:55:27 you know that i wanted to achieve
0:55:29 absolute knowledge i wanted to achieve
0:55:31 truth
0:55:31 you know sort of like a mistaken desire
0:55:35 to to
0:55:36 have the knowledge of god himself
0:55:39 to you know to know the world fully to
0:55:41 have this complete picture with no bit
0:55:43 missing
0:55:45 and then the thing that modern society
0:55:48 values the most even that doesn't seem
0:55:50 to be offering
0:55:51 what it seemed to have been offering
0:55:53 when it was being taught to me in
0:55:54 primary school
0:55:55 or in high school that maybe i was a
0:55:58 little too naive
0:55:59 when approaching this idea of science
0:56:01 and it being
0:56:03 uh this sort of quote ultimate truth
0:56:05 maybe there's a few problems
0:56:07 and again this sort of um there's a
0:56:10 there needs to be a distinction here
0:56:12 between
0:56:12 academic approaches to these subjects
0:56:15 and the approach that the average person
0:56:17 or the layman
0:56:18 may take when unders when coming across
0:56:20 you so the academic has plenty of time
0:56:22 to read the literature plenty of times
0:56:24 to sit in an armchair by
0:56:26 a window or a campfire or uh you know
0:56:31 what's it called the not campfire the
0:56:34 fireplace
0:56:35 and to ponder on these questions for
0:56:38 hours and hours and hours and
0:56:39 the average person does not have this
0:56:41 luxury the average person has a job
0:56:43 as family to feed has friends
0:56:46 has uh commitments and things a lot of
0:56:49 things that
0:56:50 require their attention then the job may
0:56:52 not give them the opportunity to think
0:56:54 too deeply about these subjects
0:56:56 and so they they only get brief
0:56:58 overviews of the
0:57:00 the ideas that i'm putting forward to
0:57:01 you now um in the same way that we've
0:57:03 gone over them in very very
0:57:05 minimal detail and so
0:57:08 you know when you've not really got the
0:57:10 time to think on these things it can
0:57:12 through a sense of impatience and i
0:57:14 guess of rushing and of
0:57:16 this naive optimism leading to this sort
0:57:19 of pessimistic view
0:57:20 you might understand why they sort of
0:57:23 fall into this
0:57:25 epistemological nihilism um and a form
0:57:27 of escapism here
0:57:29 uh is sort of escaping to this
0:57:31 post-truth era
0:57:32 again which we touched on in the
0:57:34 previous lectures this idea that
0:57:36 everything is fake news apart from
0:57:38 that which i already believe um you know
0:57:40 the mission to attain truth itself
0:57:42 just seems like too much effort um you
0:57:44 know how am i ever really going to
0:57:46 figure out what's going on
0:57:47 whether or not there is a truth i don't
0:57:49 even know and even if there was i
0:57:51 wouldn't be able to attain it i just
0:57:53 don't have the time
0:57:54 that kind of mentality and so they they
0:57:56 give up on the idea of ever achieving
0:57:58 truth at all
0:57:59 and so they just kind of end up falling
0:58:01 on this post truth i'll just go for
0:58:03 whatever i feel
0:58:06 might be the truth and i might just have
0:58:08 conviction in that
0:58:11 and you know this it's a common word
0:58:13 that's been thrown around more and more
0:58:15 recently this idea of post truth
0:58:18 uh so that concludes the section on
0:58:20 epistemological nihilism remember
0:58:22 keeping thing
0:58:23 in mind that that map view that overview
0:58:26 you zoom out and try to understand where
0:58:27 we're going with this
0:58:28 um we're exploring the the mindset or
0:58:31 the consequences here
0:58:33 um of a nihilistic framework of looking
0:58:36 at the world in an annihilistic way so
0:58:38 when you're looking in terms of
0:58:38 epistemology
0:58:40 how you can end up seeing the world in
0:58:42 this um
0:58:44 in this way where truth is something
0:58:46 that's incredibly difficult to attain
0:58:48 we've gave the reason why and you're
0:58:50 looking at the world through
0:58:52 the lens of reason and logic being the
0:58:54 highest value and
0:58:55 you know having this naive view of what
0:58:56 reasonable logic are you turn it upon
0:58:58 itself it stings itself
0:58:59 how do i justify it without recourse to
0:59:02 either intuition or fallacious
0:59:04 circle reasoning um to you know they're
0:59:07 looking using
0:59:08 reason and logic to lead you to these
0:59:10 ideas of evolution but then
0:59:12 the whole process of evolution being
0:59:14 something that undermines reason and
0:59:16 logic
0:59:18 um the development often something that
0:59:19 can change something that themselves can
0:59:22 evolve
0:59:24 what what do we do with this how then do
0:59:26 we know we can
0:59:27 come to know anything you know even the
0:59:30 process of how we attain experiences
0:59:33 we have these minds that are constantly
0:59:34 fiddling with the information before it
0:59:36 presents
0:59:37 the world to us and we can't get in the
0:59:39 middle of that
0:59:40 um it's it's very much like someone is
0:59:43 there's a there's a wall of paint
0:59:45 and something or someone is on the other
0:59:47 end firing
0:59:48 um tennis balls or
0:59:51 golf balls through this wall of paint
0:59:54 every time
0:59:55 you get it every time a ball gets here
0:59:58 it's being colored
0:59:59 it's been covered in some sort of paint
1:00:01 it's been
1:00:02 um it's being transformed before you get
1:00:06 it
1:00:07 and the only difference here is that
1:00:09 it's like a permanent instant dry paint
1:00:11 and you can't get rid of that paint and
1:00:12 see what
1:00:13 the original thing was prior to that
1:00:16 um it's being affected it's being messed
1:00:18 about with the brain is processing this
1:00:20 information and dealing with it
1:00:21 even if you think about your experience
1:00:24 of touch
1:00:24 when you're engaging with the world what
1:00:27 is happening here
1:00:28 is your brain you've got some matter
1:00:32 you have atoms uh i'll just go back here
1:00:34 so you have atoms
1:00:36 which are touching other atoms but
1:00:39 they're not even touching there's a
1:00:40 there's a gap between your fingers and
1:00:42 the table
1:00:44 of the thing that you've put your hand
1:00:45 upon and
1:00:48 what you feel as an object
1:00:51 is really just the the repelling of
1:00:54 these atoms which causes an electrical
1:00:56 signal to run
1:00:57 through these particular atoms
1:01:01 and you've just got this chain reaction
1:01:03 of
1:01:04 like uh signals running from atom to
1:01:06 atom's atom to atom until it eventually
1:01:08 reaches the nerves in your brain
1:01:10 and then your brain processes this
1:01:12 information
1:01:13 and gives you the experience of feeling
1:01:16 like there is
1:01:17 a the experience of touch over in this
1:01:20 direction
1:01:22 whatever that means like you're having
1:01:23 the experience of a direction
1:01:25 and of a sensation in this particular
1:01:27 direction and if you close your eyes
1:01:29 you can you you get a sense of this mad
1:01:33 experience of the position of your hands
1:01:35 without even seeing them
1:01:37 and you move your hands up and down your
1:01:38 brain is
1:01:40 presenting this qualia to you of the
1:01:42 position of your hands
1:01:44 um but this is being presented to you so
1:01:46 even the position of your hands never
1:01:47 mind the external world
1:01:49 but the body itself um is being
1:01:51 presented to you as qualia
1:01:53 as an experience and that process
1:01:57 is is a one of a presenting is
1:02:00 a one of the mind receiving information
1:02:03 fiddling with it and then giving it to
1:02:05 you um
1:02:07 and that is very strange especially when
1:02:10 you look at it
1:02:11 through a pessimistic moral nihilist or
1:02:14 even
1:02:14 atheistic lens um
1:02:18 so now moral nihilism so what is
1:02:21 moral nihilism exactly uh so does the
1:02:25 claim that there are no moral facts
1:02:27 put bluntly um so when someone makes the
1:02:30 claim
1:02:31 that murder is wrong or murder is right
1:02:34 um you have certain moral frameworks
1:02:37 someone might say that
1:02:38 um killing is justified in certain
1:02:41 context
1:02:42 the same per or a different person with
1:02:44 the same context might say that it's
1:02:45 completely wrong
1:02:47 but to say that you know the the act of
1:02:49 killing is either right
1:02:50 or wrong moral or immoral
1:02:54 from the the nihilistic perspective is
1:02:56 completely false
1:02:58 all moral claims all ethical claims are
1:03:01 false they don't make any sense
1:03:04 from a moral nihilistic
1:03:08 perspective and one of the reasons is
1:03:10 it's a
1:03:11 moral anti-realist position so it
1:03:12 doesn't believe um
1:03:14 that you can make genuine moral claims
1:03:17 or
1:03:18 it doesn't believe there are moral facts
1:03:19 in the world um and it takes
1:03:21 another name so it can also be known as
1:03:24 error theory
1:03:25 and there are certain philosophers that
1:03:27 put this particular uh
1:03:29 theory forward such as richard joyce for
1:03:31 example he wrote a book called the myth
1:03:33 of morality
1:03:34 um and what he says about morality is he
1:03:36 says that moral statements
1:03:38 he's a moral nihilist he says moral
1:03:39 statements fail to be true because they
1:03:41 are
1:03:43 um but is that he compares them to
1:03:45 philologists on so i've already
1:03:47 mentioned vlogistan uh in the
1:03:50 the mention of uh epistemological
1:03:52 nihilism
1:03:54 and he says it's similar to this
1:03:57 it's felt as real by those embedded in
1:04:00 the discussion
1:04:01 with ignorance of its being wrong so you
1:04:04 know they've got very limited
1:04:05 information
1:04:06 they've entered a particular paradigm um
1:04:09 the same thing is going on here you've
1:04:11 got people talking about morality
1:04:14 talking about right and wrong uh but
1:04:17 ultimately they
1:04:18 he's saying that this is the the
1:04:20 consequence of an error
1:04:22 hence error theory you know there isn't
1:04:24 an error in the way of thinking here an
1:04:26 error in the the understanding of what
1:04:27 this particular thing is
1:04:29 um and so ultimately um
1:04:33 these people are just sort of discussing
1:04:35 these things
1:04:36 um without realizing um that they've
1:04:39 made this error
1:04:41 and he says there's a number of reasons
1:04:42 why people
1:04:44 dismiss or don't think this is true
1:04:47 or would reject his um his understanding
1:04:51 of morality and he says the main reason
1:04:53 is is that it's seen as dangerous
1:04:55 um you know this notion that we've heard
1:04:57 before if god doesn't exist everything
1:04:59 is permissible
1:05:00 it's um a court attributed to dostoevsky
1:05:05 and when it comes to discussions on
1:05:08 moral nihilism
1:05:10 um
1:05:16 when it comes to discussions on moral
1:05:19 nihilism it's seen as dangerous and so
1:05:23 you know if morality doesn't exist then
1:05:24 everything is permissible and it's the
1:05:26 same
1:05:27 um issues at hand here you know
1:05:30 people believe and even um the the
1:05:33 gentleman here richard
1:05:35 joyce uh even he believes that morality
1:05:38 is something precious
1:05:39 and consequential but he sees it as no
1:05:42 less flawed despite that
1:05:44 and morality for him is a very pragmatic
1:05:48 thing and he says losing it has costs
1:05:51 but then he also says and this is quite
1:05:53 funny
1:05:54 um because obviously if we keep in mind
1:05:56 nietzsche's statements
1:05:58 that um all
1:06:02 values are underpinned by morality
1:06:05 and so he's putting forward a moral
1:06:07 nihilist position and
1:06:08 he funnily enough he says um yeah losing
1:06:11 morality has its costs
1:06:13 but commitment to flawed discourse also
1:06:16 has its cost
1:06:18 and he says the reason for this is
1:06:20 because truth is valuable
1:06:23 now he seems to have completely missed
1:06:26 that saying truth is valuable is is a a
1:06:29 moral claim that there is a value to
1:06:31 truth that truth is
1:06:32 in and of itself a good that should be
1:06:34 achieved or attained
1:06:36 um the the without morality there
1:06:39 doesn't seem to be
1:06:41 any reason to to value truth at all to
1:06:43 consider because
1:06:44 to say that it's valuable it's in
1:06:46 another way to say that it's good
1:06:48 um and again if he's already admitting
1:06:52 that it is
1:06:52 precious morality is precious and
1:06:54 consequential um
1:06:56 and that losing it has costs uh
1:06:59 then you know how
1:07:03 at this point can you
1:07:06 still say that it's uh it's valuable or
1:07:08 good like
1:07:09 if if you even if you're looking at it
1:07:12 the way he does
1:07:13 um and losing and he's happy to admit
1:07:15 losing it has costs
1:07:16 what can possibly be achieved from
1:07:19 getting rid of morality altogether under
1:07:21 this notion
1:07:22 um which he refers to as fictionalism
1:07:25 and so this is a method he puts forward
1:07:28 um just a kind of a little side note
1:07:30 quite interesting fictionalism is the
1:07:31 view in philosophy that according to
1:07:33 which statements that appear to be
1:07:34 description of the world should not be
1:07:36 construed as such
1:07:37 uh we should instead be understood as
1:07:40 cases of make-believe
1:07:43 of pretending to treat something is
1:07:44 literally true while knowing and
1:07:46 acknowledging that it isn't true
1:07:48 so in this sense he wants to utilize
1:07:49 morality like a storyteller that is
1:07:52 uh to believe it's not true to see
1:07:54 utility in it and to do this sort of win
1:07:57 cost benefit competition sort of thing
1:08:01 um in a sense he wants to look at
1:08:02 morality in the same way that
1:08:04 the average person looks at santa the
1:08:06 easter bunny the tooth fairy
1:08:08 um as a a myth that's commonly known as
1:08:10 a myth
1:08:11 um but something that value can be
1:08:14 derived from
1:08:16 um and he thinks that this step should
1:08:18 be taken
1:08:20 uh obviously we can go into arguments
1:08:22 about the consequences of taking this
1:08:23 step
1:08:24 um but it's you know this is sort of
1:08:26 telling of this general idea of moral
1:08:28 nihilism
1:08:30 um and i would say it's it's more the
1:08:32 consequence of a particular kind of
1:08:34 thinking
1:08:34 uh again he's not even noticed for
1:08:36 example um
1:08:38 that the the idea that truth is
1:08:41 valuable is sort of underpinned by these
1:08:42 notions of morality
1:08:44 um and you know he he was very much
1:08:48 um living in these issues that i pointed
1:08:50 to
1:08:51 in lecture two and so these there is an
1:08:54 argument to say
1:08:55 these conditions themselves um our
1:08:58 giving rise to this theory
1:09:01 rather than his theory being a genuine
1:09:04 sort of recognition of truth but you
1:09:06 know there's people even
1:09:08 in academia suffering from this and you
1:09:10 can you will come across people in
1:09:12 discussion especially if you're on
1:09:13 places like
1:09:14 twitter um or on the internet in general
1:09:16 you will come across
1:09:18 moral nihilists um i've engaged with a
