For the complete debate with materialists see this list

Wrapping up the discussion on materialism and spirituality 

By: Ali Sina 

There are facets of science that we do not understand. Some assume these are paranormal phenomena and others simply dismiss them as hocus pocus.

Let me make an example. It is observed that some animals somehow know when an earthquake is going to strike. I recall when I was ten years old and we lived in a village. One night the hens refused to go to their nests. That was a very strange behavior because we never had problem with them and they used to go to their nests on their own every evening. That very night an earthquake struck. This phenomenon has been observed worldwide and a Japanese scientist is now studying fish to determine how animals can predict earthquakes. You may think this is paranormal and dismiss it. As a matter of fact there are people who utterly deny anything that they do not understand and cannot be explained by our discovered science. But fortunately there are those who are skeptics and study these phenomena. If we discover how animals come to sense catastrophes like earthquake and can use it to our advantage this would be a great discovery and advance in science.

By now, the stories of wild animals fleeing the deadly tsunami before it struck Asia and Africa are near legendary. (Source) 

Some dogs are also reported to sense when their owners are approaching the house. Some experiments have been performed and it has been determined that in most cases this has nothing to do with the sound of the car of the owner or his footsteps.

Some animals (cats and dogs) have managed to travel many miles and find their owners. These animals found the new address sometimes in a different town where they have never been before.

Homing pigeons are known to go back to their homes even if they are taken unconscious to a place hundreds of miles away.

Many scientists believe that there is an “elastic magnetic field”, between living creatures and their loved ones that somehow make them communicate telepathically. These scientists are of the opinion that humans too have this magnetic field around them. The field has not yet been identified or observed. It is a plausible theory. 

Many people will tell you that they sense when something bad happens to their loved ones. All these experiences prove that there is some kind of magnetic field that binds us humans and animals together, perhaps through love.

Some people do not understand this and what they do not understand in their opinion cannot exist. So instead of becoming curious of these unexplainable phenomena they deny them.

Sometimes these so called paranormal experiences are internal. For example; seeing extraterrestrials or being abducted are not "lies" (at least not all of them). It happens to many people but the phenomenon is mental. It has to do with temporal lobe epilepsy. That is basically the experience that Muhammad had, only he used to see angels, jinn and demons and was taken to the seventh heaven.

Every so called paranormal phenomenon has an explanation. Some of those explanations we already know and some we don’t. It would be shortsighted to deny all the phenomena that we do not understand.

Curiously the fanatical religious people are the ones how once leave the swamp of religion fall into the quagmire of materialism. The same people who once fell for Islam, after leaving it fall prey to materialism. The attitude is the same… DENIAL! Whether you deny the logic or you deny the obvious phenomena that science cannot explain, your mental conditioning is the same. You are unable to tackle things that are beyond your comprehension. This is what I call fanaticism. Anyone who is unwilling or incapable to view the reality under different light because it contradicts his mental conditioning is a fanatic. Now this does not mean we should accept every irrational belief. On the contrary we should get rid of our beliefs altogether and be critical and skeptics at all times. The moment you think you have found the truth, is the moment that you have lost it.

Some friends raised the point that even if the claims of paranormal are real, so what? What are their use for me or for humanity or why even discuss it in Faith Freedom International?  

I am going to answer this question and I hope this will sum up this debate and put an end to it.  

First of all not everything should be viewed for its utilitarian values. We go to Mars for what? There is nothing there for us. So, why bother? It is because it satisfies our curiosity. And that is one heck of a reason. It is in our nature to solve mysteries and find out the truth behind the things.  

