an open letter to Mr Dawkins

an open letter to mr dawkins

i've seen your program about The God Delusion and The Virus of Faith. i can't help to give you my respond, and i am sure that you have receive many of this before.

I study science. i am moslem. but i do not go to any religious school, just common public school. my parents did not told me or scared me that i'll be condemned, or should i say, burned in hell for not believing God. in fact the idea of atheism was in my head a couple years ago. but i found something disturbing. i thought it long. i didn't go to any priest or imam, to hear their opinion. i just thought it all by my self. and then i realize, that having to believe in god is a need for me.

it began when i was reading Koran and found this verse (Sura 23 (Al Mu'minuun), verse 14) which explains about how an infant was developed. and it is remarkably coherent with a story of morphogenesis. in scientific world this process was discovered in the beginning of 20th century, began with the debate about prereformism and epigenesis. Koran told about this about 13 centuries earlier. so, how could this be happen? I've found no strong reason to explain this. how could people at the 7th century discovered such things? a fact that has no importance in life of 6th century people. and Koran used this fact to explain how God created human.

how can science explain this? could it be just prophet Mohammad's imagination? when this verse was used to explain God creation (and so does to prove that God is exist, so human should follow God's path that is shown to them by Mohammad), would it be critical when this verse is wrong?

there are many things that science and reason could not explain. God is just one of them. but if there's no evidence of God's existence, can we conclude that there were no such things as God? or may be the evidence of God's existence is not yet revealed? can we deleted something we can't explain? moreover, is it really we can explain everything simply by reasoning?

i think our brain, which is responsible to our consciousness, is merely just a simple tool that helped us survive, thriving on earth for thousands of centuries. we recognize and modify our environments with our brain's help. we set rules to live in society, we explore ourselves and our environment to ensure our survival. science, is just a product of brain work. a set of rules to help us ensure our understanding about our environments is sensible, or should we say, right.

it makes sense when we could not think, what our brain cannot think. it is the same as that we can't see what our eyes cannot see. we can't see the ultraviolet, tiny little viruses, or even a set of gene. but it doesn't directly implied that all are not exist, simply because we can't see them. we built reasons, tested them, thought of another possibilities, and tested them, and so on and so on. from this circular process, we had sense of something that we cannot see. and we say it is true, because they backed by tons and tons of what we called evidence. so, the concept of reality that we have, is also the concept that we made. we actually never know what is real.

so what i am saying is that we have so many limitations. all of our sense and our brain is just a tool that help us survive. i see the concept of conciousness is somewhat different. as an introspective ape, i think we should realize these limitations.

we can't really know what is real. our concept of reality was just informations that our senses and brain perceive. we just manage them in a set of rules, which is agreed by most of individual in human society. but we should keep in mind, that it is not necessarily becomes reality, no matter how many people agreed to that. because we have limitations.

i am not going to say that religion fills these limitations. but the consciousness of having something which is greater than ourselves, is irresistible. it is perhaps comes within our genes, along with the socialistic character that helped our survival in this vast centuries of life on earth. I think the Deity that has been awaken throughout centuries of human existence, is not merely just an answer to unexplainable events or things. more than that, i believe it is becomes a need for human. it made our consciousness expand, made us more human. distinguish us from our ape ancestor.

so what happened when people killing people by the name of God? Throughout civilization, we found that people are able to kill other people because of their believe. God is just one reason out of it. Hitler and any other racist thought that their race was superior and kill for that. Communist and fascist took over government, and kill because they believe their system is better. there are killers around us. and they fed not just by religious dogma. it is just one of them.

so, should we eliminate religion because of this? no, we should examine why people have different interpretation. why some people are willing to kill for their believe, and why some people forgive? i think you have got the point in your program. people understand the holy book in a different way. some people just take it literally, some people examine the interrelationship among verses and conclude the overall message of the holy book. but, i am sure that our Koran do not contradict itself. that it teaches us to become more human, shows us the way of living in balance within our self, and living harmonically with other people, other creature, and all our surrounding.

i believe that such idea of harmonic living, could not be developed depends on basic moral as it is you said. because in order to live harmonically you should think of others, even if they are not means anything to you, not just because 'they scratch my back, so i scratch theirs'.

human is basically a selfish being. through religion, i get insights of how we supposed to live. and it is not something that i should do because it is written in the book, or because the holy text said so. i'll do that in order of peacefulness, harmonic and balance and even sustainability of living.

So where is the root of this evil? i would take an example of a verses in Koran. It is written that we should strike back people who strikes us, but Allah loves more they who forgive. this verse is often used to backed up terror actions. but i can tell you that terror actions is not the way of Islam. strikes back the one who strikes you, not just anyone. punch back if they punch, instead of having yourself enslaved by turning the other cheek. but then again, Allah loves more they who forgive.

then the root of all evil would be ourself. it is our interpretation of the verses. it is our understanding of who we are, and what ideal circumstances are to us. moreover, the root of all evil is how we manage to fulfill that understanding. when our understanding becomes an aim of our action, it is the way we are doing it, and the way we choose to achieve it which can be evil.

but as scientists dwell to explain natural phenomena, they have some set of basic understanding, an ideal thought, a moral basic, a paradigm, a view over nature that is determine the way science was built (scientist has always said that science is a value-free. but i think we cant resist it. we valuate everything. it is in our gene. it helps our survival).

my understanding of the teaching of Koran would be similar. Islam, by its Arabic name means the way of salvation. so everything that it teaches us, should be toward salvation. why should we need any of those salvation? well i am just a simple human, i wanted to live a happy live. and Islam shows me the way to it, without having to put aside my logic and reasons and replace it by dogma, as others would do.

it doesnt really matters to me whether any atheist people do not believe in something call God, or Yahweh, or Allah. they might thought that they are not having any relationship, and that their life were not governed by this sky god, or do not having any dogma that cut off the joy of understanding things in nature by simple explanation of God creation. i think that they just missed the opportunity to feel (and not just to think) surrender. i think the contradiction might be funny, but i found freedom in limitation and surrender. and yes, how much more do we want?

if we step aside from thinking about God as the being who worked on miracles, and start to think about who we are, why we are here, where do we go, what should we do while we are here... then you back on the basic rail of religion. religion are there to answer these question, where as science could not. how we make the best of our times while we live in this world? how should we live our live in order to be grateful because of small chance we obtain and being born onto this world? this is not a 'how much more do we want' type of question. it build up the basic understanding of our existence. and we need to understand our existence. it is part of the consequences of having a consciousness. most of us merely refuse ourselves as a thinking ape, or a trillions of molecules interacting each other. that we just rot away when we die. we need a meaning. a role in nature, an achievement, an answer to 'why we are here?' type of question. a sort of question that goes beyond science. a sort of question that science cannot answer. not now, and i think later on would be just the same. because science is just a product of a tool called brain. and brain itself has its limitation.