Why Islam Is Untrue:  The Real Reasons

Every body of ideas derives from a foundation of specific principles.  Islam is no different in this respect, and it makes its basic principles particularly clear.  We can put them to a validity test:  If Islam’s axioms are valid, then Islam is valid; if they are not, then Islam is not valid.  Whether Islam should be taken seriously depends on the outcome of this test.

An excellent source of Islam’s basic principles can be found in the Saudi Arabian edition of the Koran, called the Noble Qur’an (ISBN:  9960-740-79-X, 1996).  This version of the Koran is orthodox Sunni Islam and orthodox Wahhabism.  It is published by the Fahd family through its Dar-Us-Salaam Publications.

“Tauhid (Islamic Monotheism) has three aspects”:

1.    “To believe that there is only one Lord for all the universe and He is, its Creator, Organizer, Planner, Sustainer, and the Giver of security, and that is Allah.”

2.    “To believe that none has the right to be worshipped…” in any form “…but Allah.”

3.    “Oneness of the Names and the Qualities of Allah…  To believe that:

·        We must not name or qualify Allah except with what He or His Messenger has named or qualified Him;

·        None can be named or qualified with the Names or Qualifications of Allah…

·        We must believe in all the Qualities of Allah which Allah has stated in His Book (the Qur’an) or mentioned through His Messenger (Muhammad) without changing their meaning or ignoring them completely or twisting the meanings or likening them…  It is also essential to follow Allah’s Messenger, Muhammad.”  (pp. 917 – 918)

Islam is simple, and this is one of the reasons for its success.  However, as simple as the statements from the Noble Qur’an are, they must be put into essential elements:

·        Allah exists, and, as supreme entity in the universe, must be worshipped, and Muhammad must be revered, as Allah’s earthly representative.

·        Allah has essential qualities:  omniscience, omnipotence, infallibility, being all good, and is unknowable.

·        Allah caused the universe and all actions within it.

Implied, of course, is the need to worship Allah without reservation.

These three principles interlock like the sides and angles of a triangle.  All three must be true for Islam to be valid.  If any one of them is untrue, then the other two are untrue, because of their fundamental interdependence.

Let’s start with the assertion that Allah exists.  What is the evidence for the existence of Allah?

Allah created all we see and causes all we do as well as all that has ever existed and ever been done, Islamists say.  What is the evidence for this assertion?  Look around, they retort, it is self-evident.  But, is it self-evident?

When I look around, I see many things, and I see things causing other things to happen.  I see nothing that I can say is evidence for the presence of an Allah.  No matter how hard I press Islamists for answers, I get their assertions that everything I see, feel, taste, hear, and smell came from Allah.

When I say that my senses gather no data that I can logically interpret as evidence for Allah, the Islamists retreat to one of several fall-back positions.  They say that I cannot perceive Allah and his actions, and no human can.

If that is so, I ask, how can I find evidence for Allah?  Islamists will now back up further to assert that Allah works in mysterious ways, and we cannot know these mysterious ways.  Then, how, I ask, do you know them?  They back up once more to their biggest cop-out:  faith.

You must accept Allah on faith, they tell me.

Faith is the claim to knowledge obtained by “extraordinary” means.  By “extra” and “ordinary,” I mean that faith claims knowledge based on means other than that derived from the nature of human knowledge and the means by which humans gather this knowledge.  Faith is the belief in something in the absence of evidence or proof.  They say, we know, because we have faith.  That statement would be a show-stopper if I did not know what they mean, but I do.  When they assert faith, they are asserting a feeling.  They “know” because they can “feel it” to be so.

In reality, no feelings, or emotions, are a primary means to knowledge, by their very nature.  Emotions are psycho-physiological responses to evaluations, and those evaluations are lightening fast calculations based on previously established thoughts.  The prior thinking might be good, so-so, or poor in quality, but whatever quality that thinking has, it will become the calculus for the ensuing emotions.  The emotion might be valid or invalid, depending on the quality of the previous thinking.  That is just the way emotions are, and they are the end of the cognitive chain, not the beginning.

Faith, then, is a feeling.  It is a feeling about a feeling.  “I know it because I feel that it is so,” means nothing more than “I feel that my feeling is correct.”  Faith requires no evidence, just acceptance.  As such, faith by-passes thought and acts as a short-circuit to thinking.  Worse yet, it tells us nothing about Allah.

The next, and probably last, backup position is the Islamists’ claim that Allah revealed all knowledge to Muhammad, his final prophet on earth, and those revelations constitute the Koran.

