RIS 2019 Dr. Seyyed Nasr and Dr. Bruno Guiderdoni - A Dialogue on the Question of Cosmology

salamualikum' I'd first like to start off by introducing our our speakers Samana Rahim dr. Sayed Hussain Nasser who has lectured at Ras several times in the past so many of you know him just from your experience here his University professor of Islamic studies at the George Washington University he has published over 50 books and hundreds of articles in the fields of Islamic studies mysticism comparative religion and many other subjects and in addition he has mentored countless students in a career spanning over 60 years dr. Bruno Godard Oni is a scientific researcher and scholar of international stature whose main research field is in galaxy formation a subject in which he has published more than 140 papers and organized several conferences in addition to his scientific work he has also published dozens of papers and given many lectures on Islamic subjects in France and elsewhere our two speakers both come to this subject from two sides you might say dr. Nasir began his academic career and the sciences having graduated from MIT with the degree in physics and then getting a master's at Harvard in geology and geophysics before moving on to a PhD in the history and philosophy of science before returning to Iran where he continued his academic work while also studying in the traditional Islamic fields with traditional masters dr. Godard only embraced Islam and please correct me if I have this detail wrong around the same time he also became a professional astrophysicist and alongside his professional work he has done much to cultivate an understanding for the public of Islam's emphasis on knowledge as a unified activity and he's given many lectures on Islam's view of nature and it's added towards toward knowledge and inquiry and with that I'd like to invite our speakers to the stage [Applause] this is a vast subject and we have these two great minds with us to discuss something which we could really spend the entire conference talking about so but I did want to get started dr. kadar Tony if you could help us just with terminology and if you could tell us what is modern cosmology just as a definition what is it what is the modern understanding of it and what does it include and also what does it exclude maybe we can go back to the etymology of the world cosmology cosmos in Greek means a whole which is ordered and beautiful and the Greeks the Greeks were thinking that the world was beautiful and now after a long period of absence of interest for cosmology during the 19th century we have the possibility to describe the universe around us on very large scales this is modern cosmology and the landscape but we discover is amazing because we see a universe which is much larger than what we were thinking in the past and this universe is full of galaxies and stars hundred billions of galaxies each galaxy includes hundreds of billions of stars and try to opinions of planets and so we have this view of a large and old universe and this universe is still a cosmos because it is authored by by laws and the origin of our laws is still mystery for modern cosmology for modern science thank you very much dr. Nassir your first book that was called an introduction to Islamic cosmological doctrines which was one of the earliest significant contributions to the study of that area but could you describe what is meant by cosmology in the traditional sense first of all before I begin I want to say that I'm very happy to be able to be here dr. Carter Oni his spiritual teacher Abdullah had the Pallavicini was like a brother of mine who came to Islam the gifted lost Halle gave me through through my discussion with him in Tehran the 1960s so we have a spiritual link together although history from the point of view of Western astrophysics I speak from the point of view of traditional Islamic cosmology as that point of view which I'm presenting to you of course both of these uses of the word cosmology both of these uses of the word cosmology excuse me goes back to the Greek word cosmos but I want to emphasize that the word cosmos in Greek has two meanings one is order and one is beauty one is order and one is beauty both of which are emphasized very strongly in the or on concerning God's creation Maharaja has a bottle of gases in the Quran in truth not in belong in error or falsehood that the world is created and since God is beautiful his creation is also beautiful so the Muslims inherited this term but that it was not used in Arabic but the ideas behind it they incorporated with the Islamic idea of the cosmos number from that was born Islamic cosmology in our tradition cosmology is really the science of all there is other than God massive Allah all that is below the level of the absolute divine reality of God which try sends the cosmos s cosmology and therefore by definition it embraces not only the physical world the visible world and not even only the psychophysical world but all the worlds and grades are being the angelic the arc angelic the imaginal and so forth and so on which over the centuries the stomach thinkers have developed extensively Islam has one of the richest resources for the study of cosmology and distillation of sins and for us the cosmos is a totality of which the modern cause because the cosmos with all of his extension of millions of years and billions of zeroes are that is like a speck of dust on the ocean compared to the vast reality of the worlds beyond and of course beyond that God but is one thing which we are now productive are their own is a very devout Muslim but in addition to that being a scientist a major scientific in the world in his field agree upon those scientists or theistic is that this vast cosmos is created by God is unsustained by God what is laws come from and so forth or other matters of difference but