The Elimination of Metaphysics

Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.

—Genesis 7:4

Hear, Israel: You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with cities that have walls up to the sky. The people are strong and tall—Anakites! You know about them and have heard it said: “Who can stand up against the Anakites?” But be assured today that the Lord your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the Lord has promised you.

—Deuteronomy 9:1-34

They will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.

—Mark 16:18

Shall I inform you of something worse than that … those (Jews) who incurred the Curse of Allah and His Wrath, those of whom (some) He transformed into monkeys and swines, those who worshipped Taghut (false deities); such are worse in rank (on the Day of Resurrection in the Hell-fire), and far more astray from the Right Path (in the life of this world).

—Quran 5:60

Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has made one of them to excel the other, and because they spend (to support them) from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient (to Allah and to their husbands), and guard in the husband’s absence what Allah orders them to guard (e.g. their chastity, their husband’s property, etc.). As to those women on whose part you see ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next), refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them (lightly, if it is useful), but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance).

—Quran 4:34

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the divinity … that ever was propagated since man began to exist.

—Thomas Paine1

The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive—a definition that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence … Man’s mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God … Man’s standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man’s power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith … The purpose of man’s life … is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.

—Ayn Rand2

An enduring feature of religious fanaticism is that when it is unchecked by reason and common sense observation it easily runs into bizarre and dangerous extremes. One of the saddest examples of this is the case of Mother Teresa. While no one would question the piety or religious devotion of the woman, few people understand the extent to which she and the order she founded remained complacent in the face of suffering—out of a religious belief that suffering and misfortune were to be treasured. Christopher Hitchens, a writer and journalist who composed an extensively-researched critique of Mother Teresa, argues that for her, “The point is not the honest relief of suffering but the promulgation of a cult based on death and suffering and subjection.”3

The evidence for Hitchens’ position is considerable. At the top of the list is the intentionally substandard medical care provided by the Calcutta Home for Dying Destitutes, which she founded. Father Paul Chetcuti, a Jesuit priest who worked at the Home, reported that Teresa refused “all sophisticated equipment in her homes, even a simple microscope which could be useful in the rapid diagnosis of certain sicknesses.”4 The editor of British medical journal The Lancet reported in 1994 that the sisters who ran the Home did not conduct medical investigations or even bother to separate the curable from the incurable. “Such systematic approaches,” he wrote, “are alien to the ethos of the home.”5

Lack of money or ability was not the reason. By the time of the editor’s visit in 1994, Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity had been the recipients of millions of dollars in charitable contributions. They could have done more, but it was “alien to the ethos” of the nuns. When the order opened a home in the Bronx, regulations required an elevator in the building for the sake of the disabled. The city offered to pay for the required elevator. But Mother Teresa would not allow even a free elevator to be installed. In the words of a former volunteer, the nuns and their leader were “obsessed with using only the simplest of means for our work.” In fact, when the sisters were providing medical care in Haiti they went so far as to reuse needles until they became completely blunt and unusable. Even when they saw pain caused by blunted needles and volunteers offered to procure more needles for free, the sisters still refused.6

As former volunteer Susan Shields explains, Mother Teresa and her fellow nuns believed that their willingness to endure suffering was pleasing to God. Because of their suffering, they felt, God would dispense more grace to humanity. In other words, the job of Mother Teresa and her order was to sanctify and amplify the suffering of other people. Actually relieving their suffering was not part of their central purpose.7 Mother Teresa expressed this very idea in her own words: “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.”8

It must be pointed out here that Mother Teresa herself never denied that her primary goal was not medical care. She insisted to a would-be biographer, “we are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers. We are religious, we are religious, we are religious.”9 She is not entirely to blame for the image of her constructed by her fans and the media in the West, many of whom knew next to nothing about the woman or how she and her order operated. In fact, after reading her posthumously released letters, many of them full of details of mental anguish, Hitchens concluded that “all the things that made Mother Teresa famous—the endless hard toil, the bitter austerity, the ostentatious religious orthodoxy—were only part of an effort to still the misery within.”10

The letters Hitchens refers to reveal Mother Teresa experienced a profound crisis of faith which troubled her throughout her life. In one letter written just after beginning her work in Calcutta, she wrote: “Where is my faith? Even deep down there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. If there be a God—please forgive me.”11 The doubts she felt upon beginning her work for the destitute would haunt her throughout her life. Nevertheless, several priests she confided in encouraged her to continue what she was doing, saying her agonizing was only a demonstration of her true faith.12 This woman who left her home and family at the age of 18 apparently lived with inner feelings of despair for 50 years until her death because ranking members of the Catholic Church told her to embrace it as a sign of nearness to God. In her work, she was only passing on to others what had been encouraged in her: a primitive glorification of pain.