1:09:21 few myself
1:09:21 even pretty big youtubers have claimed
1:09:25 moral nihilist positions um which
1:09:28 is incredibly funny considering a lot of
1:09:31 their
1:09:32 critiques are moral ones for example
1:09:34 when it comes to
1:09:35 criticizing islam um but yeah and so
1:09:38 they want to just treat morality like
1:09:40 this
1:09:41 story like telling a story you're and
1:09:44 it's it's got its value it's got its you
1:09:46 know it's like um
1:09:48 the the fables
1:09:52 and we can still derive some sort of
1:09:53 value from them but um
1:09:55 it's underpinned by this idea that we
1:09:57 need to understand it or look at it
1:09:59 through a particular paradigm that is
1:10:00 that they are myths
1:10:03 um so the question here is all you know
1:10:05 the average person
1:10:06 is not like uh richard joyce was his
1:10:09 name yeah richard grace so
1:10:11 the average person um
1:10:14 is not the academic and
1:10:17 a disclaimer here we're not making
1:10:19 absolute claims about numbers
1:10:21 you know i'm not making a claim that x
1:10:23 percent
1:10:24 of atheists are this or that this isn't
1:10:27 a course to tell you how to run up to an
1:10:29 atheist how to run up to a quote unquote
1:10:32 um you know
1:10:35 well not quote unquote how to run up to
1:10:36 other people who aren't
1:10:38 muslim or who are under any particular
1:10:41 character category and say ah you're a
1:10:42 moral nihilist
1:10:44 um that's that's not what we're doing
1:10:46 here today
1:10:48 if someone is you can tell the telltale
1:10:50 signs because that's they're saying
1:10:51 things which are reminiscent of the
1:10:54 things we're talking about and once you
1:10:55 can identify that they
1:10:57 hold on to these particular positions
1:10:59 it's at that point you can start
1:11:00 saying ah well you are here or immoral
1:11:02 nihilist the positions you're putting
1:11:04 forward are
1:11:05 moral nihilistic positions or here you
1:11:07 seem to be putting forward some sort of
1:11:09 epistemological nihilism
1:11:11 um these you know this is a it's a
1:11:13 method in which you can once you
1:11:15 understand these categories and you
1:11:17 understand these um
1:11:18 consequences or these called these
1:11:20 symptoms
1:11:21 um you can start to identify what it is
1:11:25 and then from there we can move on and
1:11:27 start to suggest a
1:11:28 a solution to that um
1:11:31 so keep that in mind at no point during
1:11:33 this these lectures am i
1:11:35 making absolute claims nor am i giving
1:11:38 you statistics i don't know how many
1:11:40 people are affected by this
1:11:41 allah um i know that it is from personal
1:11:44 experience but this is anecdotal and
1:11:46 this should be kept in mind
1:11:48 that this this kind of mentality can be
1:11:50 a huge problem within
1:11:51 council estates from where i'm from
1:11:55 from manchester um having kind of been
1:11:58 all over the place here
1:12:00 and also having family and friends in
1:12:02 other parts of the uk
1:12:04 um so you know i have connections to
1:12:05 liverpool to glasgow
1:12:07 to london to all over the uk pretty much
1:12:11 um especially when i was in uni um a lot
1:12:13 of the students there were from all over
1:12:15 the place
1:12:16 and you'd find them sort of reiterating
1:12:18 um
1:12:20 similar views to this and
1:12:23 you know there's especially within
1:12:25 council states there's reason for that
1:12:27 there's a resentment for
1:12:28 power and that's quite common and they
1:12:31 you know they don't really respect um
1:12:35 established authorities like the
1:12:36 government for example
1:12:38 um religion has become trivialized very
1:12:40 much in the
1:12:41 the average council estate people don't
1:12:43 really take it too seriously
1:12:45 um even in the education system you know
1:12:48 it's a point of mockery um
1:12:52 in popular culture it's a point of
1:12:54 mockery the the the media that these
1:12:56 young people are consuming um is
1:12:59 inundated with ideas of
1:13:01 trivializing the concepts of religion
1:13:03 the religious man is
1:13:05 um reduced to this this mad person that
1:13:08 stands on the corner screaming strange
1:13:09 things the end is nigh
1:13:11 um it's very rare you see
1:13:15 media as a young person like i said this
1:13:17 is anecdotal
1:13:18 and you know according to a lot of the
1:13:20 conversations i've had with a lot of the
1:13:22 the general people that i used to spend
1:13:24 a lot of time with
1:13:25 um and sort of like observing the
1:13:27 internet and things like that you see
1:13:28 these things cropping up
1:13:30 um but yeah and so these ideas of
1:13:33 religion being trivialized
1:13:34 um the reflective person looking at all
1:13:38 of this
1:13:39 um while young and maybe impatient
1:13:42 um not really having these particular
1:13:45 virtues
1:13:46 implemented in them that is patience
1:13:48 being like a major one of them
1:13:50 um when they look at this everything
1:13:52 starts to seem arbitrary it's like why
1:13:54 why
1:13:54 why and the more they ask why the you
1:13:56 know these figures of authority are not
1:13:58 necessarily giving them explanations
1:13:59 they're just telling them because i've
1:14:00 said so
1:14:01 because i've said so and this um
1:14:03 increases
1:14:04 these conditions that we mentioned
1:14:05 before um increases skepticism
1:14:09 and when people um are not getting
1:14:11 satisfying answers
1:14:13 or answers that satisfy them not
1:14:15 necessarily due to the fact that there
1:14:17 and
1:14:17 answers um half of the time as well it's
1:14:20 um
1:14:21 just simply because the people that are
1:14:22 asking are necessarily equipped to be
1:14:23 able to give those answers
1:14:24 um and they themselves asking those
1:14:26 questions um
1:14:28 they don't recognize their own limits
1:14:31 their own ignorance
1:14:33 and they have an inability to find the
1:14:35 material on the subject matter
1:14:37 you know they don't necessarily know how
1:14:38 to search academic material and even if
1:14:40 they could
1:14:41 how to engage with it how to read it um
1:14:44 you know they can read but there's a lot
1:14:45 of complex terms going on in there
1:14:48 these books can be quite large um and
1:14:50 boring there's no storyline in half of
1:14:52 them
1:14:52 um you know they they don't even
1:14:54 necessarily have the resources in order
1:14:56 to buy the books or to get access to
1:14:57 academic journals
1:14:59 and nor do they have the patience half
1:15:01 the time
1:15:02 um to go through all of these and read
1:15:04 so
1:15:05 this generally a lot of these problems
1:15:08 when it gets to the kind of the end of
1:15:09 it he seems to be more of a consequence
1:15:12 of this um
1:15:13 these issues you know that can be tied
1:15:16 more to societal problems than anything
1:15:17 else
1:15:18 um yeah so you know
1:15:21 and as uh nietzsche says again repeating
1:15:23 his words nihilism
1:15:25 there is no goal no answer to the
1:15:27 question why emphasis on that particular
1:15:28 bit
1:15:29 um and and this is what people are
1:15:31 feeling they they're they're
1:15:33 aiming at things and they can't
1:15:34 everything they aim at just seems to
1:15:35 sort of
1:15:36 dissolve deteriorate every question they
1:15:39 ask why this why that
1:15:40 they're not getting their answers and so
1:15:43 they end up
1:15:43 in nihilism and all of this itself is
1:15:46 expressive of the
1:15:48 uh the spirit of criticism uh i guess a
1:15:51 point of destructive skepticism
1:15:53 but it's unable to turn around and build
1:15:54 anything uh not because again it's
1:15:57 impossible
1:15:57 just because they're incapable of doing
1:15:59 so they've not been given the tools
1:16:01 you know they've um they've not got the
1:16:04 equipment
1:16:04 in order to resolve the problems at hand
1:16:09 uh further consequences to this sort of
1:16:11 moral nihilistic position is that there
1:16:12 is no
1:16:13 necessary moral duty people become
1:16:16 apathetic they become uh you know
1:16:19 i i don't really need to do this uh it's
1:16:22 not to say
1:16:23 that people can't experience a sense of
1:16:25 duty still
1:16:26 um in the world even if they're atheists
1:16:29 or you know even if they happen to hold
1:16:31 other views
1:16:32 similar to um these categories that
1:16:34 we're going through with regards to
1:16:35 nihilism
1:16:36 um but you know there is no necessary
1:16:39 moral duty
1:16:41 that is that it's not binding so
1:16:42 although some people may experience it
1:16:44 others may not
1:16:45 and insofar as they're not experiencing
1:16:47 this this urgency or this need
1:16:49 um for moral duty be that to the family
1:16:52 to the neighbor to the friend to this to
1:16:54 that
1:16:54 um you know it's it's
1:16:58 things again just seem arbitrary to them
1:17:00 so
1:17:01 it's unjustified they in the sense that
1:17:05 it's not been explained properly to them
1:17:08 uh why should i why do i need to do this
1:17:10 especially if
1:17:11 they're growing or living in a world
1:17:12 that's quite hostile um and the question
1:17:15 that ends up just being
1:17:16 raised here is can i get away with it um
1:17:18 if
1:17:19 a person can get away with it why not if
1:17:21 they have no
1:17:22 sense of um the divine for example
1:17:26 and again this is an argument for or
1:17:28 against in particular it's just
1:17:30 phenomenologically if they just do not
1:17:32 have an experience of the divine they do
1:17:33 not fear
1:17:34 being watched by some sort of
1:17:35 transcendent being and if they look
1:17:37 about and they can see that there is no
1:17:39 one watching and there is no
1:17:40 if they take it there won't be any
1:17:42 consequences to that why should they
1:17:44 not these sort of questions arise um for
1:17:47 the moral night list
1:17:48 why not do it again it's not to say that
1:17:50 everyone that goes through this
1:17:51 um is going to be like this but it
1:17:54 becomes a point of um
1:17:56 well if i can get away with it if i can
1:17:58 learn to be secretive
1:18:00 if i can learn to hide things this
1:18:02 becomes a motivation
1:18:04 for that particular thing and even if
1:18:06 you start to understand this sort of
1:18:08 utilitarian hedonistic um sort of
1:18:11 approach to
1:18:12 right and wrong or good you know if
1:18:14 you're motivated just by
1:18:16 sheer pleasure um and if you're in a big
1:18:20 supermarket
1:18:21 or in a like a huge corporation and you
1:18:24 you come to the understanding that if
1:18:26 you take this particular thing that this
1:18:27 company isn't really even going to
1:18:29 notice
1:18:29 it's not going to affect them you know
1:18:31 they're earning billions what are they
1:18:33 going to know about that
1:18:34 um it literally just becomes a question
1:18:37 of well if i can get away with it
1:18:39 they're not experiencing harm or the
1:18:40 harm that they're experiencing is is
1:18:43 negligible it's minimal hardly anything
1:18:45 at all
1:18:46 if they even notice it it could be so
1:18:48 mind you that it doesn't even register
1:18:50 um whereas the pleasure that they gain
1:18:52 from that would certainly outweigh that
1:18:55 and so from these kind of perspectives
1:18:57 um
1:18:59 cultivating this ability to hide things
1:19:01 to be secretive to be sneaky
1:19:03 uh it could even be seen as a virtue
1:19:05 insofar as it transforms something
1:19:07 um transforms something from being evil
1:19:10 into either neutral or good
1:19:11 you know so in this idea of um because i
1:19:14 have come across
1:19:16 people who claim to be moral nihilists
1:19:18 and utilitarians they don't see this
1:19:20 as conflicting i i happen to think there
1:19:23 is a conflict
1:19:24 in the values of both of these
1:19:25 principles but some people seem to hold
1:19:27 them anyway and so they'll hold these
1:19:28 moral
1:19:29 nihilistic positions refer to moral
1:19:31 discourse as a myth
1:19:33 yet still take these notions of
1:19:36 um utilitarianism pain and pleasure
1:19:40 being things which should be achieved or
1:19:42 avoided
1:19:44 uh you know and in this case if you can
1:19:46 hide things sufficiently well so that it
1:19:48 doesn't hurt anybody else but causes you
1:19:50 a lot of pleasure
1:19:51 typically these things may be considered
1:19:53 immoral to the average person
1:19:56 um but if you can hide them you transfer
1:19:58 something from immoral because it only
1:20:00 becomes immoral in this sense if
1:20:02 someone sees it as that these are just
1:20:04 subjective arbitrary whims of a society
1:20:06 the moral nihilist looks at this as um
1:20:09 or can look at this as
1:20:10 just pathetic and unjustified and again
1:20:13 there's no
1:20:13 duty here there's no reason why they
1:20:15 necessarily have to follow it
1:20:17 so this motivates this sort of creative
1:20:20 approach
1:20:21 to um to value to
1:20:25 to your engagement with the world to the
1:20:27 society you live in
1:20:29 and this is also expressed in a really
1:20:31 really popular video
1:20:32 um by kirk takar uh in a nutshell i can
1:20:35 never say that word properly
1:20:37 kurtz kudzat kurz kazakh
1:20:40 uh however you say it in a nutshell and
1:20:42 they did a video called optimistic
1:20:43 nihilism me and
1:20:44 brother sabor as well we did a
1:20:46 commentary on this so if you search on
1:20:48 his channel
1:20:48 optimistic nile is a muslim response um
1:20:51 you'll probably come across this
1:20:53 and at 3 minutes and 45 seconds
1:20:56 uh the video makes the following claim
1:20:59 you only get
1:21:00 one shot at life which is scary but it
1:21:02 also sets you free
1:21:04 if the universe ends in a heat death
1:21:06 every humiliation you suffer in your
1:21:08 life will be forgotten
1:21:09 every mistake you will make will not
1:21:12 matter in the end
1:21:14 every bad thing you did will be voided
1:21:16 if
1:21:17 our life is all we get to experience
1:21:20 then it's the only thing that matters
1:21:22 i repeat if our life is all we get to
1:21:24 experience
1:21:25 then it's the only thing that matters if
1:21:28 the universe has no principles
1:21:29 the only principles relevant are the
1:21:32 ones we decide on now this
1:21:34 is a viral video it's incredibly popular
1:21:38 and it has a huge
1:21:42 like the dislike ratio a lot of people
1:21:45 are liking it a lot of people are
1:21:47 really inclining to the message that it
1:21:50 gives
1:21:51 but they don't see the problems that are
1:21:53 expressive in this
1:21:55 very statement now obviously there's a
1:21:58 number of presuppositions and axioms
1:22:00 that the creators of this video
1:22:01 and very likely many of the people that
1:22:03 were liking it were holding on to
1:22:05 um but you know for anyone who's on
1:22:08 social media you've seen
1:22:10 some the horrible things recently there
1:22:13 was a video
1:22:15 so of a uh
1:22:19 an immigrant in america he was trying to
1:22:21 defend his vehicle his property
1:22:24 from two young girls 13 and 15 from
1:22:26 stealing his vehicle