it's very important in this short debate and unfortunately all together to distinguish between the very term cosmology as used in Islamic languages Alma Cohn and so forth and so on and the use of cosmology as it was transformed during the Renaissance from the cosmology of cosmography of the Renaissance with all the books published in his original country Italy and gradually in the worst of the after Galileo thank you very much dr. Gettler Tony this is an open-ended question but I wanted to ask what does Islam get right about cosmology that modern science gets wrong about cosmology as professionals were saying the best expanses of space and time but we observe is just one level of reality it's a lot of space a lot of time a lot of matter but it's a thin layer of thin plain in the multiple states of being which are described in Islamic thinking and especially in Islamic mysticism this world with respect to the divine pedestal is like a ring from in the desert a cut in a milk carton will be Arden Follette a ring from Naboo desert so we we are seeing a large expanse but this is material quantity and this physical world is not self-sufficient because it is ordered by mathematical laws and we don't know the origin of these mathematical laws except if we have a believer but because for a believer there is wisdom where is intelligence in the cosmos and the origin of his intelligence and wisdom is Allah who subhana Allah al ha little Muslim will the one who creates the world would give shape to the things so this is fundamental because unfortunately in modern cosmology we have lost the sense of the ontology the sense of metaphysics people are so fascinated by the results on body on science but they don't ask anymore the fundamental questions about what is real what is the meaning of our lives why is because most so beautiful what does it teach to us what does it mean for us as individual as human beings on the spiritual journey towards God and that's the problem with modern science it's not so much the method of science it's not so much even the results of science because these results change they are they are changing they're improving sometimes we ask questions sometimes we have the answer and the answers to our questions give birth to other questions so it's an endless quest the problem is with interpretation of science and the use of science in xiety these are the problems and since we have lost the mathematical the metaphysical perspective we have lost my metaphysical perspective we are doing a lot of wrong with science we are thinking that science is leading necessarily to evasion which is not who and we are using science for the development of a materialistic society which is not the goal of knowledge the goal of knowledge is to bring us closer to to God and that's the problem with modern science would you like to the question was what does Islam get right about cosmology that modern science gets wrong about cosmology I am a bit more radical in my criticism because in modern science if you're serious scientists the question of God or spiritual war is irrelevant as the science considers himself to be independent of metaphysics of religion of Revelation there are individuals who Christians for both phases and theologians or Muslims like Emer devout Muslims are astrophysicists that has nothing to do with the field of modern science discovered drugs on the cosmology they call it the worldview independent of any agent outside of the physical world which it considers to be the only reality going backwards the bifurcation of the car in which you put all the qualitative value Laden Astra's of life in the subjective pole in the kogatana Rusco Gatens rather than residential the world out there the world of extension so you mean when take art the early modern period who he separated the world essentially into the world of michigan's draw in the world of minds you see for the 17th century in the West even before modern science really arose in the hand of the coffin gotta lay on those people the worldview of Christian West the Christian was very similar to that of Islam Sen Thomas Aquinas after all rather be seen on why for over 500 references to Pristina 500 in the writings of saint thomas the founder of catholic theology for 700 our Catholic theology was 700 years I'm a medieval Catholic theology not st. Augustine of course now in that time this extreme separation between the knower and the known in the Cartesian sense did not exist in Western thought there was a relationship between the subject of the object and tourism's and Thomas others write extensively about this very similar Islamic review it must be resolute in our lovel maloom the word for our in Arabic with the world is Allah Allah that which can be known is raised to the act of knowledge and I am mr. Nalan is a solid scientist and scholar I the hospital relation through Allen between the two now this was in a kind of pseudo miraculous way you might say a kind of magical way gone away with done away with and so the aspect of the relation with the world of nature was reduced to the fact that somehow the subject can know the world of nature without anything of the world of itself be ready to the world of nature someone out there and most scientists have not been able to evade this there are now some new some modern physics in the quantum mechanics but our friend Warren Smith who was going to be here in map read it zombies Wars remarkable physicist who in fact says that it goes back to the error of his bifurcation and there is no ultimate separation or on their own an Islamic cosmology is based on that so we're critical of this trunk truncation of the very methods of knowing the world and also reducing what can be known to only the material to the resurrection so they've been all of expansion but really all of modern science that strictly speaking goes back to the