While Mother Teresa is more of a victim of religious extremism, sometimes the extremists turn out to be profound victimizers of others. This was the case with Swami Bhaktipada, the leader of the American Hare Krishna movement. Born Keith Gordon Ham in Peekskill, New York, Bhaktipada was the son of a conservative Baptist minister who became a Hare Krishna as an adult and founded New Vrindaban, the largest Hare Krishna community in America in 1968. The community was wracked by scandals in the 1980s as police investigated charges of sexual abuse of children by staff members of a school there, the murder of two devotees, and the embezzlement of more than ten million dollars by Bhaktipada himself. He was convicted of racketeering, eventually pleading guilty in 1996 and serving eight years of a 12-year prison sentence.

Warren Jeffs the leader of an offshoot Mormon group called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), is an even more extreme example. Jeffs was briefly on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List for fleeing prosecution for arranging marriages between his adult male followers and underage girls as young as 12. One of his unfortunate victims was a 14-year-old girl Jeffs forced into marriage with her 19-year- old first cousin. This was accepted by many of his followers, who believed Jeffs to be the prophet of God. In 2011, Jeffs was himself found guilty of sexual assault against two of his “wives,” aged 12 and 15.13

Some religious extremes involve outright charlatanism, as is the case with Sathya Sai Baba. This Indian guru claimed to be a miracle worker capable of miraculous healings, resurrection of the dead, and materializing small objects out of thin air. When a physicist challenged him in the 1970s to work his “miracles” under controlled conditions Sai Baba refused. In the 1990s, allegations surfaced that Sai Baba had been guilty of sexually molesting young boys on his religious compound. The allegations were taken seriously enough that a BBC documentary in 2004 followed them in detail. Nothing ever came of the allegations, however, as Sai Baba was extremely well connected politically: his followers included a former Indian Prime Minister.14

In quite extreme cases a religious charlatan may even believe his own story. This seems to have been the case with Kentucky native and Pentecostal preacher James Coots. Based on his reading of the Bible, Coots thought a true believer couldn’t be harmed by poisonous snakebites since he was protected by God. As part of his faith he regularly handled all manner of dangerous snakes, even losing half a finger to one bite and personally witnessing the deaths of parishioners. In 2014 Coots himself suffered a venomous bite. Yet, based on his previously expressed wishes, his family refused all medical treatment, believing the poison would not harm him. He died shortly after receiving the injury.15

Religion does not always run to fanaticism. In the words of Dr. Charles Kimball, the Director of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma, religion can be perfectly good and useful when it is “an inclusive faith rooted in tradition,” and when it embraces “religious diversity and pluralism.” We have a number of examples of leading religious figures who exemplify these qualities: Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Francis are all religious men who practiced an inclusive faith and embraced religious diversity. However, Professor Kimball also identifies what he calls five warning signs that a religion is becoming evil. The warning signs include: making absolutist truth claims, requiring blind obedience to doctrine, establishing an ideal time (such as the lifetime of Muhammad as an exemplary era for all mankind), believing the ends justify any means, and declaring Holy War.16 On all five points, Islam exemplifies the warning signs to an extreme degree.

Perhaps the greatest of all self-serving religious leaders was the Prophet Muhammad, who was so absorbed in his own perceived greatness that he saw himself as the final solution to all of mankind’s problems. He seems to have captivated people with the grandiosity of his megalomaniacal claims, despite the fact that none of his claims could be proven. The claims, for example, that Muhammad is the prophet of God or that the Qur’an was revealed to him by an angel cannot be falsified by evidence or logic. The real difference between Muhammad and the others mentioned above is that Muhammad’s followers number in the hundreds of millions and have been following his metaphysical doctrines for centuries. These facts do not make Islam more “true” than Warren Jeffs’ cult; they only make Islam a more serious threat.