1:22:28 um there were people just watching and
1:22:31 just recording this
1:22:32 why they didn't get involved or tried to
1:22:33 help i had no idea
1:22:35 um they just thought that the the better
1:22:38 thing to do would be pull out the phone
1:22:40 and record the whole thing
1:22:41 um but he's trying his hardest to
1:22:43 prevent these girls from stealing his
1:22:44 vehicle
1:22:45 nonetheless they get it they drive away
1:22:47 and they crash
1:22:48 and they kill him and
1:22:52 in this video you see this man he's
1:22:53 lying on the floor his face is directly
1:22:56 on the floor he's lifeless he's died
1:22:58 and these girls are climbing out of the
1:22:59 car and people just walking around it's
1:23:01 as if this man isn't there
1:23:03 it's as if there isn't a dead body it's
1:23:05 incredibly strange
1:23:06 and the two girls who effectively killed
1:23:09 this man
1:23:11 um show no concern for him whatsoever
1:23:15 not only that one of the girls proceeds
1:23:17 to worry
1:23:18 more about her phone still being in the
1:23:20 car the car's
1:23:22 tipped over now the car's upside down um
1:23:25 they've crushed it and a man has died
1:23:29 yet this person seems to care more about
1:23:33 her phone than the life that she's just
1:23:35 taken
1:23:36 and the the whole process of stealing
1:23:38 something off someone none of that seems
1:23:40 to register
1:23:41 and you can imagine her reading this and
1:23:43 being consoled by it
1:23:45 you only get one shot at life which is
1:23:47 scary but it sets you free
1:23:49 she's about as free as she wants i want
1:23:51 this so what
1:23:53 if society is going to give me grief on
1:23:55 the internet
1:23:56 you know if the universe ends in a heat
1:23:59 death every humiliation i suffered be
1:24:01 that
1:24:02 on twitter with viral videos of the
1:24:05 the horrible deed that i committed every
1:24:08 mistake i've ever made
1:24:09 all of that will not matter in the end
1:24:12 everything will be forgotten
1:24:13 any suffering i've caused any suffering
1:24:16 i've felt all of that
1:24:18 will not matter in the end every bad
1:24:20 thing i did will be voided
1:24:22 ultimate redemption what what's going to
1:24:24 prevent this person from doing that
1:24:27 i was going to prevent that psychopath
1:24:29 that um was being shared on twitter who
1:24:32 poured fuel over a kitten set it on fire
1:24:34 and record
1:24:35 recorded watching this poor little
1:24:37 creature burn
1:24:39 to death running around if this person
1:24:42 was to read this
1:24:43 what would he feel other than comfort
1:24:47 uh if our life is all we get to
1:24:49 experience then it's the only thing that
1:24:50 matters
1:24:51 that is our life i don't get to
1:24:53 experience anybody else's life
1:24:55 nobody gets to experience anyone's life
1:24:57 other than their own
1:24:59 and this viral video here is making the
1:25:02 claim that it's the only thing that
1:25:03 matters
1:25:04 an absolute statement it's the only
1:25:06 thing that matters if the universe has
1:25:07 no principles
1:25:09 the only principle relevant are the ones
1:25:11 we decide on or
1:25:13 if i'm the only one that gets to
1:25:15 experience
1:25:17 my life and i can't experience anyone
1:25:19 else's then the only ones that are
1:25:20 relevant if it was to be consistent
1:25:22 would be the ones i
1:25:23 decide upon now later on in the video
1:25:26 it does go on to talk about how oh well
1:25:28 it's nice if we all
1:25:29 get along and it tries to sort of make a
1:25:32 sort of
1:25:34 appeal to uh empathy and things like
1:25:37 that but these are principles
1:25:38 these are principles and there's no
1:25:40 necessary duty
1:25:42 um to decide that those are the right
1:25:44 principles
1:25:46 if the universe has no principles the
1:25:47 only ones relevant are the ones we
1:25:49 decide who's we
1:25:50 all of us the globe what if i don't like
1:25:53 the globe
1:25:53 what if i don't like people what if i'm
1:25:55 a loner what if i'm
1:25:57 a bit of an introvert what if i hate
1:25:59 society what if i'm the joker type
1:26:02 character that not only i'm an introvert
1:26:04 but maybe i don't even want to be maybe
1:26:06 i want to engage with the world but
1:26:08 i'm strange i have some quirks i have
1:26:11 this
1:26:11 weird laugh uh that i can't help i'm a
1:26:14 bit awkward
1:26:16 or you know any of these particular
1:26:17 qualities that society itself
1:26:19 finds distasteful or strange um
1:26:22 and the society itself is cruel to you
1:26:25 as a result of this
1:26:26 this you know you are at the end of
1:26:29 society's jokes
1:26:30 you know you're treated badly by your
1:26:32 neighbors
1:26:33 you have no friends your family are
1:26:35 horrible maybe you don't even have any
1:26:37 family
1:26:37 it's not uncommon many of my friends
1:26:40 were suffering
1:26:41 similar issues we were half
1:26:44 maybe most of us lived in fatherless
1:26:46 households
1:26:48 fathers in prison dead um just not
1:26:51 around
1:26:51 too many families disappeared never
1:26:54 heard of them
1:26:55 you know no parents at all
1:26:59 or if the parents were present some of
1:27:00 them had drug problems alcohol problems
1:27:03 temper problems you know what
1:27:08 subhanallah this quote here was said
1:27:11 extremely naively without really
1:27:13 considering
1:27:14 the audience in its totality and again
1:27:17 i'm not making claims here with regards
1:27:19 to statistics god knows how many people
1:27:21 are going to look at this
1:27:22 um like the example that the extreme
1:27:24 examples i gave you
1:27:26 um but we know there's at least some and
1:27:29 for those that are reading this kind of
1:27:30 thing
1:27:33 if you accept these even if they try to
1:27:36 paint a pretty picture with it later
1:27:39 um and say you know well you could hold
1:27:41 on to these principles of empathy of
1:27:42 caring for one another of being nice
1:27:44 just because it makes you feel good what
1:27:46 if it doesn't make you feel good what if
1:27:47 everyone else isn't being nice to you
1:27:50 um it's not taking these things into
1:27:52 consideration and
1:27:53 uh it yeah leads to
1:27:57 a this moral nihilistic approach
1:28:00 um because it's with regards to the
1:28:03 principles
1:28:04 um and another nature quote which i find
1:28:06 very interesting
1:28:07 nietzsche says here uh these they are
1:28:09 rid of the christian god
1:28:11 and now believe all the more firmly that
1:28:13 they must cling to christian morality
1:28:16 um this is still the case now many of
1:28:19 the moral principles they hold on to are
1:28:21 christian
1:28:22 moral principles or abrahamic you know
1:28:24 they derive
1:28:25 from the religious roots they just
1:28:27 neglect and forget that that's where
1:28:29 they came from
1:28:30 uh in england one must rehabilitate
1:28:32 oneself after every emancipation from
1:28:34 theology
1:28:35 by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring
1:28:37 manner
1:28:38 what a moral fanatic one is you see this
1:28:41 with the virtual signaling
1:28:42 virtu virtue signaling culture uh you
1:28:46 find present
1:28:47 on social media at the moment uh that is
1:28:49 the pendants they pay there
1:28:51 he's putting this at the tools of
1:28:52 england but uh this is
1:28:55 quite global phenomena now uh we others
1:28:57 hold otherwise
1:28:58 when one gives up on chris on the
1:29:00 christian faith
1:29:02 or in faith in general one pulls the
1:29:04 right to christian morality from under
1:29:06 one's feet
1:29:07 this morality is by no means
1:29:10 self-evident
1:29:11 this point has been exhibited again and
1:29:13 again despite
1:29:14 these english flatheads so here he is
1:29:16 talking specifically about the english
1:29:18 philosophers
1:29:19 um probably the likes of john locke
1:29:22 and the rest of them
1:29:26 they did try to build their own sort of
1:29:28 moral philosophies um
1:29:29 so christianity is a system a whole view
1:29:32 of things fought out together
1:29:33 by breaking one main concept out of it
1:29:35 the faith in god one breaks the whole
1:29:37 nothing necessary remains in one's hands
1:29:39 christianity uh
1:29:42 presupposes that man does not know
1:29:44 cannot know what is good for him
1:29:45 what evil he believes in god who alone
1:29:48 knows it god is all-knowing
1:29:50 we are finite beings limited
1:29:53 and by necessity everything we do
1:29:57 has um gaps in it whenever i look at
1:30:00 something there's a lot that i can't
1:30:02 look at there's a lot
1:30:03 that i'm missing um i never have access
1:30:06 to the full picture
1:30:07 and so my picture is always lacking and
1:30:10 um so christianity is a command his
1:30:12 origin is transcendent
1:30:13 it is beyond all criticism all right to
1:30:16 criticism
1:30:16 it has truth of god it's the truth it
1:30:18 stands and falls with
1:30:20 faith in god when the english actually
1:30:22 believe that they know intuitively what
1:30:24 good
1:30:24 what is good what is evil when they
1:30:26 therefore suppose that they no longer
1:30:28 require christianity as a guarantee of
1:30:30 morality
1:30:31 we merely witness the effects of the
1:30:33 dominion of the christian value judgment
1:30:36 and an expression of the strength and
1:30:37 depth of this dominion
1:30:40 it's taken hold of the collective
1:30:43 psyche to such a degree that they think
1:30:46 it's intuitive they don't realize
1:30:50 how the the intuitions that they have
1:30:53 a lot of time the consequence of the
1:30:55 society that they've been raised up in
1:30:57 they don't see how the only reason that
1:31:00 they were able to gain
1:31:01 many of these intuitions was a
1:31:03 consequence
1:31:04 of the fact that the religion that they
1:31:06 live within
1:31:07 had its roots deeply embedded into that
1:31:10 society
1:31:11 um so yeah and so it's no longer filled
1:31:14 the right to
1:31:16 such that the very conditional character
1:31:17 of its right to existence
1:31:20 uh sorry such that the origin of english
1:31:22 morality has been forgotten
1:31:24 such the very conditional character of
1:31:25 its right to existence is no longer felt
1:31:27 for the english morality is not yet
1:31:30 a problem and so that concludes part two
1:31:35 with regards to moral nihilism nihilism
1:31:38 is just seen as this
1:31:39 myth as a problem um
1:31:42 but many people overlook it and it's
1:31:45 it's a general issue
1:31:46 um you know there are there are many
1:31:49 ways that people sort of deal with this
1:31:50 like as
1:31:50 i've mentioned i've come across people
1:31:52 that sort of inclined to this
1:31:54 utilitarianism and don't see it as a
1:31:55 conflict
1:31:56 um even though the the whole idea of
1:32:00 utilitarianism is
1:32:01 to claim that there are things that are
1:32:03 good in and of themselves that is
1:32:05 pleasure happiness and there are things
1:32:08 that are bad
1:32:09 and in and of themselves that is pain or
1:32:11 suffering
1:32:12 um so there's problems with that but
1:32:15 generally it's this notion that morality
1:32:16 is a myth
1:32:17 um which takes this sort of moral
1:32:19 anti-realist position
1:32:21 and makes whatever people are saying is
1:32:23 moral or immoral
1:32:25 a subjective sort of opinion they're
1:32:27 deriving it from arbitrary whims
1:32:30 um or from simply the um
1:32:34 the dominating moral system that they
1:32:36 happen to be embedded within
1:32:38 so this now moves on to part three uh
1:32:40 let me see how long we've been talking
1:32:42 i'll try to speed this up because i've
1:32:44 already been talking for a while um
1:32:45 so this moves on to part three which is
1:32:47 cosmic nihilism
1:32:48 and cosmic nihilism is related to the
1:32:51 absence of value and purpose
1:32:53 in a godless world which does not have
1:32:55 consciousness as its underlying
1:32:57 foundation but is rather underpinned by
1:32:59 an unthinking determined
1:33:01 material substrate now this is the the
1:33:05 stronger
1:33:06 cosmic nihilist claim uh with this claim
1:33:09 there is a potential clash for epistemic
1:33:11 nihilism
1:33:12 or with epistemic nihilism due to the
1:33:14 number of knowledge claims
1:33:15 that are being made here so for example
1:33:18 the purpose of a godless world so here
1:33:20 you have the claim that the world is
1:33:21 godless
1:33:22 um and that the underlying foundation is
1:33:25 underpinned by unthinking unconscious
1:33:28 determined
1:33:29 material substrate these are also
1:33:30 knowledge claims
1:33:32 now you've got one option as epistemic
1:33:36 nihilist you can't really say they know
1:33:37 anything
1:33:38 it is also undermined rationality and
1:33:40 reason so i don't really care
1:33:42 you know it's just it is what it is
1:33:45 whether or not there is a contradiction
1:33:48 or whether you think there's a
1:33:49 contradiction it doesn't matter um
1:33:51 it is what it is it's strange because
1:33:55 you know
1:33:55 if someone's making this sort of claim
1:33:58 how they can even get to the point of
1:33:59 saying
1:34:00 this is true because they've undermined
1:34:02 the the ability to attain
1:34:05 truth um so they can they can soften it
1:34:07 basically
1:34:08 um and so this softening is related to
1:34:12 our inability to gain
1:34:13 genuine knowledge or truth as far as
1:34:15 they're concerned and so they could word
1:34:17 it differently
1:34:18 as follows so they could say cosmic
1:34:20 nidism is related to the absence of
1:34:22 value on purpose in a potentially
1:34:23 godless world
1:34:24 in which we cannot know if it has
1:34:28 consciousness as its underlying
1:34:29 foundation but appears to possibly be
1:34:31 underpinned
1:34:31 by an unthinking determined material
1:34:34 substrate
1:34:35 and so you still get this general theme
1:34:39 of you know the universe in totality of
1:34:42 everything
1:34:43 being without value without purpose
1:34:46 um and you've got to remember here that
1:34:50 value and purpose themselves are related
1:34:52 to consciousness and so the lack of
1:34:54 consciousness at the foundation
1:34:55 necessitates a lack of purpose and value
1:34:58 um
1:34:58 throughout the universe and in so far as
1:35:01 we
1:35:03 uh little beings um on this
1:35:06 universe um or in this universe
1:35:10 our experiences or the qualia that we
1:35:12 see as
1:35:14 finding value in things are irrelevant
1:35:15 because we are just made up of little
1:35:17 tiny atoms
1:35:18 as as we're going to see now so uh we
1:35:20 look at the universe and we see that it
1:35:22 is
1:35:22 indifferent and actually hostile
1:35:26 to human existence everything is just
1:35:28 one big random
1:35:29 mysterious accident you look out into
1:35:33 the void
1:35:34 and feel nothing but the absurd approach
1:35:38 you
1:35:38 life is fundamentally just mindless
1:35:40 molecules
1:35:42 which are fundamentally just weird
1:35:44 little elusive
1:35:46 lifeless particles
1:35:49 and they all make up this very large
1:35:52 big random lifeless machine and you know
1:35:55 this
1:35:56 view does entail the looking existence