experience expansion of the meaning that the cop gave to rest and self and we do not accept that because we believe that human intelligence given by God is such that is a variable to know God so in a sense what happens is the the myth the world of nature the world of the stars the world of the cosmos just becomes cut off it's there's no real way to account for how it is that we as people as human beings who have knowledge can even have a relationship with that world much less be able to say something absolute about it and say that it would say something about its nature and actually that this trajectory brings us to my next question which is this kind of ultimate reduction of things not only to mind and to matter but then mind is in a sense washed away and you're left only with matter and you have statements like the following which I want to ask your opinion on since it relates to cosmology and this is a quote from Stephen Hawking about whom there was a film recently and he's one of the most Stephen Hawking who says because there is a law such as gravity the universe can and will create itself from nothing spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing why the universe exists why we exist it is not necessary to invoke God and then he continues now this is really people because of the prestige of science because of the prestige and the fame of people like Hawking in his scientific achievements they think that this statements like this and many other similar statements have a kind of firm grounding to them but really it's a purely philosophical statement and in sends a kind of absurd philosophical statement because he's saying that you can have spontaneous creation from from nothing I could I mean there's a lot to unpack there I was wondering if you could both respond to that statement of Hawking and yeah it's problems it's a typical example of those philosophers and scientists but Imam al-ghazali was mentioning in his book inaudible all those scientists who are venturing out of a ranch of validity of reasons to other statements about God which are not valid and and so the message proposed by Imam al-ghazali a centuries ago is still valid for today too for this kind of a scientist it's absurd because it cannot be creation in physics creation of something from nothing but there is no nothing in the description of the universe by Hawking's there is the law of gravity where is the gravity field and the natural of the fields is something very personal in science so who created the law of gravity who created the law of gravity but makes the universe structure the galaxies appear the stars were planets we don't know why there is a law of gravity we don't know why there are laws in nature this is something very puzzling of a materialists of course a few centuries ago laws well designed as our own description of matter but now we cannot speak about matter without mentioning the mathematical structure whole matter matter is nothing more than mathematical entities where do these mathematical entities come from it's it's something very personal and Hawking's is not mentioning that is a kind of a smoke but he is putting on the real problem of modern science which is not address seeing the origin of the laws and for a believer of course the laws come from below giver that mean there are the sunnah of allah subhanahu Vitalis is to rule in creation to rule creation with habits i wear it with habits and these habits are described by our mathematics but there are these habits where are these regularities which are God's trace in in the world and so science does not lead necessarily to atheism it's true that most scientists now a theist it's true most scientists are materialists because most of our fellow citizens are materialists we are that better of a scientist and better than the other people but it's not a necessary conclusion unnecessary interpretation of modern science and the hope is that we can address science to put it at its proper level in the inverse scale of knowledge it's not a very high level we start on your Korean but there are levels of knowledge which are much higher than that because of course as human beings we are engaging in a journey towards the knowledge of God this is our goal as human beings but we have to address the issue of science otherwise we are going to be in some way polluted by science either because we adopt our religion or because we become fundamentalists that we don't want to hear about science oh and that's from more subtle because we we are polluted by science in our own religion we import scientist ISM within our own religion for instance when we say ok I the Koran is true because there are scientific statements in the Koran subpanel odds not necessary to see the proof of a current the roof of a current comes from its beauty from its light it doesn't come from science and this is the kind of subtle influence but we had to identify in order to protect ourselves and to put scientific knowledge at its proper level thank you very much dr. Nassir dr. Gita Tony mentioned Ghazali who in this context is very important Ghazali is even mentioned by modern popularizers of science like Neil deGrasse Tyson as being responsible for the backwardness or the anti scientific attitude of Islam because his criticism of philosophy and of natural philosophers he he says destroyed the spirit of rational or scientific inquiry in the Islamic world and this even makes its way into modern political attacks against the Islamic world it makes its way into the sort of tirades of Islamophobes Islam is anti rational it's anti scientific and so forth I was wondering if you could say something about the the the way in which Ghazali features into this story of Islam's relationship with science and maybe dispel some of the misunderstandings that arise in this connection one of the most important questions