Page 41 - The Struggle Against the Religion of Irreligion

The Disease of Materialism and Naturalism

In the Risale-i-Nur collection, a Qur’anic commentary by Said

Nursi, known as Bediüzzaman (Wonder of the Age) and one of the

greatest Islamic scholars of the 20th century, there is extensive

reference to the defects of materialism and naturalism. Materialism

can be defined as "accepting the existence of matter as the only

reality." Naturalism, on the other hand, is the worship of nature. With

these terms Bediüzzaman draws attention to materialism and

Darwinism, the foundations of disbelief, and gives a detailed account

of defects in the logic of these irreligious movements:

Or do they imagine as did the pharaoh-like materialists that

"they came into being by themselves, feed themselves, and by

themselves create everything they need" so that they refrain

from belief and worship? That means they all suppose

themselves to be the creator, whereas the creator of one thing

has to be the Creator of everything. That is to say, their pride

and conceit have made them so utterly stupid that they imagine

someone to be a possessor of absolute power who is absolutely

impotent and can be defeated by a fly or a microbe.

The materialists, whose use of reason is limited to what is

immediately apparent to them, have, in their nonsensical

39