New Atheists Deprived of Stars - Hamza Yusuf

I would argue that the reason New Atheism is around is purely artificial light I'm really mean that if we would just turn off all the electricity just once a month for people to see the heavens again they would come back to believing in something bigger than themselves because I personally many times many nights and the Sahara Desert is the darkest place in the world in terms of artificial light there's almost no artificial light where I was many nights in in the Western Sahara I literally was reduced to tea I mean really crying just because it was just so over whelming to see the beauty of the heavens and people have been deprived of this for so long I mean we see Orion which is stunning I love Orion but just to see the multitude of stars the heavens declare your glory Plato said that God put the heavens there for us to see the order and want to bring the order of the heavens down to the earth and and just astronomy is so important and modern astronomy has killed astronomy it has killed it so many people take courses in astronomy at college they're the worst courses that you can take they will kill any love that inspired you to take that course in the first place and so we do a lot of natural based astronomy of literally going out observing the moon we have an incredible teacher dr. Yusef who's been watching the moon every month for I don't know 25 years or something he's really probably one of the world's leading experts on moon sighting and if you've ever seen a new moon boy you will know exactly where I'm talking about I've only seen it once literally come like I saw it birthed and and it was just such a stunning experience to see that but everybody we go out moon sighting and everybody who's done it knows the joy that you get when you first spot the moon it's such a joyous experience and the word for seeing the moon is the same word for the the cry of the child in Arabic is still out when it first comes into the world it's it's a shout for the child what am I doing here but for us it's like what is God doing with us this is so amazing so astronomy is really important they learn to do Sun dials they learn to to identify stars we do real phenomenological astronomy just understanding because we are in the geocentric world whether we like it or not the heliocentric and the geocentric are both true one is true from experience and the other is true from just very complicated mathematical conceptual conceptualizations but geocentrism nobody talks about what a beautiful earth turn that is you know because we just don't I mean I always like Paul McCartney said the fool on the hill sees the Sun going down and the eyes in his head see the earth spinning around I mean that's a stunning piece of poetry inspired clearly because that's the modern person where we're so conflicted existentially worse and so astronomy is really important music traditionally music harmony it was at ammonia was was the the liberal art it was it was actually far more theoretical than what's what we would consider music today but music the Mohammed were very important the Islamic civilization and we have great masters still alive in that tradition which the Mohammed are closer to what we would call the the modes than they are to the modern music but they do I mean they do in Schad and things like that so but we haven't done any formal training in that I really want to get more quadrivium based it's tough a lot of students just shy away from it one of the things that most impresses me about st. John's College is that they really do the quadrivium and they love it the students love it if you if you've never done the in book one I think it's the 47th proposition if you if you've never done it and Euclid just do it one time it's actually quite stunning experience to prove the Pythagorean theorem moat and in high schools they teach you how to use it it's a utilitarian function of of it but Euclid was much more in showing you why these things are true not what you can do with them tell you about Loubs classics as they've never heard of the Kuhn Loeb family okay this is one of the biggest banking families of New York they were billionaires in today's money so over a hundred years ago one of their sons went to Harvard and studied Latin and Greek and had a really hard time and so he convinced his dad one of the richest men in America to fund the translation of all these Greek and Latin classics so I'm looking for that character to help us so if you know this somebody like that right one of the students we have have the billionaire student that comes and can convince their dad to fund but this does take a lot of work and to free people up to do these translations but and then the Scholastic version I would love to see some of the translations of gazali and these that are in Latin you know really bringing those back into it I think they'll probably be pretty good translations because they were they were such rigorous scholars so that would be fascinating but Latin and Greek will come back they will have their revival and already we see the seeds of it Arabic is too me just it is such a stunning ocean and if if you you know I wanted to study other languages but there's always something more to learn in Arabic so it's one of those languages that where you fall into it it's just really difficult to get out and that's the reason why the Arabs call a dictionary is called a mousse which means ocean right so Arabic is literally it's just vast and it's it's extraordinary and there's great gifts in it and and we believe the wisdom of the you know Mark Twain once said that the agent stole all their best ideas from us one of the best reasons for studying the classics is that you realize one we're all still human the problems of yesterday were around if you want to read a wonderful study on women fed up with with men governing everything just read Aristophanes the assembly women you know I mean it's it's like they were dealing with the same problems or read Lysistrata you know fed up with wars and sending young men to war I mean there's so much the mess now E is filled with incredible psychological insights into the nature Rou me has a great story of a man who goes to have a lion tattooed on his back and so the tattoo artist starts and he's like what's that what's that he said it's it's it's the tail it's the tail he said oh start with the head and so he goes to the head and they said what's that he said it's the head he said I don't do the body and then and then he's same thing happens with the body and finally room he just says that you know you have to suffer if you want to be a lion if you want to be great if you want to be virtuous you have to suffer you have to but people want everything without the pain of getting it so he uses that there are many examples of that in in both the traditions I mean if if you read Livi's said that the study of history is medicine for a sick mind because when you study history you will you'll feel a lot better about the time you're living in I mean we're actually living and global warming is it's uncomfortable but pestilence and plague that was uncomfortable to like 25 million people died you know I mean we tend to forget like how good things are and that's why these people are really worth reading if you want to understand what happened in Syria you can I guarantee you can find out by reading and mock it easy and macri's ii wrote a book on the causes of the collapse of states and and everything that he identified I I saw the correspondence or read book 5 of Aristotle's politics on revolutions and and you'll see why Aristotle talks about the 99% and the 1% he talks about this problem that venom Brandt right the German back in the 1970s people are too young in here to remember this guy he wrote a book called north and south basically predicting what's happening in Europe right now he said if we don't do something about this incredible equality gap of wealth we're gonna have a disaster on the horizon and you will have these people flooding in desiring what we have because they're so deprived so it's very important these are ways of understanding our world that having understanding you know knowing a diagnosis is a great gift just to know what's going on with you there's a relief that comes even when the doctor gives you a terminal there's a relief that comes with having a diagnosis of knowing what's wrong but you cannot work to make something better until you make a sound diagnosis of what's wrong and so we believe at Zaytuna that what's wrong with the rules are very simple it's ignorant and the the cure is education that it's a very simple equation it doesn't mean that the aren't evil educated people gurbles was real he was the only PhD in the higher hierarchy of the Nazi government he you know he's a smart guy he studied one of our great social psychologists his book on propaganda so he learned a lot from the Americans but education is not necessarily going to protect you from being evil or crafty but ignorant there's a real problem so thank you [Music]

Channel: TheHumbleBeliever

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Id: mEwB2WWTAng

Length: 11min 45sec (705 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 06 2020