The main purpose of skepticism is to understand the mysteries. Let me give you one example:  

Today I watched the Discovery Channel and there was a story about vampires. There are many legends about vampires and many of them are documented by very honest eye witnesses. A pseudo skeptic would dismiss it as fairy tale and would not even talk about it. Fortunately, not every one is pseudo skeptic. We have also many true skeptics. One of these true skeptics decided to find out the truth behind this legend. He studied those legends and the description of the vampires. All those legends had some similarities. The victims reported that somebody like a ghost was sitting on their chest and making it difficult for them to breath. The victims used to get paler and paler. They coughed and ejected blood. When they died often other members of the family used to be affected by the same symptoms and they too died. This made people believe that the dead is coming back to take away other family members. 

So they used to dig up their cadaver to drive a stick into their heart and supposedly kill them. They saw that after their death, their hair and finger nails had grown. This was to them the proof that they are still alive. This is of course natural because after we die cells keep living for few more days and hairs and nails keep growing. They also found fresh blood in the mouth of the dead, which to them was proof that these were vampires who had risen from their thumb to suck the blood of the living. Of course this was the blood of the defunct now flowing from his chest to his mouth. They found their bodies were bloated. That was to them the indication that they had drank a lot of blood. Of course it was gas naturally produced in the body during decomposition. After impaling them with sticks the trapped gas was released and goring through their throat and the vocal cords it sounded as if they were groaning.   

This skeptic did not just dismiss all these legends as fairy tales. He exhumed the body of one accused of being a Dracula and tested its DNA. His finding proved his suspicion. These people accused of being vampires died of tuberculosis. All the symptoms described in the old legends were consistent with tuberculosis. When he tested the DNA of these poor people, he found out the truth. At that time people did not know about contagious diseases. So if one caught this disease, other members of the family would get it and die too.  

What is the benefit of knowing the truth behind a legend? May be just satisfying our curiosity is all there is to it. But what is illogical is to dismiss it and call it hocus pocus  just because we do not understand it. This is a good example why dogmatism is wrong and why one must keep an open mind and not dismiss any claim just because it defies our understanding. It is important that we understand the mysteries behind all the claims of paranormal. 

One may say ah but that is not paranormal. Well it was up until now! the pseudo skeptic community derided it, and called all those claims hallucinations. Paranormal is something that can't be explained. Once we understand them, they will no more be paranormal. But we can't understand anything as long as  we keep denying their existence or worse indulge in mindless mockeries.  

This is not to say that all claims of paranormal have scientific explanation. Most of them do but things like ESP or  telepathy may never be explained so easily. They may actually point to an immaterial world that could be called as spiritual in nature. 

This example is to support the fact that there are indeed phenomena that are unexplainable and the stubborn denial of the materialists is nothing short of religious dogmatism.


Some of the occurrences of paranormal do not have any explanation yet. I find it hypocritical and dishonest when the materialists instead of saying we don’t know, resort to character assassinations. This dishonesty was exposed when we read one pseudo skeptic berating the performance of a certain psychic as “extremely unimpressive” and the other qualified him as “master of deception”. One who is master of anything must be also impressive. Or if he is not impressive, he certainly is not a master but a rookie. Also one can see the same kind of dishonesty when instead of verifying the claim of psychic power of Van Praagh one materialist attacked this person’s ignorance on other unrelated subjects. If Van Praagh said skeptics have done a lot of harm, this is proof of his foolishness. But we are not here to assess Van Praagh’s intelligence or wisdom but rather his psychic ability.

It is said that even Hitler had some psychic powers (I just heard this and do not know the details of it). If true, this does not mean that everything this monster did was right or conversely, his crimes against humanity do not nullify his psychic ability.

We see a lot of intellectual dishonesty in the pseudo skeptic crowd in berating any psychic or telepathic claim. The dishonesty of these people is not proof that psychic power exists but it only highlights their intellectual dishonesty.

The fact is that these phenomena remain unexplained and the existence of an immaterial world or thoughts projecting out of the mind and even breaking the time barrier are plausible theories.

Here I present one theory. Of course I do not have to prove it. It is just a theory and it could be wrong.

