How do you know that Islam is not false?
Question:
I want to know, when everyone knows that Islam is not the word of God (which is so absolutely clear that even I can easily prove, if failed will not just accept Islam but will force whole world to follow it) why don't you Muslims stop following it?
And if I proved Islam is not the word of God will you stop following it?
Answer:
There are three logically or factually false statements in your question. I explain these and then will provide an answer:
1. Islam is the name of a religion. It is not the word of God. Therefore to prove that Islam is or is not the word of God does not have any meanings.
2. You are basically asking why Muslims do not stop following Islam when all non-Muslims know that it is not the truth. This is for the same reason that all people who do not have the same view as you, think that you are wrong while you and people who have the same view as you, think that your view is correct.
For any ideology there are people who do not believe in it. If we consider this to be the sign that the ideology is false then no ideology will be true and all ideologies will be false. This itself is a logical contradiction because an ideology and its anti-ideology cannot both be false.
3. You wrote if you failed to prove Islam is false then you will force people to Islam. This is against Islam itself as it is clearly mentioned in the Qur'an (2:256) that there is no compulsion in religion. So if you at any time in future understand Islam and truly believe in it you will never try to force people to Islam.
Now to answer your question (which I correct from "if I proved Islam is not the word of God will you stop following it?" to "if I proved Islam is false will you stop following it?":
I can of course ask your reasons and try to challenge them but this will only be of theoretical value and I have already discussed many of these in my other writings. This time, and in particular as you have specifically asked about myself, I prefer to approach this in a more pragmatic way:
In my understanding the primary purpose of all true religions of God was to improve spiritual purification in people. For an atheist this will be reformulated as improving morals. The reason I am not even interested if you can or cannot prove to me that Islam is false, is that the path and the framework of Islam has worked for me in terms of spiritual purification (that may be reformulated as morals in the atheist context). This does not mean that I think I am a very spiritually purified person. This simply means that whenever I put a genuine effort to improve spiritually I found Islam to be helping me in that. I do not deny that many people find other paths work better for them. If those paths too lead to purification, and I believe many of them do, then I respect those as well. As you may know from my other writings I believe in religious pluralism and do not consider Islam or any other religion to be the only or the best path for spiritual purification.
So to answer your corrected question briefly:
Question: "If I proved Islam is false will you stop following it?"
Answer: You can prove to me that Islam is false only if you can prove that it does not help with my spiritual purification, and you can not do that because (at least for now) you don't know me in person.
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Farhad Shafti
June 2017
I want to know, when everyone knows that Islam is not the word of God (which is so absolutely clear that even I can easily prove, if failed will not just accept Islam but will force whole world to follow it) why don't you Muslims stop following it?
And if I proved Islam is not the word of God will you stop following it?
Answer:
There are three logically or factually false statements in your question. I explain these and then will provide an answer:
1. Islam is the name of a religion. It is not the word of God. Therefore to prove that Islam is or is not the word of God does not have any meanings.
2. You are basically asking why Muslims do not stop following Islam when all non-Muslims know that it is not the truth. This is for the same reason that all people who do not have the same view as you, think that you are wrong while you and people who have the same view as you, think that your view is correct.
For any ideology there are people who do not believe in it. If we consider this to be the sign that the ideology is false then no ideology will be true and all ideologies will be false. This itself is a logical contradiction because an ideology and its anti-ideology cannot both be false.
3. You wrote if you failed to prove Islam is false then you will force people to Islam. This is against Islam itself as it is clearly mentioned in the Qur'an (2:256) that there is no compulsion in religion. So if you at any time in future understand Islam and truly believe in it you will never try to force people to Islam.
Now to answer your question (which I correct from "if I proved Islam is not the word of God will you stop following it?" to "if I proved Islam is false will you stop following it?":
I can of course ask your reasons and try to challenge them but this will only be of theoretical value and I have already discussed many of these in my other writings. This time, and in particular as you have specifically asked about myself, I prefer to approach this in a more pragmatic way:
In my understanding the primary purpose of all true religions of God was to improve spiritual purification in people. For an atheist this will be reformulated as improving morals. The reason I am not even interested if you can or cannot prove to me that Islam is false, is that the path and the framework of Islam has worked for me in terms of spiritual purification (that may be reformulated as morals in the atheist context). This does not mean that I think I am a very spiritually purified person. This simply means that whenever I put a genuine effort to improve spiritually I found Islam to be helping me in that. I do not deny that many people find other paths work better for them. If those paths too lead to purification, and I believe many of them do, then I respect those as well. As you may know from my other writings I believe in religious pluralism and do not consider Islam or any other religion to be the only or the best path for spiritual purification.
So to answer your corrected question briefly:
Question: "If I proved Islam is false will you stop following it?"
Answer: You can prove to me that Islam is false only if you can prove that it does not help with my spiritual purification, and you can not do that because (at least for now) you don't know me in person.
----------------
Farhad Shafti
June 2017