With 1,400 years of unrelenting efforts to impose itself upon the world, Islam presents a distinct problem. The problem is rooted in metaphysics—or, as it is usually called when speaking of religion, the problem is theological. The Muslim believes he has a divine right to conquer all non-Muslim lands and annihilate the infidels. He believes this because Muhammad told him so (through the Qur’an or the Hadith), and Muhammad learned it from God. He is even promised eternal life so long as he follows the correct metaphysical doctrine revealed to Muhammad:

They [Muslims] are the people who do not love anyone who opposes God and His Messenger, not even if they were their fathers, or their sons, or their brothers, or their clan … He (Allah) shall admit them into Gardens underneath which rivers flow, therein to dwell forever, God being well-pleased with them, and they well-pleased with Him.17

The only way to put an end to it all is by rejecting Islam’s metaphysics (or, in religious terms, its theology) as not only absurd but deadly for humanity. The metaphysics of Islam, which is contained in its trilogy of authoritative documents (the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Sira), must be rejected in its entirety.

METAPHYSICS AND TRUTH

First, let’s take a closer look at this word we’ve been using, “metaphysics.” This word comes from ancient Greek philosophy and combines ‘meta’ (meaning after or beyond) and ‘physics’ (which refers to the natural world). So, metaphysics literally refers to something that is beyond nature. In this chapter, we use the word metaphysics to describe any system of belief or knowledge which proceeds from the assumptions (1) that there is a realm which transcends human experience (i.e. that there are things “beyond nature”) and (2) that we can have knowledge of this realm. As used here, metaphysics is an all-inclusive term that includes both religious or theological beliefs and philosophical systems. Although the focus here will be on Islam, the same arguments apply to other religious systems and metaphysical philosophical systems.

Islam and Judaism are essentially Abrahamic myths. As such, there is no logical reason to prefer them to Hellenic, Roman, or Teutonic myths. There is no reason to believe Abrahamic myths are either better or worse than Oriental, Native American, or African myths. No one is dying for Polynesian mythic beliefs. They are just as valid and meaningful as Abrahamic myths, so why should anyone kill or die for Abrahamic myths but not Polynesian ones?

The fundamental dogma of Islam is clearly metaphysical in our sense: “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet.” The first part of this formula involves the assumption of a realm transcending human experience, namely, the existence of the being “Allah.” The second part of the formula is characteristic of Semitic religions: that our knowledge of this realm is limited to what we’re told by one very special person (the Prophet), who must be believed. Every other person has his knowledge of the metaphysical realm, as it were, as second or third hand information. Another characteristic of Semitic religions on display in this formula is the implication that one must accept the words as true in order to gain access to a highly desirable metaphysical realm (paradise) or else suffer eternal torments in another, highly undesirable, metaphysical realm (hell).

There are two primary objections to be raised with regard to metaphysics in general and Islam in particular. One objection is linguistic and was pioneered by the British philosopher A.J. Ayer in the early 20th century. The other could be called scientific or empirical and dates back to the philosopher David Hume, a pivotal figure in the Anglo- Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century. The second objection has since been developed and elaborated in detail by other thinkers such as Karl Popper. As will soon become clear, the two objections frequently overlap and reinforce one another.

Ayer’s objection is called linguistic because he challenges the very language and words used by metaphysicians. As he puts it in Language, Truth & Logic:

[O]ne cannot overthrow a system of transcendent metaphysics merely by criticizing the way in which it comes into being. What is required is rather a criticism of the nature of the actual statements which comprise it. And this is the line of argument which we shall, in fact, pursue. For we shall maintain that no statement which refers to a “reality” transcending the limits of all possible sense-experience can possibly have any literal significance: from which it must follow that the labours of those who have striven to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the production of nonsense.18

Ayer’s objection is not that realms outside the senses exist or do not or that our minds are too limited to understand them. His objection is that the way language works makes all metaphysical statements inherently meaningless.19 Statements such as “Allah exists” or “Allah does not exist” have no significance because ‘Allah’ names something completely outside of sense experience.

Ayer provides a test, called the “criterion of verifiability,” by which we can determine if a given statement has meaningful significance. A sentence can be meaningful in one of two ways for Ayer. First, a sentence can be analytic, meaning that the truth of it is inherent in the definition of the term or terms being used. Saying that the internal angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees is an analytic statement because it is part of the definition of a triangle that its internal angles will produce such a sum. Second, a sentence can be verifiable. This means that in principle it would be possible through observation and experience to confirm what the sentence says as true or to reject it as false.20

A verifiable statement can be something as simple as “there is a piece of white paper on my desk” or as complex as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Simpler statements can be verified with one’s own senses, whereas something like the Theory of Relativity was at first only verifiable in principle. After numerous experiments confirmed predictions made by Einstein’s theory it began to take hold among physicists, eventually displacing the theories of classical physics. By contrast, metaphysical systems do not make statements that we can verify either in reality or in principle. There is no way for us to verify that the Archangel Gabriel revealed the word of Allah to Muhammad, nor could there ever be one. The statement is therefore without any factual meaning. It’s not even true or not true, it’s just nonsense words.