1:35:59 um sorry this view entails when you look
1:36:02 at existence you see it as just one big
1:36:03 random machine
1:36:05 there's no real reason or value to
1:36:07 anything
1:36:08 um and you know in survivors the whole
1:36:11 is without value or purpose and so
1:36:13 are its parts
1:36:17 even if we do value something who cares
1:36:21 from this particular perspective the
1:36:23 universe is destined for a heat death
1:36:25 as our old friends kirkazar had
1:36:28 mentioned
1:36:30 and so nothing will have mattered anyway
1:36:32 whatever we valued
1:36:34 will be forgotten whatever we've argued
1:36:37 will fizzle away
1:36:39 with the end of the universe now
1:36:42 keep in mind uh this whole view is
1:36:45 dependent on whether or not there is
1:36:46 actually a god
1:36:47 if there is a god none of this makes any
1:36:49 sense but the epistemological nihilist
1:36:51 says that it doesn't matter for them
1:36:52 they can't even discover that um
1:36:56 and so yeah keep that in mind that all
1:36:57 of this only follows if
1:36:59 there is a consciousness if there is no
1:37:01 consciousness or the foundation of
1:37:03 existence
1:37:04 um none of this is argumentation or
1:37:07 proves god's non-existence
1:37:09 uh that's key to remember here it's
1:37:11 we're talking about
1:37:12 the experience or the consequences of
1:37:15 this pessimism
1:37:16 the state of being that this person
1:37:19 looks at the world through
1:37:21 and the sort of reason that they go
1:37:22 through and the kind of conclusions
1:37:24 that are the consequence of many of the
1:37:27 causes that we went through in
1:37:28 lecture two now so that
1:37:32 that's cosmic nihilism the universe is
1:37:34 itself in totality without exist
1:37:37 without value without purpose um and
1:37:39 this
1:37:40 segues very nicely into existentialism
1:37:42 and you'll probably notice as well
1:37:43 there's many
1:37:44 linking points between all of these
1:37:45 different categories between all of
1:37:47 these parts
1:37:48 how they interrelate um but
1:37:50 existentialism so as we mentioned there
1:37:53 um with cosmic nihilism uh
1:37:56 the the whole is without volume
1:37:58 everything in that
1:38:01 you know that every all of it together
1:38:03 is without purpose without value
1:38:05 and if the whole thing is without value
1:38:07 without purpose
1:38:09 if cosmic nihilism is true uh then by
1:38:12 greater reason
1:38:13 existential nihilism is true if the
1:38:15 whole thing is without value and this
1:38:17 thing is much
1:38:18 bigger than i am um you know there's a
1:38:20 lot more going on here
1:38:22 um how can i as an individual have any
1:38:25 value
1:38:26 if the universe is without value how can
1:38:28 a part of it have
1:38:30 value that's the main point here if a
1:38:32 part of it values itself
1:38:34 or values another part what more is this
1:38:36 than simply saying
1:38:38 something insignificant finds
1:38:41 something else insignificant to be
1:38:44 significant
1:38:46 it's it's another way of simply saying
1:38:48 that the part is delusional the part
1:38:50 is experiencing something other than
1:38:52 what is the case
1:38:54 it's finding value in something in which
1:38:56 there is no value
1:38:58 and this is this quote called
1:39:00 realization or this experience is is
1:39:02 what we're referring to now as
1:39:03 existential nihilism this
1:39:05 idea that ultimately the human race the
1:39:08 human being
1:39:09 is fundamentally delusional for the most
1:39:11 part
1:39:12 it just doesn't map onto reality and
1:39:16 you know this is um
1:39:19 certainly the case for the the positive
1:39:23 atheist that is
1:39:24 the atheist uh which is otherwise known
1:39:27 as the atheist proper or atheism proper
1:39:30 so atheism more recently has been sort
1:39:32 of categorized into three
1:39:34 forms you have atheism proper which is
1:39:36 the positive atheist that says there is
1:39:37 no god
1:39:38 you have the agnostic or the soft
1:39:40 atheist who says that he cannot know
1:39:43 if god does or does not exist um
1:39:46 and then you have the uh
1:39:50 there's another one i can't remember
1:39:51 what that one is that just says that
1:39:53 metaphysical language i think to some
1:39:54 degree is
1:39:55 meaningless um but the point is if
1:39:58 someone is
1:39:59 a positive atheist uh an atheist proper
1:40:03 they wouldn't necessarily be an
1:40:05 epistemological nihilist because in this
1:40:07 case they could say
1:40:08 they know that there is no god um
1:40:10 obviously i would claim this is an
1:40:12 absurd view
1:40:13 but there's some people do called this
1:40:15 position
1:40:16 uh how many allah and they they put
1:40:19 forward this claim they say uh
1:40:22 there is no god and if that is the case
1:40:25 then cosmic nihilism follows necessarily
1:40:27 and the cosmic nihilism follows and so
1:40:29 does existential nihilism
1:40:31 um and so you know this conclusion here
1:40:35 follows necessarily from positive
1:40:37 atheism um and it's
1:40:39 it follows as a possibility
1:40:42 uh or inductively from the case of the
1:40:44 the soft atheist or from agnosticism
1:40:47 which probably or can be related to the
1:40:50 position of the epistemic nihilism so
1:40:53 you know there's different forms here
1:40:55 and it relates to different forms of
1:40:56 atheism in different ways
1:40:58 um but any case you know that without
1:41:00 that value
1:41:03 um sorry in any case that without value
1:41:05 values
1:41:06 the value less as though it has value
1:41:09 all of this is
1:41:10 you know an absurd mentality to hold
1:41:13 from this position
1:41:14 um and so this existential angst this
1:41:17 existential nihilism
1:41:18 um is you know this is the kind of
1:41:21 conclusion that's being come to
1:41:23 um but again you know we're making the
1:41:25 argument here that this follows from the
1:41:26 conditions
1:41:27 in the first or sorry in the second
1:41:29 lecture
1:41:31 um this experience doesn't for the most
1:41:34 part contain the recognition of this
1:41:36 um but it acts as though it really does
1:41:39 have value
1:41:40 so when um the being
1:41:43 the average human being is looking at
1:41:45 the world and valuing things
1:41:47 um and even the person that might even
1:41:49 consider themselves a nihilist
1:41:51 you know if you try to take the phone
1:41:53 for them they're gonna get upset
1:41:55 why because they value the phone um if
1:41:58 you
1:41:59 hold a knife up to them they might panic
1:42:01 why because they value their life
1:42:04 uh obviously we're not recommending
1:42:06 anyone doing anything stupid like that
1:42:08 but
1:42:08 the the point here is that they still
1:42:11 value things
1:42:12 and in this experience they act as
1:42:15 though they value
1:42:16 or they they do value um but through
1:42:19 this
1:42:19 mindset or through this um
1:42:23 symptom or this you know this effect
1:42:25 that people might be experiencing
1:42:26 that is of existential magnitude this is
1:42:29 seen as
1:42:30 delusional uh and you know it's simple
1:42:34 you can just look at this so this is you
1:42:36 uh and or any particular form of life
1:42:39 and
1:42:40 you know the the cosmic negative argues
1:42:42 here that we have a false sense of
1:42:43 grandeur that we see ourselves as a
1:42:45 center
1:42:46 as important as significant and we care
1:42:49 about what we do
1:42:50 as though our actions matter or as if
1:42:53 someone else's actions matter
1:42:55 we care about what others do like it
1:42:58 means anything
1:42:59 but as far as they're concerned the
1:43:01 reality is we
1:43:02 are insignificant the
1:43:05 grand scheme of things we're not even a
1:43:08 speck
1:43:09 and in a way from a particular path of
1:43:11 thinking uh
1:43:12 you know even the muslims here would
1:43:14 agree with this particular part
1:43:18 however we make our comparison uh
1:43:21 to the creator unlike them
1:43:24 uh the atheist for example um
1:43:27 or the the explicit existential nihilist
1:43:30 so i think this may answer a question
1:43:31 someone's already asked
1:43:33 um so we do agree to a degree agree to a
1:43:36 degree um
1:43:38 with moral nihilism but the issue here
1:43:41 is that this is in comparison to the
1:43:43 creator whereas the
1:43:45 the disbeliever the one who doesn't
1:43:47 believe um is making this comparison to
1:43:49 the rest of creation
1:43:51 and they look at us compared to all of
1:43:54 creation and come to the conclusion we
1:43:56 are insignificant compared to that
1:43:58 and if everything is insignificant we
1:44:00 are so by greater degree
1:44:01 whereas we look at god um
1:44:04 we compare ourselves to uh the majesty
1:44:07 of allah and we say we are insignificant
1:44:10 compared to that now obviously there are
1:44:13 there are
1:44:13 um different things being negated here
1:44:17 now in relation to the creation and
1:44:19 without reference to
1:44:20 a creator everything becomes meaningless
1:44:23 everything becomes without purpose
1:44:25 however our insignificance
1:44:27 when taken in relation to a creator that
1:44:29 doesn't rob everything of meaning
1:44:31 it doesn't make everything insignificant
1:44:33 because everything is the result of the
1:44:35 creative act
1:44:36 of that being everything has been
1:44:38 created with a purpose
1:44:40 with a function with you know um
1:44:43 you know there is value in these things
1:44:45 insofar as they have been made by a
1:44:47 creator
1:44:48 obviously that in itself isn't an
1:44:49 argument for a creator and if anyone is
1:44:52 interested in maybe seeing some more
1:44:53 arguments for that
1:44:54 do check out the thought adventure
1:44:56 podcast because we do go into these in a
1:44:58 lot of detail i think we're six episodes
1:44:59 in at the moment
1:45:01 and uh we we explore this in a lot of
1:45:03 depth arguments
1:45:04 for the existence of a necessary being
1:45:07 inferences from the necessary being to
1:45:08 the existence of a god
1:45:10 in future episodes we're going to start
1:45:11 talking about moving from
1:45:13 the existence of a god to the islamic
1:45:16 concept of that and you'll find a lot of
1:45:17 literature
1:45:19 being published on the sapience
1:45:20 institute with regards to this and there
1:45:21 are a lot of
1:45:22 um videos being pumped out as well so
1:45:26 just keep your eyes on on all
1:45:28 these different platforms um you know if
1:45:30 you want to kind of go into these in
1:45:31 more detail
1:45:32 but yeah so in answer to that value here
1:45:35 isn't negated
1:45:37 um you know let's see whatever in it and
1:45:40 creation and its whole
1:45:41 pales in comparison but derives its
1:45:43 value through the creator
1:45:45 rather than having its value negated
1:45:48 um so that's an important thing to keep
1:45:50 in mind now
1:45:52 in the grand scheme of things again
1:45:54 nothing we do
1:45:55 will matter this is where this type of
1:45:58 thinking departs
1:45:59 from religious thinking um because we
1:46:02 believe that
1:46:03 obviously um if everything is created by
1:46:06 god and we are created by god we are
1:46:07 created with a purpose and a function
1:46:09 um everything you do does matter
1:46:14 things aren't insignificant your actions
1:46:17 hold infinite
1:46:18 eternal consequences you will live
1:46:21 forever in an afterlife and your deeds
1:46:24 have been weighed and how you live in
1:46:26 that afterlife
1:46:28 is determined by how you act so these th
1:46:31 these deeds these actions
1:46:33 do matter but from the existential
1:46:35 nihilist perspective
1:46:37 this has all been put into question all
1:46:40 of this is
1:46:40 doubted and pushed away the ability to
1:46:44 achieve knowledge is doubted
1:46:45 moral moral existence is doubted
1:46:49 everything is becoming
1:46:50 doubted everything loses its value
1:46:53 answers to the question why cannot be
1:46:54 found
1:46:55 and you know you end up with this and
1:46:58 basically
1:46:59 you look into the skies we confirm just
1:47:02 how tiny we
1:47:03 are and how our actions are limited to
1:47:06 our tiny bubble where we have incredibly
1:47:08 limited causal effect
1:47:11 and this paralyzes people
1:47:15 to many degrees now you can see here
1:47:17 that
1:47:18 all of these contribute to a feeling of
1:47:21 existential
1:47:22 dread begins looking outwardly at the
1:47:25 world but ultimately
1:47:26 reflects back upon itself so you've got
1:47:30 your epistemic nihilism
1:47:31 your moral nihilism cosmic nihilism
1:47:33 these are talking these are these are
1:47:35 looking outwardly how do we come to know
1:47:37 things
1:47:38 how do we know what's right and wrong
1:47:40 with regards to
1:47:41 actions towards things out in the
1:47:43 external world the cosmic nihilism is
1:47:45 looking at the universe and the totality
1:47:48 and then of at the end of all of this at
1:47:51 the end of looking at this it reflects
1:47:52 upon itself
1:47:54 and begins to experience the absurd
1:48:00 and so as you remember from previous
1:48:01 lectures this ties into
1:48:04 um the notion that was given
1:48:07 by nagel thomas nagel
1:48:10 he says the notion of the absurd is born
1:48:13 out of the conflict of two things
1:48:14 one the natural human need and
1:48:16 inclination for meaning and reason
1:48:18 and two the subjective experience
1:48:22 of the unreasonable silence of the world
1:48:24 you're looking out into the world and
1:48:26 you're not getting
1:48:27 any answers yeah you're not coming to
1:48:29 the conclusions
1:48:30 um that satiate this thirst
1:48:34 that we have and this is what ends up
1:48:37 being considered the experience of the
1:48:39 absurd
1:48:39 how is it that we have this natural need
1:48:41 this inclination for
1:48:43 meaning and reason and we are completely
1:48:45 incapable of
1:48:47 fulfilling it it's expressive again of
1:48:49 an impatience
1:48:50 the fact that you can't necessarily get
1:48:51 these answers now doesn't mean you won't
1:48:52 get them
1:48:53 ever um as one and so a sense of
1:48:57 you know a sense of patience
1:49:01 um if practiced by person
1:49:04 is is something itself which can
1:49:06 deteriorate the experience of the absurd
1:49:08 maybe the answers will arrive
1:49:10 but this particular collusion
1:49:13 conclusions that have been reached here
1:49:15 um that the the universe is unreasonably
1:49:18 silent
1:49:19 and it also sort of suggests that it
1:49:22 will continue to be unreasonably silent
1:49:24 that the the answers
1:49:26 are not abstractable from the world and
1:49:29 so it
1:49:30 you end up with this experience of the
1:49:32 absurd um
1:49:34 and how can it express itself is the
1:49:36 question here um
1:49:37 we can talk about how this nihilism
1:49:41 and this feeling of the absurd um can
1:49:44 express itself in a number of ways
1:49:46 uh we could talk about how it expresses
1:49:48 itself on an individual
1:49:50 so how one particular person when
1:49:52 suffering from nihilism
1:49:54 um might deal with the world how he
1:49:56 might
1:49:57 um direct his reaction to this problem
1:50:00 towards himself or to others um or we