With Muhammad, we reach the weakest point of Islam.

Muhammad may have been an historical figure, but accepting him as the sole recipient in all of history of the words of God, putting near to divinity, and accepting the Koran as divine revelation require super-mega faith because the facts do not support any role Muhammad might have had with God or the divinity of the Koran.

From what is known about Muhammad, he is supposed to be the sole source of what Islamists call the Koran.  Allegedly, Allah revealed all of the Koran to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel.  Because he was illiterate, Muhammad wrote down none of these revelations, and there was no other source of any kind at any time.  People took what Muhammad said as true, on faith.  They just took his word for it all.

Stop for a moment to ponder the history.

Absolutely everything about Islam comes from the say-so of one person, Muhammad.  He claimed to have received revelations from Allah, and he wrote none of them down.  In fact, the Koran was many decades getting into print after Muhammad died.  Islam is all hear-say, without a shred of evidence or any other input, other than what Muhammad said it was and what some people “remembered” many decades later.

Islam has as much validity as my claiming to have received revelations from a super-entity, and then requiring people to accept my claims as the sole evidence.

What are “revelations?”  They are claims to knowledge arising from non-human means.  A séance thrives on the pretense of revelations.  Revelations by-pass the need for evidence.  They require acceptance on faith just as surely as the medium of a séance requires faith that the subject’s spouse is speaking from the spirit world.  Let’s face it:  There are no such things as revelations.

Not only did Allah not give revelations to Muhammad through Gabriel, there is no evidence for the existence of Gabriel or Allah.  Allah is as valid as a séance, and Muhammad is no more valid than a medium.

To rephrase, Allah does not exist; Muhammad was not his messenger; and the Koran is not the revealed word of Allah.

If there is no Allah, how can there be any Islam?  The answer is that there cannot be any validity to the claim that Islam comes from Allah, since there is no such entity.  Thus, one side of the Islamic axiomatic triangle disappears.  In fact, Islam, right here, falls apart totally, and nothing can fix it.

We could stop here because we have invalidated Islam.  We will not, however, because we want to demolish it completely.

The second principle states that Allah has extra-ordinary qualities:  omniscience, omnipotence, infallibility, omni-benevolence, and unknowability.

If we had not already invalidated an Allah, we would do it in a heartbeat with the quality of Allah being “unknowable.”  What does “unknowable” mean?  If I do not know how to build a submarine, does this mean that building a submarine is unknowable?  Of course, it does not.  It means that building a submarine is unknown to me.  Since there are submarines, there are people who do know how to build submarines.  If I said that building submarines is unknowable, you would properly scoff at me because you would immediately recognize that my not knowing differs fundamentally from my never being able to know on principle.

To be unknowable means that no one can know anything at all about building submarines.  It also means that no one can know such a category as “building submarines,” since even the name is unknowable.  “Unknowable” means incapable of being known in all respects.

Using elementary logic, how can someone claim something is unknowable and still talk about it?  How can that someone ever talk about any aspect of it, including its existence?  The answer to both questions is, it cannot be done.  You can blow those who assert such arguments out of the water by asking them how they know something that is unknowable.

If this Allah is unknowable, then no statements can ever be made about Allah at any time, even the name of Allah.  If statements are made, then Allah is not “unknowable.”  That would bring us back to the lack of evidence for the existence of Allah.

Let us examine the other extraordinary qualities of Allah:  omnipotence, omniscience, infallibility, and omni-benevolence.

What does “omnipotence” mean?  Literally, it means “all powerful.”  This is power unlike anything known in the universe.  It can do anything, just by will.  Islamists like to say that Allah makes something exist or cease existing or do something just by saying “Be.”  Allah, they say, can turn tigers into tadpoles, bring people back to life, and even create a universe.  Allah can make anything be something else or make anything behave any way Allah wants.

The notion of omnipotence utterly destroys the universe, because it makes the impossible become possible.  The Law of Identity, one of the metaphysical pillars of existence, says that everything that exists is something specific.  If a tiger is a tiger, then a tiger is a tiger, and a tiger is never a tadpole.  Death is the destruction of life, and it cannot become life.  The other basic law of the universe is the Law of Causality.  It says that entities (those things that exist) cause actions, and the actions possible to each entity depend entirely on the nature of the entity (i.e., its identity).  There can be no action without some entity to act.  There can, for example, be no “eating” or “sitting” without there first being something capable of eating or sitting.