What Ayer says about the factual content of questions is a very useful passage to consider in this context. Ayer says:

We inquire in every case what observations would lead us to answer the question, one way or the other; and, if none can be discovered, we must conclude that the sentence under consideration does not, as far as we are concerned, express a genuine question, however strongly its grammatical appearance may suggest that it does.21

The end of this passage provides an insightful clue into how to understand metaphysical language. The reader will perhaps recall Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” from his children’s book, Through the Looking Glass. The poem begins with a series of nonsense words presented as if they were normal English terms:

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

The whole poem is a wonderful example of what Ayer means by “grammatical appearance” implying that a statement makes sense. The pseudo-words ‘brillig’ and ‘slithy’ are in the position of adjectives, ‘gyre and gimble’ look like a couple of verbs, and ‘toves’ and ‘wabe’ act like nouns. Yet none of these words refers to any real quality, action, or object. The whole fun of Carroll’s poem is that it is made up of nonsense words which act real because of grammatical structure even though they have no real content at all. This is what all metaphysical language does and how it works, as Ayer shows in his book. Metaphysical statements are no better than Jabberwocky. Muhammad’s command to “fear the wrath of Allah” is literally no more meaningful than Lewis Carroll saying “beware the Jabberwock, my son.”

Following along Ayer’s lines, the author Stuart Chase identified several examples of how metaphysical claims involve the misuse or abuse of language. Chase refers to a pivotal example of this as “word magic.” Word magic means identifying the words we use with the things we are trying to name, and trying to avoid naming concrete things by using abstract language.22 When Muhammad says his followers must believe him because he is a prophet, he is using word magic. He is trying to get people to identify him, the man, with the word “prophet,” which carries connotations of being a messenger of God. The hearer is not allowed to question whether such a thing as a prophet is possible, or by what right other than bald assertion Muhammad may be called one. Similarly, when Muhammad promises Paradise to his followers he is using word magic. Paradise is a metaphysical entity—one could never have experience of it or prove that it does not exist—but by using seemingly concrete words to talk about it, he makes it seem like something very real and concrete in its own right. The key point is that it is all words and nothing more.

Furthermore, the meaning of words is dependent upon time and context. As Chase explains, changes in culture and conditions lead to changes in meaning. What an American in 2014 means by the word ‘justice’ is different from what one meant in 1700. Even the meaning of ‘American’ has changed radically since that time. Because of such changes, we cannot expect the meaning of written documents to survive over time unless “the words are given new concepts in the light of new conditions.”23 But Islam insists upon the literal meaning of its own words—an insistence that ensures that the understanding of the world implicit in Islam will inevitably be left behind. As Chase puts it, “The more complicated culture becomes, the less reliable, relatively, is ordinary language.”24 Islam refuses to accept changes even to one word of the Qur’an; it is therefore inevitable that its very language is already unreliable and likely to become more so as the years progress.

As Chase explains, language must change as our knowledge and culture advance. Language cannot be the foundation for eternal laws and principles because the things language is meant to deal with are not eternal or unchanging. Hence:

When men use their hands and minds in the disciplines of science, of art, music, poetry, their knowledge and well-being advance. When they use their minds for establishing eternal laws and principles in philosophy, economics, jurisprudence, theology, politics, then the good life falters, and often turns most evil.25

Establishing eternal laws and principles is something language simply cannot do. Language is tied to real objects, the times in which it is being used, and the people who are using it. When we attempt to establish something “eternal” through language we inevitably run into trouble. Yet this is exactly what literal Islam attempts to do.

The scientific or empirical objection to metaphysics can be said to originate in the empiricism of David Hume. Hume argued that all of our knowledge and ideas originate in sense experience. While metaphysics pretends to offer access to another realm, it is rather simple to observe that all the notions we have of this other realm are composed out of ideas and impressions that came to us through our observations of this one. Even our notion of God, Hume points out, is no more than an augmentation without limit of qualities such as goodness and wisdom. More significantly, it is on the basis of careful empirical observation of this world that major advancements have been made in culture and human existence.

