DOES GOD EXIST? & EXAMINING THE ATHEIST ARGUMENTS AGAINST – Surrey University, UK

The video of my lecture at Surrey University Islamic Society on ‘How Do We Know God Exists, and historical attempts to prove otherwise?’ is now available to watch online.

It features a different take on the usual “Does God Exist?” question, by including a discussion on all the common arguments used against God’s existence by Atheists, Agnostics and other such deniers. The lecture and Q/A goes through an eclectic mix of topics from the debate between Muslim philosophers on the Uncreatedness of the Quran,  Quantum mechanics, the theory of Evolution, to Cantor’s infinite sets in mathematics, and much more….

I’d argue this was my most comprehensive discussion on the existence of God (and arguments against it) I’ve presented to date. A must watch for anyone curious about the approaches to the subject, both for and against.

A kind commenter organised the video content into topics (with links to the moments in the video):

• Why this topic? 00:01:58
• Denial (00:02:23)
• 00:02:23 – Inventive & creative
• 00:04:50 – desires
• Denial of a creator (00:05:28)
• Does God Exist – 00:07:05
• What is the right definition of the word “God”? (00:07:09)
• 00:08:59 – Two criteria to be God
• First criteria: To be Infinite (00:11:22)
• 00:11:33 – infinite regress fallacy
• 00:13:16 – what is/why does there need to be a start point?
• determining (00:20:16)
• • possibilities (00:22:18)
• 00:23:51 – conclusion
• Second criteria: To have a Will (00:26:54)
  • 00:27:13 – Why a Will?
  • Three possibilities for the creator’s actions:
    • Internal Cause (00:27:53) – why it can’t be an internal mechanism
    • External Cause (00:28:56) – why it can’t be an external force to the Creator
    • Self-Initiated (00:29:25) – why all actions by the Creator must by initiated as a first cause

Atheist Arguments against God – 00:30:54

• The “One god further” argument (00:31:13)
• The “Denial of Reality” argument [nihilism/solipsism] (00:34:51)
• The “Multiverse” argument (00:37:27)
• How the Multiverse argument accepts an infinite creator but denies it has a Will 00:38:21 (refer back to 27:13 where I prove a Will is necessary for the Creator to create)
• The “Infinite Universe” argument (00:40:51)
• The “Seeing is believing” argument (00:42:24)
• The “God is complex” / Occam’s Razor argument (00:43:56)
• The “Nothing is certain” argument (00:44:56)
• The “Infinite in the Finite” argument (00:45:15)
• The “Conservation of Energy argument” (00:50:41)
• The “Virtual Particles argument” (00:50:41)
• The “Unfalsifiable text argument” (00:53:54)
• The “Problem of Evil” argument (00:55:38)
• The “Reality is Counter-intuitive/non-rationalisable argument” (00:56:48)

Q & A – 01:03:18

• Qur’an un/created? (01:03:37)
• Islam & Evolution (01:08:26)
• Adam without parents (01:16:06)
• Limitations (01:18:48)
• 01:22:32 – Use of “He”
• How God Creates (01:23:25)
• Meaning (01:25:55)
• Attributes of God (01:30:45)