We know that thoughts are vibrations. These vibrations are what make the electroencephalograph machine (lie detector) work. Vibrations are created by particles. In quantum physics time breaks down and becomes irrelevant. So is it possible that your thoughts work in times that have not yet occurred? If true, this would explain how we dream things that come to pass later, telepathy, premonition, remote viewing and other psychic claims.

The above theory of mine may not be true at all? But if true it answers this question and in fact it would be a ground breaking discovery (Please don’t forget to nominate me for Noble Prize :)). However, even if untrue it is an honest attempt to resolve a mystery.

What is dishonest is denial that such faculty exists. We see that it exists. We experience it our selves and these materialists lie to us in our face claiming that it does not exist. And when they fail, they start with their mockeries and character assassinations or rehash the tired cliché: “we do not say it does not exist, what we say is that it is not measurable and therefore irrelevant for science”

This is a double talk. On one hand they deny such thing exists and on the other they claim it might exist but they can’t talk about it. These are two different statements.

That is why I have little sympathy for this crowd. Not because they are wrong. We all could be wrong and the one who lays claim to be right is more wrong. I have no sympathy for them because they are deceitful, mockers and hooligans.

Perhaps knowing the truth will also help us use our own hidden potentials. Let us take the example of faith healing. The pseudo skeptics deny absolutely that such thing can exist. However we see the evidence. People go to churches, pagodas, temples or for heaven sake even mosques and get cured of diseases that the modern medicine has not been able to cure. Believe it or not people go to the thumb or a thug like Khomeini and they get cured.  

Denial and derision is not the answer. Something is going on. If you are a true skeptic, you do not listen to popular claim that Jesus, or Muhammad or Imam Hussain cured me. The explanation that people give as to why they were cured is irrelevant to you, but you do not deny that they got cured. You want to study this case and find out the truth behind it.  

Now we have the answer to this phenomenon. Faith heals. People who believe they are being healed do get healed. That is how placebo works. To test the potency of a new drug a group is chosen, half of them receive the drug and the other half receive the placebo which is basically made of starch and sugar packaged in the form of the drug. Those who receive the placebo do not know it. They think they are receiving the real thing and usually a big percentage of them get the same benefits that those receiving the real drug get. The efficacy of the drug is measured by comparing it to the placebo.  

What is in placebo that makes people better? Nothing! Then how is it that they get cured? It is because they believe they are going to get better and so they do.  

This proves that healing comes from within and is triggered by our brain. In fact all healing come from our brain. All what drugs do is, trigger the defense mechanism of the body by stimulating the brain to release the endorphins and other chemicals that would heal the body. This is also the way hypnosis works.  

Belief is a powerful human faculty. If we can tap into this, we can basically heal our selves at will and overcome many other shortcomings.  Despite the dogmatic denial of the pseudo skeptics of the materialist persuasion, today we are discovering that the body is not a biological machine made of various independently functioning parts.  More and more scientists are realizing that our mental state can influence our susceptibility to diseases. See this 

The benefit of the discovery of mind/body connection is enormous and being able to tap into this latent human power is exhilarating.  

The pseudo skeptics with materialistic persuasion are not after science or truth. They are promoting a religion based on materialism. There is nothing scientific, nothing logical and nothing rational about their belief. They are believers in a dogma that is contrary to human reason and observable facts. They fail in logics but excel in mockery and ad hominem.  

The more we discover the world around us the more we realize that there are realities that are not spatial or physical.  Today’s new brand of materialism is the nonreductive materialism. It affirms that psychological properties can be exemplified even in an immaterial world. This is an extension of the reductive materialism that holds every psychological property is equivalent or identical to a conjunction of physical properties.