1:50:04 can talk about it collectively how a
1:50:05 society or a group
1:50:07 um or a collective how they may
1:50:11 react to this um be that within
1:50:14 themselves
1:50:14 or to each other um or to others
1:50:18 to you know to people outside of that
1:50:20 that collective
1:50:22 and it can express itself in in two ways
1:50:24 as well so either passive
1:50:25 or active so when it's directed to the
1:50:29 self or to others
1:50:30 that's one way of describing it when
1:50:32 it's directed to itself
1:50:33 in a passive or an active way passive um
1:50:37 could be suggested in terms of sort of
1:50:39 depression
1:50:40 um spending a lot of time inside being
1:50:43 quite submissive avoiding um
1:50:46 you know engaging in escapism things
1:50:49 like
1:50:50 heavy addiction to computer games uh
1:50:52 anti-social
1:50:54 behavior in this sense you're just not
1:50:55 dealing with the social world you're not
1:50:57 going out
1:50:58 it's this is passive nihilism um it's
1:51:01 it's not characterized by a lot of
1:51:03 action um active
1:51:06 nihilism could be expressed in the sense
1:51:08 of either committing suicide
1:51:10 you're taking active steps to sort of
1:51:12 overcome this
1:51:14 um or if it's outwardly projected um
1:51:17 it could express itself in the sense of
1:51:20 mass shootings
1:51:21 now obviously again i've got to kind of
1:51:24 constantly
1:51:24 say this this isn't to say that this is
1:51:27 the
1:51:28 majority outcome of those that
1:51:29 experience these problems
1:51:31 um i'm happy to admit that this is a
1:51:33 minority
1:51:34 of those who suffer from nihilism
1:51:38 uh end up engaging in destructive
1:51:40 behavior be that towards themselves
1:51:41 or to others um but it is common enough
1:51:44 that it's a problem
1:51:45 it's common enough that it's still
1:51:47 upsetting if you look at the
1:51:50 um the levels of suicide like we did in
1:51:53 the first lecture
1:51:54 this is i would say necessarily
1:51:56 expressive of
1:51:57 this active nihilism towards oneself
1:52:01 the passive nihilists you might be able
1:52:03 to describe as those who
1:52:04 attempt it but fail you know they're not
1:52:07 really
1:52:07 doing too good at it or those who are
1:52:08 just simply suffering from depression
1:52:11 um for which the numbers are very high
1:52:14 um but when we're talking about these
1:52:16 we're just talking about the spectrum in
1:52:17 the ways
1:52:18 that this can express itself um we're
1:52:21 not talking about
1:52:22 the percentage of how this particular
1:52:24 form of it
1:52:25 um relates to the whole
1:52:29 uh so yeah active nouns and passive
1:52:31 nihilism
1:52:32 um we can talk about uh the individual
1:52:35 or collectively whether it's
1:52:36 self-directed other directed
1:52:38 um and you know how all of these
1:52:41 fall into forms of escapism um
1:52:45 how do i avoid this nihilism how do i
1:52:47 overcome it
1:52:48 um you know is it completely destructive
1:52:50 or do i go into this
1:52:52 period of creativity where we can just
1:52:55 kind of
1:52:56 do as in what we want meaning is
1:52:58 whatever i want it to be
1:53:00 all of these kind of things um
1:53:03 what kind of escapisms are there there's
1:53:05 different forms um there's
1:53:07 self-hypnosis and techno hypnosis um so
1:53:10 these
1:53:10 uh sort of self-willed forms of
1:53:14 hypnotic behavior where you can sort of
1:53:16 get yourself into a trance
1:53:17 you find this with gaming with binging
1:53:20 on netflix
1:53:22 um or any other sort of streaming device
1:53:24 even things like youtube
1:53:25 social media scrolling just endlessly
1:53:28 going through
1:53:29 the social media platforms um with no
1:53:32 end
1:53:34 these are all forms of self-hypnosis
1:53:37 and of avoiding uh the the realities
1:53:40 you're experiencing
1:53:41 um you know that sort of express
1:53:43 themselves in this this form of nihilism
1:53:46 and also express itself in uh obsessive
1:53:48 behaviors
1:53:49 so you know the typical mantra sex drugs
1:53:51 and rock and roll
1:53:52 um more specifically sex drugs
1:53:56 music alcohol gambling etc
1:53:59 all of these sort of behaviors that can
1:54:01 become quite addictive
1:54:03 um and they are used to avoid reflection
1:54:06 on life and on the position that they're
1:54:08 in
1:54:09 and on sort of continuing down that
1:54:11 rabbit hole that they found themselves
1:54:13 in
1:54:13 um as you will see when we sort of get
1:54:15 towards lecture four
1:54:17 that if you're going through this or you
1:54:19 know someone that's going through you
1:54:20 you
1:54:20 have to continue down that path you have
1:54:22 to keep on reflecting and sometimes it
1:54:25 can cause a lot of pain and this process
1:54:27 itself can be uh quite a dangerous one
1:54:31 um as obviously we've mentioned earlier
1:54:33 this
1:54:34 does lead to people committing suicide
1:54:37 sometimes and so
1:54:38 it there needs to be people um
1:54:41 helping them along in this process there
1:54:43 needs to be people that show that they
1:54:45 care
1:54:46 um and this makes a huge difference when
1:54:49 people have to go through
1:54:50 this alone this is when it generally
1:54:52 becomes a lot more dangerous
1:54:53 but you know if there's if they can see
1:54:56 a light at the end of the tunnel simply
1:54:57 having someone there
1:54:58 um it can be expressive of that light
1:55:01 and so you give some
1:55:02 something to move towards and to
1:55:04 overcome
1:55:06 but again this existential nihilism can
1:55:08 lead to these
1:55:09 sort of obsessive behaviors and simply
1:55:11 to avoid facing the problems that
1:55:13 they're going through
1:55:14 um destructive as we mentioned
1:55:16 self-destructive other destructive
1:55:18 suicidal killing
1:55:19 minority um to the total but still
1:55:22 present
1:55:23 and it could also lead to a fractured
1:55:26 society
1:55:27 um so you know you combine this with the
1:55:29 the lack of social duty
1:55:31 that we found with more nihilism this
1:55:34 leads to
1:55:35 increased levels of corruption but the
1:55:37 society as a whole
1:55:39 doesn't feel any necessary reasons if
1:55:41 they don't feel like there's something
1:55:43 watching them
1:55:44 over and above and in sulfur hours they
1:55:46 can hide it and get rid of it
1:55:48 um it would take a very particular kind
1:55:50 of person
1:55:52 to not um go against that grain
1:55:55 if they have the ability to be able to
1:55:57 to hide it to be able to be sneaky
1:55:59 um to be able to think that they can be
1:56:01 corrupt and get away with it and we see
1:56:03 growing levels of corruption around the
1:56:04 world
1:56:05 um so it's not unheard of it's not
1:56:07 uncommon um
1:56:08 it happens quite a lot enough to see it
1:56:11 as an issue
1:56:12 um and then obviously this fractious
1:56:14 society
1:56:15 leads um or is connected to this idea of
1:56:17 the post-truth world
1:56:19 where people are just picking and
1:56:20 choosing you see this um
1:56:23 political gap widening so there's few
1:56:25 studies that talk about the
1:56:27 political overlap has deteriorated quite
1:56:30 greatly
1:56:31 over the years um i think it was only 20
1:56:34 years ago there was quite a lot of
1:56:35 political overlap between the two
1:56:37 parties that generally
1:56:38 play in politics be that in the uk or in
1:56:41 america
1:56:43 the left-wing and right-wing democrats
1:56:45 republics
1:56:46 there was a lot of political overlap but
1:56:47 more recently that political
1:56:49 political overlap has deteriorated to
1:56:51 the point where there is hardly anything
1:56:52 in common between the parties anymore
1:56:54 um and it's an interesting study on pure
1:56:57 research if you check that out
1:56:59 but it's expressive of this fractured
1:57:00 society this chasm
1:57:03 opening them up opening up between the
1:57:05 people
1:57:06 that's not expressive of a border you
1:57:07 can't just draw a line on a map here and
1:57:09 say well this part of
1:57:11 the uk is this this part of the uk is
1:57:13 that like these
1:57:14 these divides can occur on the same
1:57:16 street they can occur within the same
1:57:18 family
1:57:19 they can occur within the same household
1:57:22 they
1:57:23 you know that this the fracturing is is
1:57:26 a very peculiar one
1:57:28 uh where if you were to drive to draw a
1:57:30 line it'd be a very wobbly long one
1:57:33 um and it'll go all over the place but
1:57:35 yeah so you've got this kind of
1:57:36 political gap whining
1:57:37 and you have the increase of this sort
1:57:39 of revolutionary and activist mentality
1:57:42 and this also uh leads to this
1:57:46 sort of accelerationist mentality as
1:57:48 well
1:57:49 um i have a particular theory that i
1:57:52 think the only
1:57:53 way donald trump ended up getting into
1:57:54 power um
1:57:56 was because a lot of people saw that he
1:57:59 would be
1:58:00 um possibly this is possible obviously
1:58:02 this hypothesis
1:58:04 um but it's an interesting one they saw
1:58:06 him as a
1:58:07 if he was to get into power that would
1:58:09 justify a revolutionary mentality
1:58:12 um and so if you know if you wanted to
1:58:14 egg on the end
1:58:16 if you want you know if you've got this
1:58:17 sort of communist mentality for example
1:58:19 and you want
1:58:20 to see the collapse of a um
1:58:24 particular system um what would be the
1:58:27 best way of getting that done if we put
1:58:29 this
1:58:30 crazy guy in power in place
1:58:33 um that would justify a revolution if we
1:58:35 can get the worst possible character and
1:58:37 so
1:58:37 i think obviously there's a lot of fans
1:58:39 of his so he does have his fan base
1:58:41 um he does have a huge portion of the
1:58:44 people that did vote for him and
1:58:45 generally thought that he was the
1:58:47 solution to their problems
1:58:48 um but i do think that there's probably
1:58:50 many
1:58:51 um people who hated him that voted him
1:58:54 in any way
1:58:55 because that would have justified this
1:58:57 sort of revolutionary mentality
1:58:58 but again um you see this
1:59:02 being expressed on places like youtube
1:59:03 um there is a talk of accelerationism
1:59:06 um and this is also expressive you see
1:59:08 this in pop culture
1:59:10 so how the end of the world has been
1:59:12 sort of romanticized
1:59:13 you see the increase of things like um
1:59:16 like the zombie
1:59:17 game industry or the
1:59:21 um you know the series that sort of go
1:59:23 along this line
1:59:24 uh where you have this sort of
1:59:26 apocalypse occur
1:59:28 and people love it people absolutely
1:59:30 absolutely eat it up especially in the
1:59:32 gaming industry these are some of the
1:59:33 most popular games
1:59:34 you have daisy for example um there's
1:59:37 huge channels that have been produced as
1:59:39 a result of these kind of games where
1:59:41 people get to live
1:59:42 this end of the world scenario um
1:59:45 and many of them especially the youth
1:59:47 constantly think all right i'd be sick
1:59:49 if this happened
1:59:50 uh i'd boss it you know i'd just go
1:59:52 straight to the gun store i'd go
1:59:53 straight to here i'd be building you
1:59:54 know i'd thrive in that kind of
1:59:56 environment um and you know this is
1:59:59 expressive often accelerationism
2:00:02 um that is a the willing of the end to
2:00:05 occur
2:00:06 um which seems to be on the rise of one
2:00:09 becoming more popular
2:00:10 um and it's probably a consequence of
2:00:12 this political gap
2:00:13 widening as well like every those the
2:00:16 political gaps become
2:00:17 quite big and um the people
2:00:20 it's hard to get perspective when
2:00:22 there's such a large population
2:00:25 so it's difficult to determine who's
2:00:26 actually got the power so you see the
2:00:28 right wing
2:00:29 um clicks sort of complaining about how
2:00:31 the left wing have all the power and how
2:00:33 they're
2:00:34 um destroying the world and the lefties
2:00:36 are doing this and that and then you
2:00:37 have the right way
2:00:38 sorry the left wing saying the same
2:00:40 things i know it's patriarchy the right
2:00:42 wing
2:00:42 conservative powers they have control
2:00:44 they're the ones and everyone's sort of
2:00:46 blaming all the problems on the opposite
2:00:47 sides
2:00:48 um and the gap has kind of become so
2:00:52 wide
2:00:52 and the position is becoming so extreme
2:00:55 uh
2:00:56 like for example abortion being a really
2:00:59 good example of this
2:01:00 um you have one cam sort of wanting or
2:01:03 allowing
2:01:03 abortion to varying degrees um but
2:01:07 they're fine with it and then you have
2:01:09 another camp saying abortion shouldn't
2:01:11 be practiced um it shouldn't be legal i
2:01:14 shouldn't be made so easily accessible
2:01:15 and obviously there's varying degrees
2:01:18 but for the most part they sit on
2:01:19 opposite camps uh pro-life
2:01:21 or um pro-abortion or pro-choice
2:01:25 as they call it um yeah and
2:01:28 so you've got these rise of these
2:01:30 problems
2:01:31 and i would say that these are again
2:01:33 consequences of a lot of these issues
2:01:34 that i'm going through today
2:01:36 um that the conditions that gave rise to
2:01:39 this
2:01:39 social nihilism um in its many forms and
2:01:42 the the consequences of that
2:01:44 which we've um completed today and so
2:01:47 last thoughts and a general overview we
2:01:49 went through the
2:01:50 the four stages um or the four
2:01:53 particular categories we talked about
2:01:56 um epistemological nihilism and the
2:01:58 problems that are outlined there
2:02:00 how it's kind of it's driven by this
2:02:02 hyper skepticism
2:02:04 um the ability to attain knowledge
2:02:06 becomes questioned completely
2:02:08 and people are just left in never-ending
2:02:10 doubts
2:02:11 doubt after doubt after doubt after that
2:02:13 and
2:02:15 the second category that we covered uh
2:02:18 let me just double check that the second
2:02:19 category was moral nihilism
2:02:22 um and how you know moral facts become
2:02:26 impossible to attain or the moral
2:02:27 language is itself incorrect
2:02:29 um or it should be seen
2:02:33 through this uh state of frame frame of
2:02:35 mind
2:02:38 as a myth and we should adopt a sort of
2:02:41 storytelling mentality when dealing with
2:02:42 morality
2:02:43 but ultimately moral language is
2:02:45 incorrect
2:02:46 um they also spoke about cosmic nihilism
2:02:49 that is the universe itself not having
2:02:51 any
2:02:51 value um necessarily or any purpose
2:02:55 and then this having a lead on or a
2:02:56 bleed into
2:02:59 existential nihilism that is the
2:03:01 experience of our life
2:03:03 not just the universe but the life of
2:03:05 particular people
2:03:06 having no value and the problems
2:03:09 entailed with
2:03:10 that and so these are all consequences
2:03:12 of the
2:03:13 um the issue of nihilism um and how it
2:03:17 can become destructive either to the
2:03:18 self
2:03:19 or to others to the individual to the
2:03:21 collective
2:03:22 passively or actively
