51 Quotes by Salman Ahmed Shaikh

Nature and natural laws do not explain the deeper meaning of life. They are in need of explanation themselves for their origin, purpose and designer. Descartes said: I think, therefore I am. It is also important to think ‘why I exist and where will I be when I am not (alive).

The ability to make machines can be used for more effective food production, distribution, clinical cures and better health. On the other hand, the same ability can be used to decimate species including human beings. The record of science taking a solo flight by discarding values in recent times has not impacted our technical progress, but it has resulted in the unprecedented loss of human lives in wars, extinction of species, ecological imbalances and irreversible damage to the environment.

Many scientists in the past did not regard scientific discoveries as a challenge to faith. They understood that what had been offered by modern science are better explanations of physical phenomena rather than finding a newer source of origin, creation and ‘will’ behind the physical phenomena. Isaac Newton is quoted to have said that gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.

Rediscovering regularity in physical realities is not the end-objective of existence. How we develop as adults from birth as an individual and how and when homo-sapiens as a whole came to exist in this form physically is all beside the point as far as the basic questions of purpose, essence and meaning of life are concerned.

Sam Harris writes that “Most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.” There are no objective morals then. Sam Harris is skeptical of free will. If that view is taken, then all judiciary and penal laws shall cease to exist. But, do they or would they?

Our medical reports, tests and the various chemical components in our bodies only describe our biology, chemistry and physics, but not our soul and inner self.

Who made the natural laws? Who made the fundamental forces of physics? Who makes them work? Who created the physical forces and their exact characteristics and their rules of operations in the universe? Who created the primordial inputs which are required for life to evolve?

The perception of god in the view of scientists and philosophers who do not believe in God is ‘god of the gaps’ which has to be invoked as an ad hoc presumption to bypass material explanations in certain instances where physical answers and explanations are absent for the time being. Their argument is that if a physical explanation can take us back to relying on some finite number of constant values related to forces and energy, then why to invoke god to fill the gap.

If we make intelligent robots, they can only know about their inventors and creators if that knowledge is inbuilt into them. Their recognition or non-recognition does not make any difference about the fact that they have been created by someone. Furthermore, their best source to know about their creator is the knowledge given by the creator itself.