Appeal to Authority

An argument presented by some of these pseudo rationalists in support of materialism is that since many scientists are also ontologically materialists, therefore materialism is true. This is of course a logical fallacy. The science has advanced through critical examination of the facts which is a function of rationalism. The materialistic doctrine of some of the scientists has no relevance in their scientific achievements.  There are scientists who are religionists. Darwin was a religious man. It wasn't his religious belief that led him to discover the evolution but his critical thinking. The scientists’ belief has nothing to do with their methodology in their study of science. If the methodology is correct, correct scientific discoveries will be made, irrespective of the epistemological views of the scientist.

Isaac Newton was a religious man. He was also a genius. This is no proof of the validity of his religious beliefs. In the same way the beliefs of the materialists has no relation to their scientific work.

Science advances through a methodology that is critical and analytical. It is not based on any belief system. One can be materialist or religionists, communist or capitalist and if he uses the correct scientific methodology he will come to the right conclusions.

It is a fallacy to claim that just because someone is right in one thing, he must be right in all things or conversely if someone is wrong in some things he is wrong in all things. .

An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:

1. Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
2. Person A makes claim C about subject S.
3. Therefore, C is true.

Newton was a great mathematician but that is no proof that what he thought of religion was also true. Dawkins is also a great biologist but his beliefs of materialism are not necessarily true.

This is the same kind of fallacy we saw being employed by pseudo skeptics in this debate who berated Van Praagh for making a stupid statement about skeptics to dismiss his ability as a psychic.

As we wrap up this debate on Being and Nonbeing, I would like to answer the concern of some friends who expressed their view that such debate has no relevance to the goal expressed by Faith Freedom International.

The truth is however, that it is not entirely unrelated. At Faith Freedom we want to demonstrate the fallacy of Islam and help Muslims leave this dangerous cult that is threatening the peace of the world. However, Islam presents itself as a religion. This, of course is not true. Islam is a political movement bent to govern not just the minds of the people but also their lives and the entire world. However, since Muslims still perceive Islam as a religion, the first thing they would want to know is what alternatives are available if Islam is not true. Other religions may not satisfy many Muslims who after leaving a dogmatic and a fanatical belief may not wish to embrace yet another. So the alternative for such people is between Islam and complete disbelief.

To make the disbelief appealing we have to present it truthfully, logically and reasonably. If the only alternative to Islam is materialistic dogmatism then it is difficult to convince Muslims to leave Islam. It is easy to convince people to throw away the bathwater, but it is not easy to make them throw also the baby along with it. Nature hates vacuum. When we take away Islam from people, with all its lure of the afterlife, spirituality and otherworldliness and replace it with some patent lies of materialistic genre we have a very tough sell to make. Basically what we are doing is replacing one lie with another. This is why so many people resist making the plunge.

But if we are truthful to ourselves and to them, if we show them that rationalism does not mean embracing another dogmatism, that their inner senses do not lie to them, that if they are worried about spirituality, they should not, because the world may have another spiritual dimension, and we are not trying to sell another doctrine, it would be much easier to convince them that Muhammad was a liar. It is easy to show that Muhammad was a liar but it is not easy to convince them that their own senses lie to them, that spirituality is hocus pocus and that mater is all there is.

This is not just a matter of feel good factor but rather a matter of being truthful to our own selves, our own intuition and our own commonsense.

The best way to combat a lie is with truth, not with another lie. This is one of the obstacles facing Muslims who may want to leave Islam. They need alternatives. Other religions and materialism are NOT attractive alternatives to everyone. Other religions do not satisfy the apostate rationally and materialism does not quench his spiritual thirst. Both spirituality and rationality are human faculties. If we want to be whole, we have to satisfy both these needs.

Rational Spirituality is not a new doctrine. It is the recognition of these two basic human needs. It is the acknowledgment that we are spiritual beings but our spiritual guidance does not come from someone else. It comes through our own rational thinking. No one can be a guide to another person. We do not need prophets, messengers or gurus to tell us what to do. We all have our own inner compass to find our own way. We all have to learn to be prophets unto our own selves. All guidance we need can be found in the interpretation of the Golden Rule.