In the early 20th century, the philosopher Karl Popper identified the foundation of modern science as resting on what he called “falsifiable” claims. This means that science works by making claims about the world of experience which could, in principle, turn out to be wrong. Science does not “prove” a theory in the sense of dogmatically accepting it for all time. Rather, it adopts a theory that explains real phenomena in the world and holds onto it until the theory fails or another more successful and useful theory replaces it. The crucial point is that a truly scientific theory is open to being proven wrong.26

Metaphysical claims, by contrast, are completely non-falsifiable. In the case of Islam, even the idea of “falsifying” its claims runs directly counter to the religion itself. Questioning Muhammad or the teachings of Islam in any way is forbidden. This means that one of the most characteristic qualities of modern science, a quality that has enabled it to be so successful in the propagation of self-correcting and non-dogmatic knowledge, is utter anathema to the Islamic religion. Once someone accepts a metaphysical claim, there is almost no way to show them by experience that they have made a mistake. As the satirist Jonathan Swift put it, “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”

Popper characterized the advancement of science and human knowledge as a great process of trial and error. Someone proposes a theory, the theory provokes opposition or criticism, and then a solution is found which takes into account both the theory and its criticism. In order to advance, Popper says, we need three things: many theories to be tried out, diversity among the theories offered, and for a sufficiently severe or rigorous testing of the theories to take place.27 To these three, he then adds a fourth which as it were animates the rest: a spirit of critical thought. Mere acceptance of theories will get you nowhere:

It is clear that nothing can damage scientific development more than dogmatism. There can be no scientific development without free competition of thought … And there cannot be free competition of scientific thought without freedom of thought.28

The need for freedom of thought to make scientific and cultural advances is a critical reason why Popper championed what he called the “open society” favored by the modern West.

Metaphysics (and the doctrine of revelation in particular) takes the complete opposite approach from Popper’s process of trial and error. It is all dogma—everything has to be accepted without criticism. Taking a critical stance is suspect. Muhammad was notoriously impatient and hostile towards his critics even when he was just a street preacher in Mecca. Since Islam understands itself as a pure and perfect revelation from God, there is no need for criticism or advancement in Popper’s sense. Indeed, any advance is typically perceived as decay or error, which is why literalist Muslims are so hostile toward the encroachments of American culture in the Middle East. They don’t want a more advanced culture seducing people away from the eternal, unchanging path of Islam. Diversity of theories is nothing other than heresy from the metaphysical standpoint. Revelation commands the hearer not to think or consider or test but to accept and obey.

Empiricism provides a means whereby statements or claims can be determined to be meaningful and externally valid. One such means, mentioned above, is Ayer’s principle of verification. Ayer’s principle ties the meaningfulness of statements to empirical, observable, and thus demonstrable reality. Another means is the scientific demand for repeatability. Singular events are of little use or interest.

By contrast, the “knowledge” one gains through metaphysics gives us no way of making verifiable or demonstrable propositions about reality. For example, what makes Christianity’s picture of heaven more satisfying or believable than Islam’s? On what basis could we decide that Elijah is a more trustworthy prophet than Muhammad? There is also no appreciable means by which a metaphysical system can be improved upon, especially in the case of religions. Instead, as history shows, attempts to improve or correct religions tend to end up in producing new religions—usually involved in new conflicts with the old religions. This was the case with Protestant Christianity and all its various sects, and even Islam understands itself as a “correction” of Judaism and Christianity.

Empiricism is self-correcting. This is what enables modern science to progress. Once Einstein’s theories were proven to be more accurate than classical mechanics, all physicists accepted and adapted to the new system. There are no classical physicists anymore. But despite Islam’s alleged correction of Judaism and Christianity there are still Jews and Christians. Despite Protestantism’s alleged correction of Catholic practices there are still Catholics. Metaphysical systems cannot self-correct in the way that science can because the claims of science are demonstrable. No one argues about whether 2 + 3 = 5 because this fact can be demonstrated. Metaphysics does not have access to demonstrable facts; it has only persuasion through the use of language and appeals to fear or force to win adherents.

