Yaqeen Institute's Islamic Curriculum: Lesson 1 Notes

Couldn’t find any resources on Yaqeen Institute’s Islamic Curriculum, so I’ll be posting my notes here as I get through it. Maybe someone finds them helpful.
They’re not very well-structured or presented, so you’ll need the lesson plan besides you to know what parts of it I’m referring to.
I make EPUB versions of all lesson plans (slides embedded!) available at https://github.com/catsquawk/yaqeen-institute-curriculum-epubs/.

Worksheet: The Scientific Revolution

• The condition of 16th century Europe under the Roman Catholic Church
  • blind belief, lack of critical thinking about world around them
  • dictatorship, nobody could contribute to Europe’s understanding of the world.
• The conflict between Christian rulers and European scientists
  • blind belief contradicted observation and empirical evidence
  • people in power of the church shut down those who disagreed
• The belief that science, not religion can improve the human condition
  • medication for malaria was developed
  • empires grew
  • life expectancy increased
  • a lot of questions arose, existential crisis for some
• The efforts of early European scientists to devalue/shift the public perception of God, revelation and religion
  • letter system established to spread science
  • lied to church
  • published literature
• Excessive trust in the scientific method, observation, empirical knowledge to know reality and eliminating supernatural or spiritual explanation
  • too many questions, too few answers, humans are limited in ability and resources
  • efforts to understand supernatural go basically nowhere (alchemy and astrology attempts)

Reflection Questions

• Must God be proven through science and the scientific method?
  • In some way… yeah? How else do we come to the conclusion that God exists? Because somebody told us?
  • Or, maybe not, since God is supernatural and outside the observable universe. We can’t completely confirm nor deny God’s existence through the scientific method alone. If you could (you can’t) then that being probably isn’t worth calling a God since we’ve just observed them and reached their level(?)
  • Why believe anyways? Why care?
  • Can this question not be left unanswered?
  • How would you even begin to answer a question like that, without resorting to observation and the scientific method? It sounds impossible.
• “Although most people believed in God, they also developed a scientific method and, additionally, established faith in their own rational powers.” What do you think about this statement?
  • I think belief in God and science can sensibly coexist, understanding God’s creation and its magnificence can stengthen faith. The problem arises when contradictions seem to appear, like when Galileo’s discovery of heliocentricism contradicted what the scripture said at the time.
• Scientifically proven facts seem to be the only ones seriously accepted, believing in anything else is seen as “blind”, “indoctrinated” or “brainwashed”. The concept of God now is given the need to be scientifically proven when it simply cannot be.
  • We have discovered that we can deduce things with evidence, proving their truth and reality. Why entertain anything that hasn’t been proven? Things become understandable and predictable, not left to guesswork.
  • How do you even begin to interact with something not proven, if not the result of irrational bias, hallucination or delusion?

What is the main idea of the video?

• Real progress in humanity was achieved through the scientific method. Humans realised they could make conclusions based on observations and use that to understand the world around them.
• This understanding can be used to drastically better the lives of people through, for example, technology and medicine.

How can we know what is real?

• Observation and throrough experimentation, until and indisputable conslusion is reached.
• The scientific method

Religion is claimed to need “scientific” evidence today as it contradicted what was clear, observable reality at the time. This raised heavy skepticism around it.

• Is belief in God “irrational” or “absurd” without empirical evidence?
  • No, if you have reasons to back it up and not following it blind.
  • It may not be conclusively or empirically proven, but it’s also not unreasonable and laughable
  • Like theories in science (e.g The Big Bang Theory), it has supporting reasons, but is not proven.
    • Something worth mentioning, though, is that people don’t worship the Big Bang or shape their lives around it. To orient your entire life around something unproven may seem absurd, though I still think it isn’t, if accompanied with reasoning.  - How Scientism and Naturalism have shaped our worlds.
  • The scientific revolution made clear the fact that science is the only way to explain reality that aligns with our observations.
• Why do we need empirical evidence to prove God’s reality?
  • There are two probabilities: God exists, or God does not.
  • If you don’t have empirical evidence, you haven’t proved any one of those true.
  • How do you know if something unobserved is real, without observing it yourself?
    • No idea.

The purpose of existence and the meaning of life is to accumulate wealth.

• You can’t confirm or deny it with the scientific method alone.
• There’s no way to measure meaning or purpose. Perhaps how people perceive you after death? The number of lives you’ve saved? It’s all based on subjective morals and ethics.

Why does God need to be proven?

• If you’re dedication your whole life to something, I think it’s reasonabe to want to be absolutely certain in its (proven?) existence first.
• Scientific inquiry has lead to so much materialistic development, it clearly brings much more observable fruition than belief in God.

Reflection: What is problematic about being asked to “prove” God’s existence?

• Science and empirical evidence cannot prove God, as God is unobservable.
• It suggests that only “proven” things are worth considering and believing in, which isn’t the case.
• You can appreciate a person’s morality or a food’s taste without it being “proven”.
  • not very good examples, I’m aware.

The dominant pathway to knowing reality and its limitations

1. “Reality” is what is real and true, whether believed, observed or neither.
2. Since the Scientific Revolution, the dominant pathway and only acceptable pathway to Reality is through observation, experience and empirical evidence. You are to begin with heavy skepticism and question everything, only being personally convincted by what is empirically proven.
3. The limitations of this dominant pathway are that it fails to address the unobservable and subjective, which is meaningful to living a meaningful, morally correct life and addressing possible threats in the unobservable (e.g Hell).

What approach does the Quran take to discern reality?

• Metaphors, experiences and past events
• Oaths
• Gives reasons, not empirical evidence

Main idea of comic

• The heart can oppose reason and logic in favour of feedback from emotions or past experiences.
  • Is this true? Does the heart actually “feel”? Thought this was a common saying and not actual fact.
• The brain strictly operates on logic and reason.

Main idea of the verse

• In regards to knowledge outside the scope of the scientific inquiry, the heart is the vessel of reason.
• You can only use your emotions and experiences, as empirical evidence is unavailable.

How do these verses on God’s existence appeal to your heart?

• They scare me. If God and Islam are true, I may as well die and go to Hell already, this won’t be easy. I’ll lose too much. What if I don’t find peace?
• It’s cool if connecting to a supposed God could comfort me, I guess?
• Being grateful and thanking God for what I’ve been given sounds like a good thing.
• It’s comforting to believe true justice with come forth one day, but still not evry convince IMHO.

How do these verses on God’s existence appeal to your mind?

• They give valid reasons for God’s existence. I doubt the universe appeared from nothing, or created itself. I also doubt there’s no being more powerful than us, and we’re alone in this universe.

Why does the Quran mention our senses and hearts in the same verse?

• The senses and heart and part of the same whole, and they work together to understand reality.
• Addressing a single dimension only would suggest that one of the two are necessary to understand God’s Reality, disregarding its integration into the whole.