2:03:25 um and these are huge issues
2:03:30 that face society as a whole
2:03:33 um and i would i'm going as far as i
2:03:34 agree globally
2:03:36 and so hopefully having gone through
2:03:38 lectures two and three
2:03:40 this should feedback now into lecture
2:03:41 one where i was
2:03:43 making the argument that it is an
2:03:44 important subject one that we should be
2:03:46 looking into
2:03:47 and should be uh trying to understand in
2:03:50 order to be able to overcome it
2:03:52 i am confident that islam is an answer
2:03:54 to this
2:03:55 i am confident that a lot of these
2:03:58 problems that have been raised
2:04:00 islam can be given as an antidote to
2:04:03 them
2:04:04 and can not only
2:04:08 obviously bring people out of these
2:04:10 problems or pull people out of this pit
2:04:12 um but help them to to build they give
2:04:15 them a foundation from which to step on
2:04:18 and as allah says in the quran those who
2:04:19 hold firm to the rope of allah
2:04:22 could not go astray they they have
2:04:24 something firm to hold on to
2:04:27 and insha allah next week we're going to
2:04:29 go into that
2:04:31 uh in the last lecture of this series
2:04:34 uh lecture four and we'll leave out
2:04:37 there for today
2:04:38 forgive me uh i've been trying to keep
2:04:41 these
2:04:43 short so the intention like i did one um
2:04:46 episode
2:04:47 on this i think last year in july
2:04:51 and i had to squeeze all of this into
2:04:53 one and that one ended up being
2:04:55 like three four hours long or something
2:04:57 stupid it was really really long
2:04:59 um and so after discussing things with
2:05:01 brother hamza
2:05:03 hamsa sauces he suggested we do a four
2:05:06 part series
2:05:07 and uh i was just kind of hoping that
2:05:10 maybe i could break that three four
2:05:12 hours
2:05:12 to one hour a piece um but it turns out
2:05:15 that
2:05:16 because i was restricted to one lecture
2:05:18 i could have talked much longer
2:05:20 um but i sort of rushed it
2:05:23 and so it ended up being a lot shorter
2:05:24 and these have still been quite long so
2:05:26 i think on average it's been about a two
2:05:28 hour
2:05:29 um i think the first one was two hours
2:05:32 plus a half an hour q and a at the end
2:05:34 the third one was about two and a half
2:05:35 hours with a half an hour q a and this
2:05:37 one has been two hours and i'm going to
2:05:38 leave it with for another
2:05:39 half an hour q a um
2:05:42 let me turn off this split screen so you
2:05:46 can see me
2:05:48 uh let me close this screen
2:05:52 there we go um so yeah so let's move on
2:05:55 to the
2:05:56 the q a um i just want to ask obviously
2:05:58 thank you to everyone who's been with us
2:06:00 um let's see there's still 22 of you
2:06:02 alhamdulillah
2:06:04 uh so barack obama for powering through
2:06:08 this
2:06:09 absolutely lengthy lecture series with
2:06:11 me um
2:06:12 so feel free in the software you're
2:06:15 using you should have the ability to ask
2:06:16 questions
2:06:17 um so please do check them out welcome
2:06:20 salaam to everyone who's saying salaam
2:06:21 alaikum
2:06:22 um ask your questions and i'll try to go
2:06:24 through them uh as quickly as i can
2:06:27 for about half an hour so how long have
2:06:30 we been going now
2:06:31 we've been going for two hours and six
2:06:32 minutes when it gets to two hours and
2:06:34 thirty i'm gonna stop
2:06:36 um but bismillah so we've got one from
2:06:38 here from san bernardino
2:06:41 uh for the youth of wales i sent you an
2:06:43 email but you did have uh you may not
2:06:45 have had time to read it
2:06:46 please respond by elaborating on the
2:06:48 concept of values
2:06:50 undermining themselves yeah so it's
2:06:52 basically
2:06:54 when someone values something they see
2:06:56 that as important we
2:06:57 i do go over this quite in depth in the
2:06:59 first lecture um so when
2:07:00 that one is released i just recommend
2:07:02 watching that again but i'll go over it
2:07:04 quickly again
2:07:05 um a value undermining itself is
2:07:06 basically we hold something
2:07:08 important and in holding the particular
2:07:11 thing to be
2:07:12 important this thing itself
2:07:16 causes it either a chain effect or
2:07:18 directly
2:07:19 undermines itself and gives a motivation
2:07:22 to stop
2:07:23 valuing it or that the thing itself
2:07:27 makes it um or reveals
2:07:30 that this thing shouldn't be valued
2:07:33 inexperienced
2:07:34 not necessarily that it shouldn't be but
2:07:35 the person that holds this value
2:07:38 goes down a path that ends up kicking
2:07:41 its own feet from underneath it
2:07:42 so i gave a number of examples reason is
2:07:44 a really easy one
2:07:45 so if you hold reason as a higher value
2:07:49 the idea of this higher value
2:07:50 undermining itself would be the process
2:07:52 of
2:07:52 well the reason holds particular
2:07:56 ideas in within this concept and so
2:07:59 within that is the idea of a fallacy of
2:08:01 faulty reasoning
2:08:03 and one of these fallacies um
2:08:06 is is known as circular reasoning that
2:08:08 is or begging the question the thing
2:08:09 that you're arguing for
2:08:11 is presupposed um in the argument itself
2:08:17 or in the propositions leading to a
2:08:20 conclusion
2:08:21 so you have a number of proposition
2:08:22 argument is generally a minimum
2:08:25 one or two propositions so you have
2:08:26 proposition one proposition two
2:08:28 leading to a conclusion and so
2:08:32 if the conclusion is to be found in the
2:08:35 propositions
2:08:37 that are being used to justify the
2:08:39 conclusion this is called circular
2:08:40 reasoning it's called begging the
2:08:41 question
2:08:42 you're presupposing the thing you're
2:08:44 trying to get someone to believe
2:08:47 and then it leads to the the thing that
2:08:50 you hope to convince of but it's already
2:08:52 present in the conclusions
2:08:53 so when it comes to reason it's like why
2:08:55 do we value reason why should we value
2:08:58 reason or value logic and it's this
2:09:01 process of reasoning itself which
2:09:04 turns so you've got to turn reason upon
2:09:07 itself basically
2:09:08 and say well why do we just why is
2:09:11 reason a higher value
2:09:12 and the only way to really justify that
2:09:15 if reason is a higher value
2:09:16 is with a reasoned argument but the
2:09:18 problem is is that's presupposing
2:09:20 the reason is valuable in the first
2:09:22 place in order to justify
2:09:24 the reason is valuable so you've got
2:09:26 this fallacious process
2:09:28 and the only way you can really justify
2:09:31 reason
2:09:32 without falling into fallacious
2:09:34 reasoning is to appeal to something
2:09:36 beyond reason itself
2:09:37 so you're appealing to reason from an
2:09:39 intuitive sense
2:09:40 we intuitively have reason or you know
2:09:43 maybe try to make some sort of a priori
2:09:46 argument
2:09:47 um to sort of justify it
2:09:50 but you've still got these problems that
2:09:52 you're you're appealing to an argument
2:09:54 for the justification even if you're
2:09:56 appealing to
2:09:56 intuition so reason turns itself upon
2:09:59 itself and undermines itself
2:10:02 if it's held as a higher value or the
2:10:05 highest
2:10:05 value another option another example
2:10:08 of that was truth so truth for nietzsche
2:10:12 was seen
2:10:13 as being underpinned by morality and so
2:10:16 nietzsche said that
2:10:17 you know if you commit to truth
2:10:21 and you study the world as far as he was
2:10:23 concerned
2:10:24 um you know if you look at anthropology
2:10:26 if you look at the study of
2:10:27 the different moral systems across the
2:10:30 planet
2:10:31 that this leads to this sort of
2:10:32 descriptive moral relativism
2:10:34 um which ultimately then undermines
2:10:38 morality itself and if truth was a
2:10:42 moral value and truth gave rise
2:10:45 to the undervaluing of morality
2:10:50 then that knocks the pillar that held
2:10:53 truth up in the first place and
2:10:57 devalues truth but the whole process
2:11:00 itself of devaluing truth was begun
2:11:05 by the state of valuing truth in the
2:11:07 first place so that is what we mean by a
2:11:10 higher value in the mining itself i hope
2:11:12 that makes sense
2:11:13 um i know it could be a bit convoluted
2:11:15 sometimes you just need to sort of
2:11:16 re-listen to these things
2:11:17 um lecture three is going to be uploaded
2:11:19 as well
2:11:20 um so just keep an eye on them i'll get
2:11:23 on hamza to try to upload them
2:11:24 as soon as possible and obviously the
2:11:27 the answers that i'm giving to these
2:11:28 questions should be present
2:11:30 at the end of that lecture as well um so
2:11:34 you ask another question you gave the
2:11:35 example of nietzsche taking talking
2:11:36 about truth under mind and morality but
2:11:38 i'm confused as to
2:11:39 what this actually means yeah so i'm
2:11:42 hoping that
2:11:42 there should have explained it so for
2:11:45 nietzsche
2:11:46 nietzsche was looking at the world so he
2:11:49 was looking at all these different moral
2:11:50 systems and he's saying here that truth
2:11:53 undermines morality because there are so
2:11:56 many moral systems
2:11:57 so he's taking this route through moral
2:11:59 relativism or descriptive moral
2:12:01 relativism he's saying there's all these
2:12:02 moral systems
2:12:04 how can any of them be true there are
2:12:05 answers to this it's not necessarily
2:12:07 a necessary conclusion um you don't need
2:12:10 to move
2:12:10 from there to moral nihilism some people
2:12:12 move from there to
2:12:14 um meta-ethical moral relativism so
2:12:16 they're still holding this sort of moral
2:12:18 realist position and claim
2:12:21 that there are still moral facts about
2:12:23 the world but just relative to context
2:12:25 they're relative to the society
2:12:27 um so that's another position or you can
2:12:30 simply say that you know
2:12:32 from the islamic perspective we would
2:12:33 look at this and say well no everyone
2:12:35 started on one particular moral system
2:12:37 or they
2:12:38 everyone was on uh that one particular
2:12:41 religion
2:12:42 the one that was given to adam
2:12:43 alaihissalam and then as the
2:12:45 the people grew and developed and
2:12:46 different communities sprouted and went
2:12:49 onwards
2:12:50 they developed these moral systems
2:12:51 creatively
2:12:53 and it gave rise to adaptions
2:12:56 and you end up with these very different
2:12:59 moral systems
2:13:00 and all of them which have a common
2:13:03 theme
2:13:04 um you know for example they all have
2:13:06 this sense of supernatural earth
2:13:08 life after death of the soul and things
2:13:10 like that um and these all carry with
2:13:12 them a sense and
2:13:13 notion of justice which is in relation
2:13:16 to an afterlife within relation to an
2:13:18 eternal
2:13:18 judgment um that you know that's how we
2:13:22 would approach it
2:13:23 uh but fenicia he didn't see it as that
2:13:26 like he he
2:13:27 he was sort of suffering from this idea
2:13:29 that truth itself was
2:13:30 sort of difficult to attain and he was
2:13:32 just looking at what
2:13:33 was the case with regards to all of
2:13:35 these moral systems
2:13:37 and ended up taking a sort of
2:13:40 epistemologically nihilistic
2:13:43 approach to some degree although not
2:13:45 completely he's not
2:13:46 he's a bit of a weird one i'd say he's a
2:13:48 wild card
2:13:50 um but he he was basically saying that
2:13:53 truth undermines morality
2:13:55 truth was underpinned by morality so
2:13:57 insofar as he
2:13:58 is it undermines morality itself
2:14:01 undermines truth
2:14:02 so truth undermines itself um that's all
2:14:05 that means
2:14:06 uh please can you direct me to the
2:14:10 recordings so yeah like i say they've
2:14:11 not been uploaded yet but they will be
2:14:12 uploaded
2:14:13 to the website savings institute.org and
2:14:16 to the youtube channel so just keep your
2:14:17 eye out for them
2:14:18 and they should be available soon
2:14:20 inshallah um so we have a another
2:14:22 question here
2:14:26 yes here we go so doesn't islam also
2:14:28 kind of promote
2:14:29 nihilism uh that this life is
2:14:32 meaningless
2:14:32 in comparison to the next i mean every
2:14:36 major religion has
2:14:37 had groups which have taken a nihilistic
2:14:39 attitude um
2:14:40 yeah but you missed a part of that
2:14:42 sentence you said
2:14:44 um doesn't islam also kind of promote
2:14:46 nihilism that this life is meaningless
2:14:48 in comparison to the next yes um
2:14:52 but it's not just meaningless in
2:14:54 comparison to the next
2:14:55 they are connected they're not there's
2:14:57 not this chasm between them
2:14:58 um the the connection is in terms of
2:15:02 how you act in this world and in so far
2:15:05 as things are done in the name of god
2:15:07 if you act in this world and live in a
2:15:10 way
2:15:11 obedient to god into his commands then
2:15:14 life
2:15:15 becomes meaningful but without that
2:15:18 concept
2:15:19 life becomes nihilistic so we would
2:15:21 agree with regards to that
2:15:23 but we don't believe that life is
2:15:26 without meaning
2:15:27 we don't believe that life is without
2:15:28 purpose allah says in the quran
2:15:30 do you think we made you ingest we made
2:15:33 you with purpose to worship
2:15:35 allah and so
2:15:38 it's it's you know if you're looking at
2:15:39 the quran and you're looking at the
2:15:41 islamic position
2:15:42 it is quite objectively the case i say
2:15:45 quote-unquote because
2:15:47 for those of you who are familiar with
2:15:48 me um i'm not too fond of the
2:15:50 distinction it's absolutely the case
2:15:52 it's probably a better way of putting it
2:15:54 um it is absolutely the case that from
2:15:56 the islamic
2:15:58 paradigm that life is meaningful
2:16:01 um we agree with the nihilists that we
2:16:05 say well if there is no god
2:16:07 then life is nihilism um and the the
2:16:10 distinction here is
2:16:12 with that um condition
2:16:15 without god or lived
2:16:18 without god in mind or lived without
2:16:22 um the intention to please allah
2:16:25 life is meaningless but we
2:16:29 differ here from the nihilist uh and
2:16:32 that we
2:16:33 believe god is noble we believe god
2:16:36 exists
2:16:37 and we have you know a genuine
2:16:40 sincerity in that belief and we
2:16:43 therefore
2:16:44 do not experience nihilism in that sense
2:16:47 um insofar as we recognize that
2:16:49 there obviously if you see nihilism as a
2:16:51 sickness like i've been explaining it
2:16:54 even if someone does um end up
2:16:57 experiencing nihilism while being a
2:16:59 theist it's not the consequence
2:17:00 of the religion because the religion
2:17:03 absolutely negates it you know it says
2:17:06 no you have been created with purpose
2:17:08 um it's a consequence of particular
2:17:11 conditions that is
2:17:13 you're overwhelmed by information you
2:17:16 don't really know how to deal with
2:17:17 things you're not really being
2:17:18 provided with the right tools to be able
2:17:21 to overcome these problems