The empirical methods favored by science and philosophers like Ayer and Popper also offer us a way to prevent the propagation of false knowledge. In the empirical view, it is crucial to accurately portray reality and the natural world. If the means by which we produce our knowledge of the world is flawed, our knowledge itself will be flawed—that is, it will be incompatible with reality. As Chase puts it, “If a map is going to help us, it has to be accurate in its description of the territory.”29 Scientific knowledge not only provides us with such a map, it provides a means whereby the map can be continually refined to reflect changes or greater accuracy in portraying the underlying reality. When our map of reality is accurate, as it is in the case of modern engineering where mathematics is used as the map of the physical world, we are capable of building great things. Using science’s map of reality we split the atom and sent men to the moon. Using science’s map of reality we have expanded communication from inscribing on stones and writing letters to cellular phones and the Internet.

Metaphysics pretends to provide a map of another reality, but we have no access to it. No one can confirm that heaven or Allah is real. The great cathedrals of Europe may have been inspired by religious devotion, but they were erected by men who understood architecture and stonework—that is, by men with empirical knowledge of the real world. For the things of this world, metaphysics provides no guide at all that experience and common sense cannot provide better.

The author and atheist advocate Sam Harris summed up the two objections to metaphysics that we have been discussing in his 2004 book, The End of Faith:

We have seen that our beliefs are tightly coupled to the structure of language and to the apparent structure of the world. Our “freedom of belief,” if it exists at all, is minimal. Is a person really free to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence? No. Evidence (whether sensory or logical) is the only thing that suggests a given belief is really about the world in the first place.30

The structure of language, as both Ayer and Chase have shown, tells us that metaphysical statements have no real meaning whatsoever. The sensory or logical evidence Harris refers to corresponds directly to Ayer’s verification principle (whereby a statement must be analytic or empirical to be meaningful). A person who allows him or herself to be ruled by ideas for which he or she has no sensory or logical evidence is generally thought of as a madman or at least delusional.31

ANSWERING THE METAPHYSICIANS

The claim is put forward by religious persons that faith represents a different type of knowledge, one accessible only by the grace of God. Semitic religions such as Judaism and Islam hold to a version of this belief called the doctrine of revelation. According to this doctrine, the universe was created by a God who reveals his will only through a chosen agent (called a prophet). Everyone who wants salvation must accept the prophet as God’s messenger and obey him as such.32

This system of belief depends entirely upon people believing that the prophet is God’s messenger. Using the criteria discussed above, it is easy to show that such a claim is utter nonsense. The word is not the thing, so merely calling oneself a prophet does not make it so. Furthermore, the claim is completely beyond the realm of observation or demonstration so its truth value is zero. The prophet demands that people believe the following: that God is real, that the nature of God is whatever the prophet describes, and that the message from God is whatever the prophet says it is. Anyone making such demands would have to be extraordinarily upright to be even minimally credible. Yet Muhammad is a man who married a six year old girl, massacred 600 Jews in one day, and pronounced that “war is deception.”

In the end, the prophet has a very clear and demonstrable goal: to be worshipped as if he were God without being called God directly. The writer Anwar Shaikh demonstrates that this is the case with Muhammad with clarity and precision:

Though the Prophet calls himself Allah’s ABD or slave, Allah allows him to be above His laws … It is a condition of faith that a believer should love Allah, but this stipulation becomes insufficient because a person does not rank as a believer until he loves the prophet “more than his father, his children and all mankind” … Muhammad is as great as Allah because the former like the latter, has ninety-nine attributes … obedience to Muhammad becomes as compulsory as to Allah … Gradually, the Prophet shares authority with Allah: “It is not for any believer, man or woman, when God and His Messenger have decreed a matter, to have a choice in the affair.”33

Being a prophet is an obviously self-serving position without a shred of evidence.
What is true is what we can empirically and logically demonstrate. Truth is objective, measurable, verifiable, concrete fact. By adopting this view of what truth is, society has made tremendous advances in science, technology, and social life. On the basis of such advances, the philosopher Bertrand Russell rejected the approach of what he called “the classical tradition.” That approach consisted, according to Russell, in the belief that human reasoning—without any aid from information provided by the senses—could discover otherwise hidden secrets of the universe. Instead, Russell advocated the empiricist view that any “secrets” about the universe could be found only by scientific methods. All matters of fact become known to us through the senses, aided by the instruments and techniques of empirical science.34 Once this view is accepted, Russell argues, metaphysical arguments

