A review of the debate between Hamza Tzortis and Parvez Hoodbhoy
It was just yesterday when i happened to watch the debate which took place between our brother Hamza Tzortis and Parvez Hoodbhoy in lahore university of management sciences.It was the first debate of its kind in Pakistan and LUMS was a good venue for such a discussion as the mentioned institute stands for liberalism and it hosts such diverse opinions on its campus since long.
Dr Parvez Hoodbhoy , the MIT trained physicist who has done his doctorate in particle physics , has been serving as a voice of secularism and liberalism in Pakistan. He has been airing his views on political and strategic topics as well. Before this debate ,he was one of the four members who took part in a TV debate on the creation of universe and purpose of life on Geo news( The video can be found on youtube).He has a handsome amount of following in Quid e Azam university Islamabad where he is serving as the head of the physics department.
Brother Hamza Tzortis is a Greek convert to Islam.Born to secular parents , he converted to Islam nine years ago. He has engaged many prominent atheists including Dan Barker and Ed Bukner. He is a public speaker and has done his masters in psychology.
I must admit in the beginning that the debate was not much focused and could not yield into an obvious conclusion. The topic was much smokey and the reasons of its smokiness are understandable. Dr Hoodbhoy could not have afforded debating for Atheism in Pakistan and thats why he did not play on the front foot. The moderators of the debate must have been well aware of limitations of Dr Hoodbhoy so they came with a topic which was mild enough not to cause any issues for the Dr.
Brother Hamza Tzortis gave a very articulate opening for the Islamic world view and made some good philosophical and rational points. His main aim was to prove that the world view provided by Islam is perfectly reasonable , rational and compatible with the modern day epistemic realms including sciences. Dr Hoodbhoy in his response reduced rationality to Scientology and committed a straw-man logical fallacy. His main criticism surrounded the unscientific claims of some Muslims regarding science in Quran (which had nothing to do with the topic and neither had Hamza claimed that Quran is a book science). He then went on committing the fallacy of appeal to numbers and composition fallacy by saying "The internet forums are flooded with such unscientific claims about the Quran by Muslims". His biases were visible and obvious till the end and at the very end they finally overtook him and he got furious.
As Dr Hoodbhoy seemed less interested in defending or speaking for the atheistic world view in responce to the very coherent case built by Brother Hamza for the Islamic world view , I want to focus on the objections raised by Dr Parvez Hoodbhoy here now. His babbling about evidentialism , empiricism and varificationism will be enough to make one sure of his ignorance about Philosophy and i am sure that he has not given a deep thought to all what he said.The bubble of the pseudo-confidence and unwarranted , unjustified and unsubstantiated arrogance of Dr Hoodbhoy can be easily blasted. It is much easy to persuade oneself that he has understood something while he has understood nothing and i think this calamity has found Hoodbhoy.
On the empiricist point of view , the out world which the sciences inquire through our empirical senses breaks down to elector-chemical waves. What a person calls the outer world is infact naming a process incitement of rods and cones in the retina of the eyes which result in the origination of an elector-chemical wave (no different from the normal electric current but with a low magnitude ) and this ECV travels to the optic center of the brain through the optic nerve and thats it.If asked , it would have been more scientific for Mr Hoodbhoy to claim that the room was inside him and he was not inside the room. There is no scientific evidence for any existence in the outer world but still no one questions its existence. Similarly there is no scientific proof to assert that there are other minds in this world. There is no evidence for the reality of the past as well. It will be scientifically impossible to refute the person who claims that the present world was created some 10 seconds back including our memory. No matter how radical this claim may sound but on such reductionist scientific perspective of proof and evidence , its impossible to prove the past.
However , one sees that these "skeptics" almost never get skeptic about these issues and they digest these issues like the rest of us on pure belief. This is known as the "concept of properly basic belief" and same is true for God. Belief in God is a part of the properly basic belief so Hoodbhoy sahib was doing "special pleading" all the way in this discussion when he was talking about the necessity of proof and evidence.
The present Newtonian model of science is based on observation , prediction and experimentation (though these foundations are under threat these days due to the approach of physicists like Brian green and Jimmy gates etc towards the string theory .The famous theoretical physicist Lee Smolin has recently published a book "The trouble with physics" which shall be a good read on this issue) However the very notion which is the starting point of scientific method that is "1 Observe some part of the universe 2. Make some predictions about your observations 3. Run experiments over the predictions 4. Those which qualify , take them as scientific facts" can not be proved scientifically. How on earth can a person prove in a lab that this particular method of inquiry is "science" . This base of science is belief as it can not be verified by the very same scientific rules. Along with these lines , another question to ponder for Hoodbhoy will be that what scientific or experiment based evidence is there to conclude that only this method of inquiry is the "correct" method? I am sure there is none.
What about Maths then? Mathematics happen to be all internal and has absolutely nothing to do with laboratory. Where do the numbers exists and what experiment was carried out to conclude 2+2=4? Its all this internal (or apriori) of maths which corresponds so well to the natural world though the numbers have never traveled in the natural world. Kurt Godel had the right words for it. He said " What we call nature is not nature but an aspect of nature exposed to our method of questioning".
