The Atheists Who Are Unmaking the World

A History of Humanity from a Logical Perspective

It should hardly surprise us that the world seems to be moving in only one direction, when the system — which, ultimately, is us — is slowly devouring democracy, our sense of community, and even our ability to ask questions.

We live in an age in which certain theories are repeated so often that they eventually acquire the status of untouchable truths. And today, questioning those theories is enough to make someone “controversial.”

But reading a theory at university does not mean that theory possesses all the answers. And millions of copies sold do not transform an interpretation of the human being into an absolute philosophical truth.

The real danger begins when we stop questioning what we are taught. We repeat ideas formulated by others, call them knowledge, and through constant repetition eventually begin to confuse consensus with truth.

In doing so, we become intellectual slaves to thoughts we have never truly thought for ourselves, contributing to the construction of a collective “truth” that perhaps we have never had the courage to put to the test.

Because a lie does not become true simply because millions of people repeat it. It merely becomes a lie that millions of people have stopped questioning.

Consider evolution.

We are taught that Homo sapiens belongs to the animal kingdom and that human beings and the other great apes share common ancestors.

To be clear: Darwin did not claim that we descended from the chimpanzees we see today. Evolutionary theory speaks instead of common ancestors and diverging evolutionary lineages.

But once that distinction has been made, we can finally ask the forbidden question:

Does this biological explanation truly explain the human being?

I do not believe it does.

If Everything Evolves, Why Does Nature Preserve?

Look around us.

Fish still exist. Microorganisms still exist. Apes still exist. There are organisms whose forms appear extraordinarily stable.

An apple remains an apple. An orange remains an orange. Water remains H₂O. The Earth remains the Earth.

The Sun continues to rise according to regularities that do not depend on our theories.

Of course, the evolutionary response is well known: evolution does not mean that every organism must constantly transform, nor that every species must change at the same rate.

And that is correct.

But that answer itself opens the door to a more interesting question.

If nature contains both transformation and stability, why do we so often tell the story of humanity as though biological transformation alone were sufficient to explain what we are?

A fish does not need to become something “higher” in order to continue existing, and a species well adapted to its environment may retain certain characteristics for immense periods of time.

Evolution itself does not contain a ladder compelling every organism to progress towards greater complexity.

Humanity, therefore, cannot simply be presented as the inevitable next rung on an evolutionary ladder.

Because according to evolutionary theory itself, that ladder does not exist.

The Ape Did Not Become Human

Here we need to eliminate a common misconception.

Modern science does not claim:

modern ape → human.

It proposes:

common ancestors → diverging evolutionary lineages → modern primates and hominins → Homo sapiens.

Fine.

But this addresses biological genealogy. It does not necessarily solve the problem of the human being.

We can compare bones, chromosomes and DNA sequences. We can reconstruct phylogenetic trees.

But when all of that is done, something extraordinary still stands before us:

a being capable of understanding that it exists.

A human being does not merely see.

We KNOW that we see.

We do not merely suffer.

We ASK why suffering exists.

We do not merely die.

We KNOW that we will die, and we construct entire philosophies around mortality.

We do not merely perceive something beautiful; we contemplate Beauty itself.

We do not simply react to behaviour; we construct an entire concept of Justice.

And it is here, in my view, that a purely materialistic explanation begins to reveal its limits.

The Elephant in the Room: The Intellect

Animals possess cognitive abilities that it would be absurd to deny.

They perceive, remember, learn and desire. Some use tools, communicate, solve problems and display extraordinarily complex social behaviour.

Yet the human being has developed something remarkable: a mind capable of systematically engaging with universals and abstractions.

Think only of truth, justice, being, infinity, causality, number — and God.

We may debate for centuries exactly what distinguishes the human mind from the animal mind, but we cannot pretend that the question does not exist.

And it is an ancient question.

In the philosophy of thinkers such as Avicenna, the human being possesses a rational intellect capable of apprehending universals.

The Active Intellect represents a higher reality through which the human intellect is actualised and reaches intelligible knowledge.

This is metaphysics, not neuroscience.

The Active Intellect is the “Giver of Forms”: that which illuminates the human mind and enables it to move beyond what the senses perceive, allowing us to grasp universal concepts such as truth, justice, goodness and being.

It does not merely allow us to see the world.

It allows us to understand it.

In Avicenna’s philosophy, the Active Intellect is also the source of prophetic inspiration. In the prophet, through an imaginative faculty brought to the highest degree of perfection, the emanations of the Active Intellect are received with exceptional power and clarity.

Here we encounter one of the fundamental distinctions traditionally attributed to the human being: not merely perceiving what exists, but understanding its meaning, conceiving the universal and questioning the nature of truth.

Furthermore, each of the nine celestial spheres is governed by an Intellect. Each Intellect contemplates the First — God, the ultimate principle — while also contemplating itself, thereby generating its own celestial sphere and the Intellect immediately beneath it.

The tenth Intellect is the Active Intellect (al-ʿaql al-faʿʿāl), which governs the sublunary world — our realm, situated, within this cosmology, beneath the sphere of the Moon.

And perhaps this is precisely why the philosophy raises a question that no brain scan can simply erase:

What, ultimately, is thought?

Harari and the Great Ape Family

In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari emphasises that Homo sapiens belongs to a biological family — the family of the great apes.

Biologically, this is not Harari’s personal invention. It is consistent with modern zoological classification and contemporary evolutionary theory.

But what deserves examination is what we do philosophically with that information.

Because an apparently simple statement —

“We are animals”

— can easily become something very different in popular culture:

“We are nothing but animals.”

And between those two statements lies an abyss.

The first is a biological classification.

The second is a conception of the human being.