2:17:22 um you'll be that from neglect of the
2:17:24 community not really upholding their
2:17:27 um their obligations for the for the
2:17:30 community itself
2:17:31 um or anything kind of thing like that
2:17:33 but yeah so
2:17:34 there is an analystic element but it's a
2:17:36 conditional one
2:17:37 and we negate the condition which
2:17:39 necessitates nihilism
2:17:41 and we call people away from it so we
2:17:43 say no no if you're
2:17:45 if you don't believe in god and if
2:17:46 you're not worshiping him
2:17:48 you're if you're worshiping false idols
2:17:50 be that um
2:17:52 other gods uh you know a polytheistic
2:17:54 notion of it
2:17:56 um or of men or of your own desires as
2:17:59 allah says on the ground they they take
2:18:00 their own desires as gods
2:18:02 um you know insult pharaohs are doing
2:18:04 that they're living a nihilistic life
2:18:06 because ultimately everything they do is
2:18:08 for nothing everything they do is
2:18:10 is just going to kind of end terribly
2:18:14 for them
2:18:14 in survivors they repent from that they
2:18:16 turn around
2:18:17 and they um they they focus solely on
2:18:20 god and submit to him
2:18:22 then at that point everything is
2:18:24 transformed
2:18:25 and everything becomes meaningful
2:18:26 because it's fulfilling the function the
2:18:28 purpose that it was made
2:18:30 to fulfill uh
2:18:34 what is logic according to islam
2:18:38 [Music]
2:18:39 when you say according to islam
2:18:45 it depends what you mean so we could say
2:18:50 that allah has created the world
2:18:53 so that it is knowable
2:18:57 like that we can engage with it and
2:18:58 we've been given faculties
2:19:00 so that we can engage with it and we can
2:19:02 understand it
2:19:04 logic is basically just the um the
2:19:07 necessary
2:19:08 connections between statements
2:19:11 so a statement is logical insofar as
2:19:14 there is a
2:19:15 flow and a connection from one premise
2:19:17 to the next
2:19:19 which necessarily leads to a
2:19:22 sound conclusion that is oh
2:19:25 sorry a sound argument so the conclusion
2:19:28 is true in so far as the
2:19:32 um premises are true
2:19:36 and that the argument is valid and the
2:19:38 the an argument is valid
2:19:40 in so far as there is this necessary
2:19:43 connection so if
2:19:44 um if a then b a therefore b
2:19:48 this would be considered logic logic is
2:19:51 just a description of
2:19:52 um the relation between statements um
2:19:55 it's not necessarily just like an
2:19:57 islamic
2:20:00 approach there but that's a descriptive
2:20:03 one
2:20:04 um if we're talking about
2:20:07 the rational faculties um we're talking
2:20:10 about our faculty which has been
2:20:11 instilled in us
2:20:12 for us to be able to engage with the
2:20:14 world and to come to truth
2:20:16 through that process um but it's one
2:20:19 that we've been given
2:20:20 specifically in order to achieve a
2:20:22 certain task um
2:20:24 and obviously with that in mind we're
2:20:25 understanding the fundamental
2:20:28 um being is god
2:20:32 he creates the world and he's created it
2:20:34 with purpose and function in mind
2:20:36 um and so logic works insofar as it sort
2:20:40 of facilitates that goal
2:20:42 um in achieving truth in achieving uh
2:20:45 a recognition of our purpose
2:20:48 in life um
2:20:53 good question uh i'll probably have to
2:20:55 think about it
2:20:57 and maybe even it might be a good
2:21:00 title for an essay what is logic
2:21:03 [Music]
2:21:09 could you share the link to the previous
2:21:11 recordings i've joined it yeah so like i
2:21:12 said
2:21:13 um they are available they're just they
2:21:15 need to be uploaded
2:21:16 uh and when they are uploaded they will
2:21:18 be present on the savings institute
2:21:20 website so just keep an eye on there
2:21:21 go on to the savings institute um
2:21:25 youtube channel subscribe click the bell
2:21:27 and turn on all notifications
2:21:29 and when it is uploaded on the youtube
2:21:31 channel you'll be notified um otherwise
2:21:33 just keep an eye
2:21:34 on the channel or on the website savings
2:21:36 institute.org
2:21:37 it will be present on there at some
2:21:39 point
2:21:41 we've got 10 minutes left
2:21:44 to those of you who use it
2:21:49 true trump is an anarchist what were the
2:21:52 three books you mentioned
2:21:54 at the start um
2:21:57 you'll have to remind me which three
2:22:00 books
2:22:02 at the start of what the start of this
2:22:03 lecture or the start
2:22:05 lecture one um
2:22:09 so i don't recall which ones you're
2:22:11 referring to
2:22:12 um so we've got another comment here
2:22:15 from brother stephen uh we love you
2:22:18 yusuf
2:22:18 we love you too bro i love the link
2:22:21 between epistemological nihilism and
2:22:22 agnosticism
2:22:24 cosmological nihilism and the atheism
2:22:27 uh could you elaborate on the other
2:22:28 types of nihilism
2:22:30 and the typically actualized worldview
2:22:36 um
2:22:39 so in terms of elaborating
2:22:43 i've already gone into quite a lot of
2:22:45 detail on those particular things
2:22:47 and to elaborate especially with me only
2:22:50 having really eight
2:22:52 well seven minutes left i'm not sure i
2:22:54 can
2:22:55 go into it in much more detail that
2:22:57 would maybe
2:22:58 draw much more out at the moment um
2:23:02 if you want brother steve we can talk
2:23:04 privately
2:23:05 um because you've got me on whatsapp so
2:23:07 just send me a message and we can have a
2:23:09 chat
2:23:10 if you want to go into it um but in
2:23:12 terms of like
2:23:13 elaborating on the other types of
2:23:15 nihilism so you've mentioned here
2:23:17 epistemological and cosmological so the
2:23:19 other two were
2:23:21 moral nihilism and existential
2:23:25 and like i say i think i've already
2:23:27 really gone into them quite a lot so i
2:23:28 don't want to
2:23:30 go into it too much more um and this is
2:23:33 a more specific
2:23:34 question you've got with regards to
2:23:37 moral nihilism
2:23:39 or um existential nihilism
2:23:42 because that was a very general question
2:23:44 um so
2:23:46 if you could make it a bit more specific
2:23:47 than inshallah and i'm gonna go for it
2:23:49 um i've got another question here salaam
2:23:51 yusuf walaikum i
2:23:53 read that generation z
2:23:56 is the nihilistic generation do you
2:23:58 think that this is
2:23:59 fair label because nihilism is not a new
2:24:02 phenomena always been around
2:24:04 um i i would say every generation is
2:24:07 going to be more nihilistic
2:24:10 um if trends are going the way they are
2:24:12 that's
2:24:13 quite again anecdotal um
2:24:16 you know what research how would you
2:24:18 even research that exactly
2:24:20 um maybe you could make a relation to
2:24:22 the increase of
2:24:24 techno escapism or techno hypnosis
2:24:27 you know the more dependent people
2:24:30 become on escaping the world or escaping
2:24:33 existence into fantasy
2:24:34 like gaming and things like that i guess
2:24:37 if you're looking at the coming
2:24:40 generations as being more prone to these
2:24:41 kind of things
2:24:42 maybe you can make the argument here
2:24:43 that they're seeing life as
2:24:46 being pretty crappy so they have to
2:24:47 escape in this fantasy
2:24:49 and the conditions are allowing that um
2:24:52 you know
2:24:52 so they've got their basic needs being
2:24:53 supplied for
2:24:55 poverty is decreasing in you know the
2:24:57 western world in particular
2:24:59 um to the point where it facilitates
2:25:02 this escapism and so it sort of
2:25:04 creates this nasty feedback loop and
2:25:06 allows um that nihilistic phenomena to
2:25:09 sort of
2:25:10 develop more readily in the younger
2:25:12 generation
2:25:14 um whether that is the case
2:25:18 is is i guess if you want to argue
2:25:20 absolutely you need to do some sort of
2:25:22 research
2:25:22 um i guess this is the job for the
2:25:25 sociologists
2:25:27 uh the psychologists to really sort of
2:25:29 dig into
2:25:30 um you know if you've got a basic
2:25:32 understanding of what nihilism is
2:25:34 um with these four particular concepts
2:25:36 we've gone through today um
2:25:38 it's not going to be impossible for
2:25:40 people to start engaging in studies and
2:25:42 to
2:25:43 try to get to the best sex money or as
2:25:46 close to obviously
2:25:47 if you're sort of giving these
2:25:49 principles or if you're holding them you
2:25:51 might not say you're going to be
2:25:52 motivated to go on this task
2:25:54 um but in so far as you think knowledge
2:25:56 is possible
2:25:57 um and that it's not a hopeless endeavor
2:26:00 like myself for example i don't think it
2:26:02 is impossible and i think we can
2:26:04 um progress and develop with recourse
2:26:06 the best
2:26:07 explanations um and i think this is
2:26:11 in in the self-motivation so that there
2:26:13 should be
2:26:14 increased studies and that's i guess the
2:26:16 purpose of this set of lectures as well
2:26:18 in my essays is to motivate people to
2:26:19 look into it more
2:26:21 um and to engage in studies and try to
2:26:23 decide or
2:26:24 see if we can collect a bit of data to
2:26:26 see how many people sort of fall into
2:26:27 any of these particular nihilistic
2:26:29 categories
2:26:30 um i think that would be incredibly
2:26:33 interesting and it would help my
2:26:35 research a lot as well um what is the
2:26:38 logic according to islam and how is it
2:26:40 taught
2:26:40 as compared to atheists definition of
2:26:42 logic um
2:26:44 it's not really made distinct so if you
2:26:46 know the ulama they would often be
2:26:48 taught aristotelian logic
2:26:49 um so basically it's under something
2:26:51 that there are particular
2:26:53 set of logical laws um
2:26:56 that must be abided by when talking
2:26:59 about
2:26:59 or making statements or arguments um
2:27:03 so you put an argument forward um and it
2:27:06 must follow
2:27:07 a logical consistency it must be valid
2:27:10 that is there must be necessary
2:27:11 connection between each
2:27:12 statement um for example if i say
2:27:16 um socrates is a mortal
2:27:20 or mor sorry socrates is a human all
2:27:23 humans are mortal
2:27:24 therefore socrates is a
2:27:28 mortal you've made a necessary
2:27:30 connection between the two premises
2:27:32 so you're saying um all a's
2:27:35 are b's uh so all
2:27:38 yeah all a's are b's um
2:27:41 [Music]
2:27:43 a is a b sorry all a's are b's
2:27:46 socrates is an a therefore socrates is a
2:27:49 b
2:27:50 and the so there's there is this
2:27:53 connection and you can see the
2:27:54 connection when you break it down
2:27:56 and you sort of turn it into algebra or
2:27:58 you replace the statements into a
2:28:00 generic term
2:28:01 or symbol um you can see how the
2:28:03 premises connect and how they link
2:28:05 necessarily to the conclusion
2:28:07 um there's not necessarily a difference
2:28:10 between the two
2:28:11 in terms of how it's practiced in terms
2:28:14 of the explanation for its origins
2:28:16 that's maybe where we would differ
2:28:18 but the the explanation for its origins
2:28:21 doesn't necessarily
2:28:25 differ in terms of how we use it
2:28:26 practically um but it might
2:28:29 affect the consequences of it so when we
2:28:31 were talking for example about
2:28:32 epistemological nihilism
2:28:34 and how logic itself might be seen as
2:28:36 something that develops with the human
2:28:37 being
2:28:38 and that might undermine logic like uh
2:28:40 edmund hussell was saying in that quote
2:28:42 that i gave you
2:28:43 um and in that case it would have a
2:28:46 consequence but its
2:28:47 practice would remain the same as it's
2:28:49 used in the the islamic paradigm
2:28:51 that is we're looking at statements and
2:28:53 we're saying that certain things
2:28:57 suggest certain things you know that
2:28:58 this connection makes the argument valid
2:29:01 and insofar as it's valid if it is valid
2:29:04 if the premises can be shown to be true
2:29:06 in a valid argument the conclusion isn't
2:29:08 necessarily true
2:29:10 um you know it's just the the process of
2:29:12 engaging and looking at argumentation
2:29:14 and trying to discover truth through
2:29:16 that
2:29:17 um wouldn't really differ again it's
2:29:19 it's literally just in terms of the
2:29:20 origin story
2:29:22 and in terms of how we understand the
2:29:23 origins that can affect
2:29:26 how we understand how we should approach
2:29:29 or deal with it or whether it's
2:29:30 something we can say um it affects our
2:29:32 epistemology
2:29:34 so what degree we can say we can achieve
2:29:35 knowledge if logic itself becomes
2:29:37 undermined
2:29:39 um then that also means that it
2:29:41 undermines our
2:29:43 use of it as a tool to achieve knowledge
2:29:45 or truth
2:29:46 um half of the time atheists neglect
2:29:50 it we don't really talk about this
2:29:52 problem too much
2:29:53 you got to kind of force them into that
2:29:55 conversation
2:29:56 um and then even then it's like it just
2:30:00 you know pulled the mystery card and
2:30:02 it's not like we don't have a lot of um
2:30:05 so when we're making a recourse to god
2:30:08 for this faculty being god given we're
2:30:11 not explaining the whole process of how
2:30:13 it was created or anything like this
2:30:14 there's a certain gaps in our knowledge
2:30:15 in terms of
2:30:16 um how we use it and certain leaps of
2:30:19 faith here as well
2:30:21 in both spheres the atheist is making me
2:30:23 to face
2:30:24 faith uh the theist is making leaps for
2:30:27 faith
2:30:28 um and if you want to look again
2:30:30 arguments as to why leaps of faith are
2:30:32 necessary and not
2:30:33 this dirty word or not this bad thing um
2:30:36 read my dissertation part two i go into
2:30:38 that
2:30:39 um these four catalysts have a look at
2:30:42 how much time i've got
2:30:44 right so it's two hours 30 minutes i'll
2:30:45 read this last question
2:30:47 uh and then i'll have to go um
2:30:51 i'll tell you what if if if you all
2:30:53 promised not to ask any more questions
2:30:55 so that i can see here
2:30:56 the last one was asked by riad odin um
2:31:00 so don't ask any more questions once i
2:31:01 get to this one i'll finish there
2:31:04 um insha'allah so po with me uh
2:31:08 so we've got here uh these four
2:31:11 categories of nihilism
2:31:12 can it be the case that a person starts
2:31:15 experiencing epistemological nihilism
2:31:16 and then progresses
2:31:18 to existential or can it start from any
2:31:20 of the four
2:31:21 um yeah good question
2:31:27 i hmm it could because the thing is is
2:31:29 these four categories that i'm giving
2:31:31 you
2:31:32 these aren't the start so i'm giving you
2:31:34 these as consequences
2:31:36 um now if someone's not necessarily
2:31:38 suffering from nihilism and they start
2:31:40 to engage in this um
2:31:43 you know it's it's gonna be the the
2:31:47 these again are the consequences these
2:31:49 are the effects
2:31:50 the causes we were mentioning at the
2:31:52 beginning
2:31:53 um in lecture two uh so the causes are
2:31:56 more likely to be the fact that this