which faces people who are trying to study Islam today including a large number of younger Muslims in the West who are studying from Western sources this is a long story after shorten we do not have time but as early was sort of picked but Western Orientalism as a key person to study the Islamic intellectual life from a very particular point of view on Beulah gold see her other famous Orientalists concentrator must have attention on Pazzaglia and the criticism of rationalism of reason and this story was like this all right for a while Europe and the Islamic world or Alexis's civilizations but then they came along Roselli prevented the Muslim from thinking and Europeans did not have a Ghazali unfortunately they produced Albert Einstein that's the that's the that's the heart of the this asinine very stupid argument in fact it's much more fun question who was it that the court was not born on for a son why was he born in Paris what was Galileo born in Italy are not in Egypt I've written a lot about this have not time to go into it now but in fact it is the presence in Islam of a knowledge of a semental order of grosses America of philosophy in the traditional sense of harmony that in fact prevented this from happening what Roselli did was not to destroy rational thought he destroyed the possibility of rationalism which is a very different thing if the Westerners are unhappy that resulted in that they should be happy otherwise as I said the atomic bomb but imagine for a CERN Oppenheimer with the feminine job or I could have never happened historically so this question is that Ezeli attacked the power of rationalism to stand opposed to the tenets of faith here rather Messina he know he wrote he wrote a book on logical Azadi he's not a logical nor I'm not a Mia or Almonte refutation of logic he wrote a book on logic as early it was not he was against thinking he was a turning of the stream in which Islamic thought essentially turned more and more towards in were destroyed Ashraf to school of illumination to other modes of thought to to solve while not disbanding science because the third digit a bizarrely but woody Shiraz earnestly than to see the whole revival of his science some of the greatest physicists opted-in feel of optics in the history of science lived actually Africa's early Muslims so this is not what happened and finally this is an important issue now that the blind application of modern science that killing us all if Galileo had remained only in the library to burn our up in the environment across is available have that place application of all these things as soon as something is made in order to make money is applied no matter what its consequences for the world in which we live now that we have this crisis you should intelligent enough to say thank God there was a bizarrely who prevented from the forests are becoming as polluted as Detroit if you look at the history of the world altogether you will see that if the rest of the world has started like the West with Industrial Revolution essentially we're not there on right now and divided Islamic world which has such a remarkable science in physics and mathematics and astronomy and other you know very well if you had continued along of developing a kind of science independent of the religious worldview like the West it could not be around know or would have been destroyed so I don't want to make a virtue out of necessity EE store my fingers have been critical of khazzani including at Malo Sabra but also the federal some his ideas his idea that Islam stopped thinking because of Assad is totally false I'm you're a scholar of Estonia you know yourself also the non only in Persia as a measurement of sorrow in the Sunni world all the laser philosophical Sufism had developed in Egypt in Maghreb and so on and so on it's very much related to Cazale and read to the intellectual life for centuries of a part of the world a very large part of the world just so just to follow up on that dr. nasir I want to ask you and dr. you'd had only two related questions what should the what should the Islamic world do to the muslim-majority world do in this area in terms of steps to take maybe an education or in policy or what have you in other words there's a sense in which at least philosophically you both definitely agree that in this respect in modern cosmology it's on the wrong track I mean intellectually speaking what what are steps or approaches that one could take to correct and to head in a better direction because in some countries both the medicine system continuing and the moderns regional system in some countries the merit system was destroyed or modified to a larger sense like in Libya president we're not going to special examples but the general public which goes to state-run schools or now private schools in a western style all they're studying is Western science they're not standards in Islamic science it's long as two hours on the Sharia your study how to make ablution which is very necessary under a law at best a little about ethics but not about the nature of reality Islamic understanding of the nature of reality what metaphysics really is or is not taught in schools in an Islamic world but the belief is still there the vast majority appeal is to live in that world and that's what you have an inward paralysis has been created by introducing the Western educational system run mostly by Catholics now in the park Sidorov earth and Pakistan a country in which four million people died because of partition in order to create it Muhammad Ali Jinnah as Pakistan allaka my own country our canister openly about it 90% of the children of the elite of Pakistan generals has a banks ministers and so forth don't go to Western schools go to Catholic schools 90% it says if 90% of all America is a bunch sod to a Mojave School in Texas that's exactly what is happening and but