Tigers, for example, cannot ever become tadpoles any more than death can become life.  A world where anything can be anything else and things happen without cause cannot exist on the one hand.  On the other hand, if it could exist, it would be a nightmare universe of unpredictable terrors.

Humans know perfectly well that things cannot switch identities, nor can things happen opposite to the nature of these things.  Islamists, however, will resort again to faith.  Regarding accepting the unnatural, Tertullian, one of the early Christian theorists in Rome, once said:  “I believe it because it is impossible.”  Tertullian stated nothing useful about the nature of the universe and any of its parts.  He did point out how fallible the human mind can be, but that fallibility does not change the laws of Identity and Causality one whit.

However, if Allah is omnipotent, can he make a square circle?  Can he kill himself?  Can he take away his own power?  Any being possessing ALL POWER can do ANYTHING.  Can that being do these?  Of course, Allah can, say the Islamists; Allah can do anything, but Allah chooses the time and place to do what Allah does.  Allah chooses not to do any of these things.  Islamists want no limitation on Allah’s power.

Yet, if Allah can do the contradictory and does not, what is Allah’s purpose?  Allah has no purpose, they say.  Purpose imposes a human limitation on Allah.  Yet an entity without purpose is an entity without identity and causality.  An entity without identity and causality does not exist.

To quote G. H. Smith, Allah, “…an unknowable being—does things in an unknowable way through some unknowable nonprocesses.”  (Atheism:  The Case Against God, Prometheus Books, 1979, pages 72-73).  Allah’s “omnipotence” violates every tenet of the universe.

What is “omniscience?”  It means knowledge without limits, past, present, and future, i.e., knowing all, and the Koran stresses this attribute as much as Allah’s omnipotence.  One aspect of Allah’s omniscience is the predestination of all humans, which Allah causes, so Allah knows the outcome of each life.

Omniscience, however, contradicts Allah’s omnipotence.  If Allah knows the future with certainty, then he cannot change it.  If he cannot change it, then Allah is not omnipotent.  Allah’s alleged omniscience means knowledge, a human concept, derived totally by non-human, and unknowable, means.  We are back to unknowability again.

If Allah does not know the future with certainty, then he is not omniscient.  If he is not omniscient, then he is also not omnipotent since his omnipotence necessitates omniscience.

How did Allah come by his knowledge?  If Allah acquired it, then he began without omniscience, thus was not omnipotent.  If Allah “just has” knowledge, without acquisition, then Allah acts by means not of this universe.  Actions extra to the universe mean no identity and no causality for Allah, and these mean, no Allah.

What is infallibility?  It means, to be incapable of error.  Allah, thus, can make no mistakes.  He is, after all, omniscient.  However, if Allah can make no mistakes, then Allah cannot be omnipotent.  If he makes mistakes or creates errors, then he cannot be omniscient.  Allah just cannot be at all.

What does omni-benevolent mean?  It is just another way of saying that Allah is all good.  In short, whatever Allah does is absolutely good.

If Allah is all good, why does he run this place called Hell, and why does he predestine so many humans to end up there in eternal torture?  After all, Allah created Hell, and Islam makes it clear that Allah runs it.  The Koran makes clear that some 70,000 to 80,000 humans will enter Paradise, while all of the rest will enter Hell; and, only 25% of all married women have any chance for Paradise at all.  When you die in Islam, you will ultimately end up either in Paradise or Hell.  Those are the only choices.

Smith puts this one well, “To be omnibenevolent, [Allah] must be capable of evil but always choose the good.  If [Allah] deliberately chooses evil, he is immoral.”  (p. 80).  Can an omnibenevolent being be immoral?  If he cannot, he is not omnipotent.  If he can, and if he chooses such, then he is not good or benevolent.  If Allah is all good, why is there so much evil in the affairs of humans, and so much suffering through the world?  If Allah does not know about the evil and the suffering, then Allah is not omniscient.  If Allah knows but permits them, then Allah is not all good.  If Allah is either not omniscient or all good, then he is not omnipotent.

If Islamists retreat into Allah’s unknowability in order to escape the fallacies involved in omniscience, omnipotence, omni-benevolence, and infallibility, then Allah ceases to exist—because he has lost his identity. 

Let us take up the third principle of Islam.  This one claims that Allah created the universe, all entities within it, and all actions within the universe.