2:31:58 person is becoming overwhelmed
2:31:59 um this person is beginning from like a
2:32:02 state of pessimism
2:32:03 um or in the process of going through it
2:32:06 they get overwhelmed and become
2:32:07 pessimistic
2:32:08 um and there's so much you know they're
2:32:10 experiencing problems and to do with
2:32:12 alienation um
2:32:15 uh what was the other ones so yeah it's
2:32:18 so
2:32:18 you've got to make the distinction
2:32:19 between the four categories that we've
2:32:20 gone through today
2:32:21 these are causes these uh effects uh
2:32:24 sorry
2:32:25 these are effects these are things that
2:32:26 are following from
2:32:28 uh being a nihilist or being like
2:32:30 evaluating the world as a nihilist
2:32:33 um it's it's already sort of presupposed
2:32:35 in the evaluation
2:32:38 um it's it's not a necessary outcome
2:32:41 um only in software is people are sort
2:32:43 of
2:32:45 dealing with a certain state of or frame
2:32:47 of mind
2:32:48 um but yeah i guess if you're just if
2:32:51 you're not really
2:32:52 beginning from this position so you're
2:32:54 not experiencing as a poison
2:32:55 so you i get or a sickness and you're
2:32:57 just you're fine you start engaging in
2:33:00 this
2:33:01 you could start your studies at any one
2:33:03 of them
2:33:04 you could start looking into
2:33:05 epistemological nihilism
2:33:07 um and become convinced of
2:33:11 particular arguments being put forward
2:33:12 there and that have a knock-on effect
2:33:15 leading to the other four
2:33:16 i don't see how if you're not an
2:33:18 epistemological nihilist or if you're
2:33:19 not a moral nihilist
2:33:22 um how you could go into this reading
2:33:24 about existential nihilism
2:33:26 and then becoming the others um unless
2:33:30 it just kind of motivates you or raised
2:33:32 an interest to look into the others and
2:33:33 then it led back
2:33:35 so you so if you for example you start
2:33:36 reading about existential nihilism
2:33:38 you're not necessarily going to become
2:33:39 one at the end of that but existential
2:33:41 nihilism may motivate you to go and
2:33:43 study
2:33:44 uh epistemological nihilism and then
2:33:46 when you study that you might start to
2:33:48 become you know suffer from these
2:33:49 problems of being
2:33:50 uh being overwhelmed so i get there can
2:33:53 be this sort of feedback loop between
2:33:54 these two
2:33:55 areas so you know you're living in a
2:33:57 world where
2:33:58 nihilism has already taken effect and
2:34:00 there are the causes of nihilism are
2:34:01 present around you
2:34:02 and so insofar as you're engaging with
2:34:04 these causes you can be coming to get
2:34:06 affected as well um
2:34:10 and it's contagious in this sense i
2:34:12 guess
2:34:13 um yeah but it's interesting good
2:34:16 question
2:34:18 uh where are we to access
2:34:21 those podcasts that brother mentioned um
2:34:25 on youtube so thought adventure podcast
2:34:27 if you go to google
2:34:29 or go to story youtube and search
2:34:31 thoughts adventure podcast
2:34:33 um they will show up and they should now
2:34:36 as well be on all major
2:34:37 podcast platforms um so if you are on
2:34:40 apple podcast and you search thought
2:34:42 adventure podcast
2:34:43 it should come up um or if you search
2:34:47 anything in general under sorry if you
2:34:50 search on
2:34:50 google podcasts apple podcast spotify
2:34:54 they should all be present there and
2:34:55 we're discussing a lot of these
2:34:56 questions to do with arguments for the
2:34:58 existence of god
2:34:59 uh whether the trinity is rational
2:35:03 and the problems of consciousness was a
2:35:04 really good one with brother hamza
2:35:06 he was present on that uh podcast it was
2:35:09 a really good one
2:35:10 so
2:35:16 uh please are those who believe in
2:35:19 nihilism considered as
2:35:20 kuffars yeah if you believe in nihilism
2:35:24 um then you would be a disbeliever if
2:35:26 you believe that the world is without
2:35:27 purpose
2:35:28 you're negating the words of allah in
2:35:29 the quran um
2:35:31 and you know you might necessarily be
2:35:33 aware of it so this person
2:35:35 you've got to keep in mind there are
2:35:36 different kinds of disbelief
2:35:38 so those who disbelieve actively
2:35:41 um so they you know they are
2:35:43 knowledgeable they are aware
2:35:45 of the commands of allah they are aware
2:35:47 of his book of his teachings of his
2:35:48 messengers
2:35:49 and they reject them that's one kind of
2:35:51 disbeliever so the the polytheists for
2:35:53 example
2:35:54 and the quraish they would fall under
2:35:55 that particular category and then there
2:35:57 are people
2:35:58 that are not more khalif um who have not
2:36:00 had the reaching of divine teaching
2:36:02 they're not aware of the book they're
2:36:03 not aware of the messenger they're not
2:36:04 aware of the message
2:36:05 but they may still hold on to a notion
2:36:08 of nihilism
2:36:09 they would be dif disbelievers by
2:36:11 definition but they wouldn't be the same
2:36:13 kind of disbeliever as say the quraish
2:36:15 or those who study and reject the
2:36:18 message
2:36:19 um that there would be a distinction
2:36:20 between these um and that distinction
2:36:22 would be the quality of being more
2:36:24 khalif
2:36:25 which is to have met the conditions
2:36:29 to be um the responsible person or the
2:36:33 legally responsible person
2:36:34 that is you're an adult um you are
2:36:38 capable of reasoning
2:36:39 so you're not suffering from sort of any
2:36:40 mental deficiencies
2:36:42 uh you're sane and you've had the
2:36:44 reaching of divine
2:36:46 teachings that have been unpolluted so
2:36:48 that you've you've been given the
2:36:49 message
2:36:50 um in its true form you've not been lied
2:36:54 so for example
2:36:55 um if all you heard about islam
2:36:59 was what you were given from tommy
2:37:00 robinson um
2:37:02 and everyone around you is convincing
2:37:04 you that tommy robinson
2:37:06 um knows his stuff he's you know he's
2:37:09 you know
2:37:10 might as well be a chef because he
2:37:12 studied it that much you know
2:37:13 this kind of nonsense um if
2:37:17 that's all you've gotten your
2:37:18 information from and you're not even
2:37:19 really familiar with what kind of person
2:37:20 he is you're not really familiar
2:37:22 um with him being a bad person but
2:37:25 you're still young and maybe inshallah
2:37:27 hopefully in the future uh that person
2:37:30 will discover that this person
2:37:32 is uh a horrible person
2:37:35 um and that he's spends a lot of his
2:37:38 time lying
2:37:39 and uh you know you've seen the recent
2:37:41 revelations as well with some of his ex
2:37:43 employees um he manipulates and
2:37:46 lies with his recordings and mixes it up
2:37:49 in editing to make it look like
2:37:50 something happened that didn't happen
2:37:52 you know once these kind of things have
2:37:54 become
2:37:57 revealed to that person that should
2:37:58 motivate them to question the things
2:38:00 that they've been saying
2:38:01 about particular groups of people for
2:38:02 example the muslims
2:38:04 and then they should look into it but
2:38:06 you don't know what point in their life
2:38:08 that's going to happen
2:38:09 so they you can't say anything about
2:38:11 their destiny you can't say whether or
2:38:12 not they're going to end up in hell
2:38:15 because you don't know what sort of
2:38:17 process they're going to go through
2:38:19 so that person is a distinct kind of
2:38:22 person we say they are disbeliever
2:38:24 but they're not mcallif because they've
2:38:25 not had the reaching of divine teaching
2:38:27 um
2:38:28 and so you've got to keep that in mind
2:38:29 you know when it comes to referring to
2:38:31 people of course there's different
2:38:32 levels of
2:38:34 different kinds um
2:38:35 [Music]
2:38:37 it was about value at the start of
2:38:40 lecture
2:38:41 at this the start of this lecture or
2:38:45 all of the lectures
2:38:48 let me have a look
2:38:54 volume
2:39:04 i don't know so at the beginning of this
2:39:05 lecture i mentioned
2:39:07 um on truth and lying in a non-moral
2:39:10 sense by friday nietzsche
2:39:11 edmund hussell the idea of phenomenology
2:39:15 um
2:39:20 the only of the things i mentioned was
2:39:22 my own work um
2:39:24 so i did a dissertation which you can
2:39:26 find on my website
2:39:28 um at ponderingsoul.com or if you search
2:39:31 yusuf ponder's nihilism dissertation
2:39:33 they should come up
2:39:35 and also the lecture that i posted on
2:39:36 nihilism with um
2:39:38 i'm just gonna turn these lights
2:39:41 um yeah so i did another essay on
2:39:43 nihilism
2:39:45 distinct from my dissertation taking a
2:39:47 different path
2:39:48 on the subject um which has been
2:39:49 published on sapience institute.org
2:39:54 but other than that the
2:39:59 wilson power thomas kuhn
2:40:03 the structure of scientific revolution
2:40:07 those are the only things i mentioned at
2:40:08 the beginning i can't remember anything
2:40:09 else
2:40:11 um with regards to that and
2:40:14 last question is salaam
2:40:15 [Music]
2:40:18 salaam so based on your answer about
2:40:20 logic doesn't logic
2:40:22 then become subjective according to an
2:40:24 atheist
2:40:25 so the the problem here is you can't say
2:40:28 that
2:40:28 according to an atheist because it
2:40:30 depends on the atheist
2:40:32 atheism there could be an atheist proper
2:40:35 so that's a positive atheist who says he
2:40:37 knows the god doesn't exist that could
2:40:38 be an agnostic
2:40:39 someone who's just i don't know yet and
2:40:42 even agnostic
2:40:43 atheists can break up into separate
2:40:45 categories so it could be
2:40:46 strong agnostic and that he could posit
2:40:49 that it's not possible to know
2:40:51 whether or not god exists he could be a
2:40:52 soft agnostic
2:40:54 in the sense that he says or she says um
2:40:58 you might be able to know but i don't
2:41:00 know
2:41:01 i've not achieved knowledge on that
2:41:03 subject yet
2:41:04 um it might very well be the case that i
2:41:06 can achieve the knowledge if i
2:41:08 was to look into it but i haven't so
2:41:11 there's
2:41:11 you know there's all these different
2:41:12 layers um
2:41:15 and simply hearing someone has said that
2:41:17 they are an atheist
2:41:18 isn't enough for you to say ah well
2:41:22 this is what you think about logic they
2:41:24 don't know half the time it's you know
2:41:25 logic for the most
2:41:27 part it's just something um apriori
2:41:30 it's embedded uh in the way we deal with
2:41:34 the world
2:41:34 it's embedded in how we interact and
2:41:36 approach um it's sort of
2:41:38 innate in us we deal with the world as
2:41:41 though logic is
2:41:42 um a part of our structure um
2:41:46 [Music]
2:41:48 but but it's not that it becomes
2:41:51 necessarily subjective again it depends
2:41:52 on the person there's a lot of nuance
2:41:54 and you'd have to speak to them
2:41:55 as individuals and get to know what they
2:41:57 know or what get to know what they
2:42:00 believe and then at that point if they
2:42:02 start getting to certain points where
2:42:03 it's like well logic is
2:42:06 meaningless it's just you know dependent
2:42:09 on societies and on particular groups of
2:42:11 peoples and blah blah blah
2:42:13 um then you can start saying well you've
2:42:15 made a logic here sound quite subjective
2:42:18 um but there's not many people that are
2:42:20 going to halt in that position
2:42:24 so yeah that would be an answer to that
2:42:26 then becomes subjective according to an
2:42:28 atheist
2:42:29 so yeah you can't make that claim it's
2:42:30 not according to the atheist
2:42:32 position because the atheist position is
2:42:34 quite varied it's quite chaotic it's
2:42:36 hard to
2:42:36 pin down exactly um
2:42:40 it's fluid yeah because as long as it
2:42:42 serves the purpose of
2:42:44 everything is created by god and for a
2:42:47 purpose
2:42:47 then something divine does logical
2:42:50 it's not isolatable yeah
2:42:54 so just keep that in mind what i've said
2:42:55 there um
2:42:58 it can be for particular kinds of
2:43:00 atheists so the ones who
2:43:02 hold on to this notion for example that
2:43:05 materialist reductionism everything can
2:43:08 be reduced to the material world to just
2:43:09 atoms bouncing off each other
2:43:11 logic is just a human peculiarity in
2:43:13 this case that develops with the
2:43:14 evolution of the human being
2:43:16 um and then if that's the case it's like
2:43:19 one group like what is a logic it's it's
2:43:22 a whole
2:43:24 field of study um but we could go
2:43:27 throughout
2:43:27 this
2:43:31 yeah i'm a bit over um but it's an
2:43:34 interesting question
2:43:35 just keep in mind there's a nuance to it
2:43:36 so don't just make these blankets names
2:43:38 with that
2:43:39 but yeah uh yusuf
2:43:43 uh great lecture mail i reward you
2:43:46 uh for sharing your insights okay thanks
2:43:48 yeah
2:43:49 thank you very much to all of you who
2:43:52 have attended there's still 13 of you
2:43:54 here
2:43:55 um so barack obama to all of you who
2:43:58 have managed to
2:43:59 push on for nearly three hours and uh
2:44:02 sorry the q a went over a little bit i
2:44:04 just wanted to try and get to the bottom
2:44:05 because i know i
2:44:06 i've not been able to do that for the
2:44:08 other ones as well um
2:44:10 but yeah i i hope that this is cogent
2:44:13 that you're understanding
2:44:14 where we're going with this um we'll
2:44:16 continue this next week
2:44:18 um on monday at 8 00 p.m again
2:44:21 insha'allah
2:44:23 and so i look forward to doing that one
2:44:24 and i look forward to concluding this
2:44:26 series with you and be sure to give
2:44:28 feedback as well if you're enjoying it
2:44:30 or not enjoying it send emails to
2:44:32 sapiens institutes if you go on there
2:44:35 there's a contact page and so you can
2:44:37 give them feedback on this lecture
2:44:38 series whether you found it beneficial
2:44:40 or not
2:44:40 either way constructive feedback will be
2:44:43 appreciated
2:44:44 so even if you didn't like it don't hold
2:44:46 back and don't be afraid to kind of give
2:44:48 that feedback if you think it's
2:44:49 necessary
2:44:50 um not just even giving um ways you
2:44:53 think that it may be improved
2:44:55 things you think i could have left out
2:44:56 things that maybe didn't explain too
2:44:58 well
2:44:58 anything at all um be that good or bad
2:45:01 please do
2:45:02 give us your feedback um if you do it
2:45:04 for the savings institute
2:45:05 email um obviously that will go through
2:45:07 hamza then he can get a good
2:45:10 idea of how well i'm doing or how bad
2:45:12 i'm doing um
2:45:15 and that obviously will help sort of any
2:45:18 progress with my relationship with them
2:45:20 inshallah though i do hope you've
2:45:21 enjoyed it i do hope it has been
2:45:23 beneficial
2:45:24 and that you are taking something away
2:45:26 from this and that you are learning um
2:45:28 but other than that we shall leave that
2:45:29 for today um
2:45:40 well
2:45:43 you