what we should do I think there's three steps so first of all revive our own educational system in its fullness if we should have a contemporary in Madison like mousse on Sharia or like to all us are as were all subjects in al-azhar physics was taught in their fifties Tomic century it is unlike now with the tichel Islamic law and things like that secondly on the basis of that on the basis of that then to study Western subjects and so look upon West nor the Western subjects but no it's an Islamic point of view and thirdly to be able than to create our societies which are rooted in our own tradition but also the into consideration what is positive that Western science has developed short of the limitations which his worldview has imposed upon it this would be the ideal program and I was talking about so many things I wanted the pleasures of Malaysia or other places are small experiments in Pakistan right now in Iran they're trying to do it but we need a much larger engagement in this matter and inshallah can still be done anything that you wanted to say on that topic but especially I had a question for you about many young Muslims they tend to prefer going into the sciences either engineering or they go into other fields which are in the sciences and as we know science is not only a method it's not just a pure set of practices but it's a community it's a set of institutions there's a kind of authority within it and it's not always easy if an individual wants to make his way through that as a believing Muslim is somewhat of faith coming from his own principle even within modern science even for those who are not people of faith those who hold heterodox ideas about let's say the nature of galaxy formation or quantum mechanics or what-have-you they're often ostracized or they have a heart practically speaking and so the empty the central part of my question is what are some ways that Muslims who are actually in the sciences right now and who don't really have a real it's how can they cope with their situation like how can they shield themselves and guard themselves or frame their practice so that they can have integrity within themselves but also while being able to succeed or do well outwardly in their profession the problem is that universities in Europe and the US and Canada have lost their their true meaning which is universal they are not universal anymore you are mentioning the fact that in the old Medeiros in the old schools every field of knowledge was taught to students from metaphysics to mathematics and physics going through Shariah Kalam and so on and so we have lost that in in the major universities of a world we have lost the universality of knowledge and we have restricted ourselves to very specific levels where is the list I don't know it what contacts the list of all the sciences which are currently developed in universities there are 3,000 different Sciences 3000 different branches of science and so we are training experts in one very specific field and total ignorance in all the other fields especially in in what is the ground in which knowledge grows which is metaphysics we are we are in need of metaphysics and my hope is that in the development of the new development of universities in the Arab Islamic world this vocation of the universities to reach a real young universalism is going to be fulfilled the universalism we can also play on the etymology it means versus unum towards were one normally the university is a place where you can integrate all the fields of knowledge within the perspectiva but ahead which is the very essence of metaphysics we have that in our tradition unfortunately we go through Western systems either in the West or in the Islamic countries where the Western system has been imported and we train people were fragmented we are just studying one thing and they they are very anxious about the whole perspective because they don't have the training in metaphysics so back to metaphysics back to metaphysics especially now but we are facing a very specific moment of a history of a humankind we are we are challenged by many different crises at different levels and economic crises social crisis and cultural crisis all the crisis and obviously also we a crisis of the our relationship with the environment and we versus the sacred character who nature and so we have to train our young people to address these questions not the questions of the past century but without coming questions how are we going to share limited resources in peace and justice on this earth and for that we need metaphysics we need to understand but the meaning of our lives is not consuming or over consuming it's the embellishment of inner self and that's metaphysics which is teaching us is a lesson dr. nasir earlier dr. Geetha Tony made a reference to the scientific interpretation of the Piranha and was was critical of it but I think maybe the audience would benefit maybe from a few more minutes of discussion about what what is this thing called sign the scientific in that chefs era lend me the scientific interpretation of the quran because the quran as everyone knows is replete with references to the world of nature the quran swears many oaths by different parts of the world of nature and some commentators really went very far in trying to make modern science and the quran somehow coincide or have a very particular relationship i was wondering if you could just say something about the history of that and its ramifications i'm glad you brought issue up because this issue is really intellectual wickedness and even evil that still exists in the storm of world in certain quarters it began in the 1890s in egypt and in person who was professionally a doctor called Alaskan Durrani wrote tosh.0 or on based on scientific interpretation of verses of the Quran would pretend to the science of that time and that time already