and philosophical problems “all reduce themselves to problems of logic.”35
Religious people may object that inspiration or revelation or some other method provides access to knowledge that is unavailable to the senses. There is nothing wrong with people believing this. But when people make empirical, real-world demands based on what their metaphysics tells them, this is illegitimate. Islam demands that we pay tax to Muslims, that Muslims conquer and rape non-Muslims, and that everyone must believe in its theology or face death. These demands are empirical; they are real. Why should we give in to the demands of this theology rather than another? This is a practical question. As such, it can only be answered the way any practical question involving people with different beliefs should be answered: with reference to the standards of this world. Those standards are provided by empiricism, reason, and the scientific method. Any other approach is doomed to failure and violence because there is no way to decide between competing

theologies aside from persuasion or force.
Muslims may object that we should judge other religions by this standard. The

objection is irrelevant because the judgment of other religions has already been made. The Enlightenment already raised these issues and both religion and society changed accordingly. Christianity became more universal and pluralist, and society recognized its explicitly secular character. In the United States, this is exemplified in the common practice of separation of church and state and in the enshrinement of individual freedoms such as freedom of speech. The Indian tradition already recognizes non-metaphysical and anti- metaphysical belief systems. Buddhism is a religion without a metaphysical basis. Islamic metaphysics dominates ordinary social and political life in a way that has no parallel in any non-Muslim nation.

The essential point is that if metaphysical claims do not create real-world violence and suffering there is no reason to object to them. If Muslims embrace pluralism and give equal treatment to competing metaphysical systems (Hinduism or Christianity, for example), they can tell whatever stories they wish. But if their claims rise to the level of killing people and invading other nations the rest of the world cannot simply stand by. Atthat point we must insist that their claims are absurd and wrong. We cannot counter Islam with Christianity or Buddhism or any other metaphysical system. We counter Islam with truth—that is, with logic, empiricism, and the scientific method, which are the means by which we arrive at what knowledge we have of the world.

The claims of metaphysics are completely without merit. Metaphysical propositions are literally nonsensical, unverifiable, and useless with regard to living one’s life or the development of human life in general. Even if we leave aside the sheer number of human conflicts in the world today which arise from metaphysical or religious principles, it would still be true that metaphysics is useless for producing accurate knowledge of either human nature or reality. This is not cause for concern or worry. Rather, as Bertrand Russell points out, this should be perceived as a liberating piece of wisdom:

My Conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they were true. Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity.36

In the case of Islam, when we strip away the metaphysical nonsense and delusion we are left with a very different—and more accurate—view of both the religion and its founder. Muhammad was not a prophet; he was only a man. He used stories of another world to acquire all the usual things a man would desire: women, wealth, pleasure, and power over others. He used a fabricated religion to place his own tribe and people above all the others. Even today, all those who call themselves Muslims must adapt themselves to Arab language and Arab customs—in short, they must accept Arab supremacy and second- class citizenship even in their religion.

Once the nonsense of metaphysics is removed, world conflicts involving Muslims can be seen for what they are. The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is nothing more than a fight between ethnic groups that could be easily settled by a partition of territory. The conflict between Indians (Hindus) and Pakistanis (former Hindus) is an intra-ethnic conflict with no purpose. Truly, once the nonsense of metaphysics is removed Islam itself can be seen as nothing more than Arab imperialism—a drive to enslave the whole world to the Arab people and the Arab way of life. The claim that Islam rules the world by divine right is at bottom a maniacal demand that Arabs should rule the world.

Allah, heaven, and hell are mere words. They do not name real things in the world. The texts of Islam, the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Sira, which promise to tell us all about these content-free words, are thus little more than fiction. The conflicts engendered by these absurdities are not religious conflicts—there is no such thing. Religions are myths. The real aim of Islam is to subjugate all non-Arab peoples. Theology or metaphysics are only a tool to that end.

Given the length of time and the scope within which Islam operates, it is easy to see that Islamic imperialism is a far greater existential threat than Nazism or Communism ever were. Nazism was finished in less than 20 years; Communism in less than 80. Islam has threatened the world for 1,400 years and is still going, still virulent even in the face of the technological superiority of the West. There is still hope in opposing Islam if European and American intellectuals and political leaders will realize that Islam is the most virulent and potent imperialist adversary the West has faced—not merely a rival religion and metaphysical system. Islam seeks the return of the entire world to the tribal rule of seventh century Arabia. If our leaders fail to understand this grave danger, Western Civilization will meet the same fate of the Hindu, Buddhist, Coptic, Hellenic, and Persian Civilizations— all deformed, devoured, and destroyed by the very same Islamic imperialism.