Skeptic: I appreciate your conviction, but I find “certainty” a bit arrogant. The universe is vast and silent. How can you claim to know the Creator exists when the most honest answer seems to be: “I don’t have enough data”? To me, it’s a 50/50 coin flip.
Muslim: I understand your concern. Intellectual humility is important. But calling it a 50/50 coin flip assumes both sides have equal explanatory power. Neutrality is not automatic — it must be justified.
The real question is: Which worldview better explains reality — theism or materialism?
If one explanation accounts more coherently for existence, order, rationality, consciousness, and morality, then skepticism stops being neutral.
Skeptic: But you're referring to a Deity beyond the constraints of space and time; and this seems to me a gap in reasoning.
Muslim: Let’s approach it carefully.
Philosophers call this the Argument from Contingency.
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.
The first principle is not religious — it’s metaphysical. Something cannot come from nothing. Absolute nothingness has no properties, no potential, no causal power.
Skeptic: How do you know the universe began to exist?
Muslim: Modern cosmology indicates that space, time, and matter expanded from a finite state — what we call the Big Bang model. Thermodynamics also suggests that the universe is not past-eternal.
But even philosophically, an actual infinite regress of past events creates contradictions. If the past were actually infinite, we could never arrive at the present moment.
So the evidence strongly points toward a beginning.
Skeptic: Even if it had a cause, why assume that cause is God?
Muslim: Because the nature of the cause must match the effect.
If the universe includes space, time, and matter, then its cause must be:
Timeless (since time began with the universe)
Spaceless
Imaterial
Powerful
Independent
Furthermore, the universe appears ordered and law-governed. So the cause must also be intelligent.
That description aligns with what we mean by God.
Skeptic: But who created God?
Muslim: That question misunderstands the argument.
We are not saying “everything needs a cause.” We are saying “everything that begins to exist needs a cause.”
God, by definition, is the Necessary Creator — The One whose existence is not derived.
Asking “Who created the uncreated?” is like asking “What’s north of the North Pole?” It’s a category mistake.
Skeptic: Even if I grant that, science explains reality. Evolution explains life. Maybe everything is just natural processes.
Muslim: Science explains processes within the universe. It tells us how things behave once they exist.
But science does not answer:
Why there is something rather than nothing
Why physical laws exist
Why mathematics maps onto reality
Why consciousness exists
Why moral truths feel objectively binding
Evolutionary theory may explain biological diversification through mutation and natural selection. But it operates within an already finely tuned universe governed by stable laws.
It does not explain the origin of those laws.
Skeptic: What do you mean by “finely tuned”?
Muslim: The constants of physics — such as the gravitational constant and cosmological constant — exist within extremely narrow life-permitting ranges.
If altered even slightly, stars could not form, chemistry would collapse, and complex life would be impossible.
There are three possible explanations:
Physical necessity
Chance
Design
There is no evidence these constants are physically necessary. Pure chance with astronomically low probability is not rationally satisfying.
Design remains a serious explanatory option.
Skeptic: What about consciousness? Why couldn’t it just emerge from matter?
Muslim: That is one of the deepest problems in philosophy — the “hard problem of consciousness.”
A complete physical description of neurons firing does not explain:
Why there is first-person experience
Why red feels like red
Why thoughts have meaning
Matter has mass and extension. Consciousness has awareness and intentionality.
They are categorically different.
Reducing subjective experience to chemistry does not explain it — it merely redescribes correlations.
Skeptic: Morality can also be evolutionary. We evolved cooperation.
Muslim: Evolution may explain why we hold moral beliefs.
But it does not explain whether those beliefs are objectively true.
If morality is merely evolutionary survival programming, then calling something “evil” is just expressing preference.
But if torturing children for fun is objectively wrong — even if society approves it — then morality transcends biology.
Objective moral duties require a grounding beyond human opinion.
Skeptic: Let’s assume God exists. I still want to be free. If God exists, I must obey Him.
Muslim: Freedom is not the absence of limits.
A fish is free in water — not on land.
Humans are free when they live according to their nature.
If we were created with moral and spiritual purpose, then aligning with that purpose is not slavery — it is fulfillment.
Obedience to truth is not oppression. It is harmony.
Skeptic: But what about suffering? Why does God allow evil?
Muslim: First, the logical problem of evil fails unless someone proves God cannot have morally sufficient reasons.
Second, free will explains moral evil. Love and goodness require genuine choice.
Third, many virtues — courage, patience, compassion — only exist in a world where suffering is possible.
And interestingly, calling something “evil” assumes objective morality — which itself points beyond materialism.
Skeptic: Even if I accept theism, why Islam specifically?
Muslim: If we establish a Necessary, transcendent, immaterial Creator, then:
Polytheism contradicts necessity.
Incarnation contradicts transcendence.
Dividing God compromises absolute unity.
Islam uniquely preserves:
Absolute oneness of God
No incarnation
No inherited guilt
Divine justice
Harmony between reason and revelation
The Qur’an describes God:
“He is Allah, the One. Allah, the Eternal Refuge. He neither begets nor is born, Nor is there to Him any equivalent.” — Qur'an 112
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