the science was coming from the West this is the West most powerful I was military machine was destroying the stomach forces were regret it power is usually brings with his obedience and respect unfortunately a lot of Muslims in their heart that respectful more than sons that have been knowing what it was begin deserted in the eighty nine eighteen nineties in India a bit earlier anyway Italy I don't do with this particular issue after Alexander on his work a number of apologists who might say in Syria are the places then in India itself and in Iran in the 1830s and 40s began to write commentaries defending Islam on the basis that the verses of the Quran accorded with scientific theories or truth now this is something of a suicide but people who know science know that the results of modern science change all the time if you read Allah second there are now is sounds absurd when Newtonian physics is no longer accepted if it said that it said no see the famous Turkish commentator and the Verona's early treatises of the North Central says it was different there of Newtonian physics as a bacana be proof of the reality of Islam and that is rather stupidest on a nooner see this is very prevalent and also the idea of taking pride in the fact that islam develop science and it goes the logic if you reduce the citizen of this following the worst is great the worst says that science is great therefore science is great islam produced science therefore some is great so al akbar has reduced our carbon a crack as the west that is great not allah that's that is gist of the whole argument and it's very dangerous still goes on in my own country around if somebody invents some gadgets i was many the president of iran's leading university and sciences which is not called sheriff universities that most brilliant young muslim scientists and engineers where they're unbelievable have a modern sanford and MIT the if someone invents a machine you know an honor does get an award is on television but there's a great contribution to islam but it's not a great contribution to solve at all the machine could cause a lot of harm later on but idea of been taking pride in that we're doing what the Western should be important well because the West is what is important because we have a infer art accomplished toward the west let's sit down and take a mirror from our face and realize it we have to overcome the inferiority complex and we have some brilliant young Muslim minds I have a lot of Hope in them but it's important that they be weaned away from his drug that I have been given without their knowing getting their education and trying to stand independently on their own feet and be able to be critical of not only something that Western science might say wrong or goes wrong but also the Islamic interpretation of that whereas you're young Muslims scholar you know where was the reversal taking place in this country we have a lot of young Muslim scholars have gone to the field of Islamic studies and they made the Western interpretation of this Islamic but with an Islamic name the way of getting ahead in the academic world was a very very dangerous thing but the West is the motto medieval was so much her love that says winkin omnia Veritas is a jihad our call bottled as the Quran the truth is always trial dr. Tanya the in a couple of minutes we have left is there more that you would like to say on the subject of how the sacred scriptures and their relationship to the world of nature and how it is that Muslims in some cases get it very wrong as to what that relationship should be and like how they really should be approaching it sometimes people come to me and they ask me I have questions students in science who are Muslims young Muslims about which one is true is science true or is religion true the point is but maybe we have to think a little bit more about what truth means because truth in science has a bit vanished during the 20th century as you know we can't say that our theories are true they are corroborated by the facts until new facts appear and we have to change our theory so that means science it it's it's more than mere opinion but it's not true it's just something which works which works until it is disproved by the facts if we have that in mind we we can't put science at its proper level in the scale of knowledge whereas religious truth is the capability of religion to lead us in our spiritual journey to the contemplation of the one who is the truth that is al Haq Allah Subhanahu WA Ta'ala this is the definition of religious truth all that doctrines all the practices of religion have a single goal that is bring us to the knowledge of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala this is the meaning of truth so if we have that in mind i think that we we we are not we should not have troubles with science we should on no contrary use science for what it is that is maybe for practical purposes maybe for the amazement in front of a beauty of nature of a beauty of a cosmos which is unveiled by science but it should not change our hearts and it should not put us straight from the spiritual journey because this is the most important thing but we have to to do earth in our lives we we do not have any guarantee that we can understand everything in the world but we have a promise in the holy quran but we will face god and we will know him this is something which is amazing thank you please join me in thanking our speakers for a wonderful panel thank you so much you [Applause]

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Keywords: ris, islam, ristalks, 'ris, talks', muhammad, inspiration, motivation, toronto, reviving the islamic spirit, conference, convention, islamic conference, youth

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Length: 45min 32sec (2732 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 27 2019