For the moment, let us suppose that the universe required a creator.  Opening that door a little opens that door fully.  If the universe requires a creator, and if Allah is that creator, it means that everything requires a creator.  If so, then, who created Allah?  While struggling with that question, any of us can see quickly that we force the need for something to have created Allah, then to something else creating the something that created Allah, and so on.  Logicians refer to this as the “problem of infinite regress”:  Every creation requires a creator.  This goes on without end, which is preposterous.  And, if the universe was created, how does claiming that Allah created it explain anything?  It does not.

Commonly the next question asked takes the form of, well, if Allah did not create the universe, who did?  The answer usually blows peoples’ minds:  No one did.  The universe was not created.

People have grave trouble with the metaphysical fact that the universe was not created.  The trouble, I believe, comes from hand-me-down religious influences in the culture and complete lack of philosophical education of children and adults.  Once anyone catches on to the nature of metaphysics, then one is freed from this thinking trap forever.

So, let us demolish this thinking trap.

What is the universe?  It is everything, absolutely everything, without exception.  Call it “universe” or call it “existence” or call it “reality.”  These are synonyms for everything that is.

Another question here exposes one of the great problems causing the thinking trap.  What is outside the universe?  Or, given some of the “science” fiction, what other universes are there?  The answer to both is “none.”  Nothing is outside the universe, and there are no other universes.

To grasp this, recall that the universe is everything, with nothing left over.  That is the identity of the universe, and there is no other identity.  To say that the universe is finite is just another way of asserting the fact that the universe has identity, but it does not allow opening the door to stepping outside the universe.  Reality is sovereign.  There is no “outside” to step into.  Nothing is nothing, not just some variety of something.  Every something exists in the universe.  Said another way, if something exists, it is in the universe.  There are no other universes or alternative realities and no evidence for any.

Doesn’t the Big Bang Theory prove me wrong?  No, it does not.  First off, the Big Bang Theory is just that, a theory.  Physicists are playing with this notion, seeking to prove it and thus far have not.  Evidence lines up for and against the theory.  We have much to learn about the nature of the universe.  But, even if the Big Bang Theory were true, it would be no more than a part of the identity of the universe.

There is nothing outside the universe.  In fact, there is no outside to the universe.

The universe “just is.”  It was not created.  It exists.  It is just there, and it just is what it is.  The only thing we can do is to learn as much as we can about its nature which includes those things in the universe.

One of the commonest mental hang-ups concerning the universe is the notion that things are too orderly for there not to have been a master plan.  This is the Argument from Design, as it has been known historically.

Look at the beauteous wonders in the heavens; look at all of the complexities of everything, even look at life itself.  There’s just no way this could just happen.  There had to be a designer, and that designer is Allah.

Why should we give Allah credit for the things being what they are?  Things are what they are, and they do what they do, because they are what they are.  Things behave according to their natures.  They can do nothing else.  That restates first the Law of Identity, then the Law of Causality.  The order, the beauty, and the complexity are all statements about the natures of all the things under consideration.

We must be very careful here not to let ignorance cloud our thinking.  For example, how life arose has not been answered yet by scientists, nor have all the facets of the nature of life been explored.  There is much about life that we do not know right now.  However, not knowing does not authorize anyone to substitute a false something where there is not yet an explanation.  “I don’t know,” applies to much in the universe that humans have not had time, knowledge, and means to learn enough about.  Life is just one of those insufficiently delineated things.  However, saying “I don’t know,” does not provide any basis for substituting Allah as an explanation of identity and causality for anything whatsoever.  Allah explains nothing, particularly life.

Allah is nothing.  There is no Allah.  Allah did not create the universe because there is no Allah, and the universe was not created.  Allah’s extraordinary qualities are internally self-refuting and mutually contradictory, because they do not exist, because Allah does not exist.  Muhammad was never the prophet of Allah because there has never been an Allah, and Muhammad did not receive revelations from Allah because revelations do not exist, and because Allah does not exist.

We have invalidated the axioms of Islam.  We invalidated each of the three separately, knowing that invalidating any one makes the other two invalid as well.  Historically and in terms of reality, Islam has no validity, no truth to itself, no adherence to reality, and is in fact nothing more than self-serving statements originated by a self-serving warlord to justify his actions and to recruit fellow scoundrels.

For some 1400 years, ignorant Muslims have been mired in this mental La Brea Tar Pit called Islam.  They have died and continue to die for this fiction, which shows how powerful ideas are in human affairs.  To believe in Islam, a normal human being has to surrender stewardship of his most valuable possession and his sole means of survival, his mind.

A television commercial comes up and applies to those who accept Islam:  A mind is a terrible thing to waste.