(to be continued Insa'Allah)
Dr Parvez Hoodbhoy , the MIT trained physicist who has done his doctorate in particle physics , has been serving as a voice of secularism and liberalism in Pakistan. He has been airing his views on political and strategic topics as well. Before this debate ,he was one of the four members who took part in a TV debate on the creation of universe and purpose of life on Geo news( The video can be found on youtube).He has a handsome amount of following in Quid e Azam university Islamabad where he is serving as the head of the physics department.
Brother Hamza Tzortis is a Greek convert to Islam.Born to secular parents , he converted to Islam nine years ago. He has engaged many prominent atheists including Dan Barker and Ed Bukner. He is a public speaker and has done his masters in psychology.
I must admit in the beginning that the debate was not much focused and could not yield into an obvious conclusion. The topic was much smokey and the reasons of its smokiness are understandable. Dr Hoodbhoy could not have afforded debating for Atheism in Pakistan and thats why he did not play on the front foot. The moderators of the debate must have been well aware of limitations of Dr Hoodbhoy so they came with a topic which was mild enough not to cause any issues for the Dr.
Brother Hamza Tzortis gave a very articulate opening for the Islamic world view and made some good philosophical and rational points. His main aim was to prove that the world view provided by Islam is perfectly reasonable , rational and compatible with the modern day epistemic realms including sciences. Dr Hoodbhoy in his response reduced rationality to Scientology and committed a straw-man logical fallacy. His main criticism surrounded the unscientific claims of some Muslims regarding science in Quran (which had nothing to do with the topic and neither had Hamza claimed that Quran is a book science). He then went on committing the fallacy of appeal to numbers and composition fallacy by saying "The internet forums are flooded with such unscientific claims about the Quran by Muslims". His biases were visible and obvious till the end and at the very end they finally overtook him and he got furious.
As Dr Hoodbhoy seemed less interested in defending or speaking for the atheistic world view in responce to the very coherent case built by Brother Hamza for the Islamic world view , I want to focus on the objections raised by Dr Parvez Hoodbhoy here now. His babbling about evidentialism , empiricism and varificationism will be enough to make one sure of his ignorance about Philosophy and i am sure that he has not given a deep thought to all what he said.The bubble of the pseudo-confidence and unwarranted , unjustified and unsubstantiated arrogance of Dr Hoodbhoy can be easily blasted. It is much easy to persuade oneself that he has understood something while he has understood nothing and i think this calamity has found Hoodbhoy.
On the empiricist point of view , the out world which the sciences inquire through our empirical senses breaks down to elector-chemical waves. What a person calls the outer world is infact naming a process incitement of rods and cones in the retina of the eyes which result in the origination of an elector-chemical wave (no different from the normal electric current but with a low magnitude ) and this ECV travels to the optic center of the brain through the optic nerve and thats it.If asked , it would have been more scientific for Mr Hoodbhoy to claim that the room was inside him and he was not inside the room. There is no scientific evidence for any existence in the outer world but still no one questions its existence. Similarly there is no scientific proof to assert that there are other minds in this world. There is no evidence for the reality of the past as well. It will be scientifically impossible to refute the person who claims that the present world was created some 10 seconds back including our memory. No matter how radical this claim may sound but on such reductionist scientific perspective of proof and evidence , its impossible to prove the past.
However , one sees that these "skeptics" almost never get skeptic about these issues and they digest these issues like the rest of us on pure belief. This is known as the "concept of properly basic belief" and same is true for God. Belief in God is a part of the properly basic belief so Hoodbhoy sahib was doing "special pleading" all the way in this discussion when he was talking about the necessity of proof and evidence.
The present Newtonian model of science is based on observation , prediction and experimentation (though these foundations are under threat these days due to the approach of physicists like Brian green and Jimmy gates etc towards the string theory .The famous theoretical physicist Lee Smolin has recently published a book "The trouble with physics" which shall be a good read on this issue) However the very notion which is the starting point of scientific method that is "1 Observe some part of the universe 2. Make some predictions about your observations 3. Run experiments over the predictions 4. Those which qualify , take them as scientific facts" can not be proved scientifically. How on earth can a person prove in a lab that this particular method of inquiry is "science" . This base of science is belief as it can not be verified by the very same scientific rules. Along with these lines , another question to ponder for Hoodbhoy will be that what scientific or experiment based evidence is there to conclude that only this method of inquiry is the "correct" method? I am sure there is none.
What about Maths then? Mathematics happen to be all internal and has absolutely nothing to do with laboratory. Where do the numbers exists and what experiment was carried out to conclude 2+2=4? Its all this internal (or apriori) of maths which corresponds so well to the natural world though the numbers have never traveled in the natural world. Kurt Godel had the right words for it. He said " What we call nature is not nature but an aspect of nature exposed to our method of questioning".
(to be continued Insa'Allah)
AssalaamuAlaikum Dr. Sahib,
ReplyDeleteGreat writing and analysis.
Just a tip: that when you are done with your writing then please copy and paste it in MS Word; it will highlight the spellings and grammar mistakes for you so that you can correct them.
Walaikum as sallam. Jazaka'Allahu Khair. Insha'Allah i will act on your advice.
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