Genetics can support the first.

It cannot, by itself, prove the second.

And this is what concerns me when books telling the story of humanity become global cultural phenomena: readers may cease to notice the precise point at which the evidence ends and interpretation begins.

And What Came Before the Ape?

For a moment, let us suppose that we accept the evolutionary reconstruction in its entirety.

Let us travel backwards.

Homo sapiens.

Earlier hominins.

Primates.

Mammals.

Vertebrates.

Simpler organisms.

The earliest forms of life.

Molecules.

Atoms.

Matter.

Energy.

The primordial universe.

And then?

Where did all of it come from?

That is the question no fossil can answer.

Biological evolution does not explain the ultimate origin of matter because it was never formulated to do so.

Abiogenesis attempts to understand how life may have emerged from prebiotic chemistry. But here too we must avoid caricaturing science: science does not claim that organic molecules magically appeared out of nothing.

Molecules arise from pre-existing matter.

Very well.

And the matter?

We can push the explanation further and further backwards.

But moving a question backwards is not necessarily the same thing as answering it.

Try Explaining Nothing

This brings us to the point I find most fascinating.

What is nothing?

Not empty space.

Not the quantum vacuum.

Not even a universe without stars.

Absolute nothingness: no matter, no energy, no space, no time, no laws and no possibilities.

If absolutely nothing exists, what exactly is supposed to produce something?

Nothing + nothing + nothing = ?

And suddenly we have a universe governed by mathematical regularities, matter capable of organising itself, life capable of reproducing, and finally a consciousness capable of asking where all of this came from?

Can we simply call all of this “chance” and consider the matter settled?

I cannot.

The Qur’an Asks a Devastating Question

And here a text more than fourteen centuries old poses a question of remarkable philosophical force:

“Were they created from nothing, or are they themselves the creators?”Qur’an, 52:35

Consider that question carefully.

It does not say: stop observing nature.

It does not say: stop reasoning.

It asks:

From nothing?

Or:

Did you create yourselves?

If both possibilities prove problematic, then we should at least have the intellectual courage to consider a third possibility:

that what is contingent depends upon something that is not contingent.

Avicenna Understood the Problem

Avicenna developed one of the most fascinating metaphysical arguments in the history of philosophy.

The things we observe could have failed to exist.

I might never have been born. A particular star might never have formed. A planet might never have existed.

These are contingent realities.

But if everything that exists were to receive its existence indefinitely from something else, the question concerning the foundation of the entire chain would remain.

Avicenna therefore arrives at the idea of the Necessary Existent: a reality that does not receive existence from anything else.

Within the Islamic perspective, this ultimate foundation is Allah.

Not an old man sitting above the clouds.

Not an object hidden somewhere inside the universe.

But the very foundation by virtue of which something is rather than is not.

Has Science Proven God?

No.

And we do not need to lie in order to defend God.

Experimental science has not demonstrated the existence of a Higher Intelligence.

But neither has it demonstrated that God does not exist.

It has not demonstrated that reality emerged from absolute nothingness.

It has not demonstrated that consciousness can be completely explained through matter.

It has not demonstrated that describing biological evolution is equivalent to explaining the meaning of the human being.

And this is where intellectual honesty matters.

The limits of science are not proof of God. But neither is the success of science proof that God does not exist.

Perhaps Darwin Is Not the Problem

Perhaps we have been fighting the wrong target.

Perhaps Darwin himself is not the problem.

The problem begins when a biological theory is transformed into a total philosophy of existence.

Darwin may attempt to explain how populations change. Genetics may explain why I share particular DNA sequences with other organisms.

Palaeontology may show me organisms that lived millions of years ago.

Yet none of these disciplines, by itself, can tell me:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

What is the Intellect?

Why am I capable of knowing a mathematical truth?

Why does consciousness exist?

What makes something just?

Why is the universe intelligible?

Is there a purpose?

These questions do not become foolish simply because they cannot be placed inside a test tube.

The Atheists Who Are Unmaking the World?

The title is deliberately provocative.

Because I do not believe that every atheist is “unmaking the world,” just as I do not believe that every believer makes it better. Indeed, the person who does not believe may sometimes be the one who searches most relentlessly, pursuing answers without end — only to find themselves confronted, eventually, by the very same final dilemma.

The real target is something else:

the conviction that humanity can eliminate every form of transcendence and then continue living as though nothing fundamental had changed.

If the human being is reduced exclusively to an organism, a consumer, a producer, a voter, an algorithm, a genetic inheritance and a collection of neuronal impulses, then we must at least ask what becomes of the words upon which our communities have been built:

dignity, responsibility, sacrifice, truth, good, evil and the sacred.

Perhaps the crisis in our sense of community did not begin with Darwin.

But a society that no longer knows how to answer the question “What is a human being?” inevitably risks allowing the market, technology or power to answer it on our behalf.

In the End, One Question Remains

We can study the biological history of humanity for another thousand years.

We should.

We can discover new fossils, sequence new genomes, understand the brain more deeply and perhaps move extraordinarily close to understanding the origin of life.

We should.

But even if one day we succeeded in reconstructing every single step:

matter → chemistry → life → organism → primate → Homo sapiens

one question would still remain.

Why do matter, laws and the very possibility of all this exist in the first place?

Science can explain with ever greater precision how what exists changes.

Philosophy asks why there is something there to change at all.

And the Qur’an gives its own answer:

Not nothingness.

Not humanity creating itself.

The Creator.

So perhaps the question is not:

“Which animal did we come from?”

but:

“Where does existence itself come from?”

And above all:

Who convinced us that we are no longer allowed to ask?

“Indeed, We created humans in the best form.”

Qur’an, 95:4