You’ve probably seen the videos. A robot walking or crawling around, sensing its environment and figuring out how to do human-like tasks, such as opening doors. They’ve even learned how to do back flips now. The videos go viral on social media every few months, along with terrified reactions about how “the robot overlords are coming,” “we might as well submit now,” and so on.

Back-flipping bots aside, it makes sense to learn more about robots, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI). The website “Wait But Why” has an in-depth article on this topic [1], which discusses how AI is catching up to humans and in fact will eventually overtake us. Others have commented on the concept of the “singularity,” which is where AI will reach a point where it can self-improve, creating explosive increases of intelligence [2].

This has naturally created concern. Elon Musk says AI represents a fundamental risk…

RECOMMENDED READING LIST OF PROFESSOR TIMOTHY J WINTER
[compiled 6 April, 2009]

Timothy Winter
Sheikh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies
University of Cambridge

Timothy John Winter (born 1960), aka Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad, is a British Muslim thinker, professor, and translator. Winter has written about the interaction between Islam and secular issues spanning a wide range of disciplines. He has held a number of lectureships and administrative posts in British academia having to do with theology, the intellectual history of Islamic civilization, and international academic cooperation…[Read More]

Beginners:

1. Abdel, Haleem M. A., trans. The Qurʼan (New York: Oxford UP, 2005).
2. Du Pasquier, Roger. Unveiling Islam (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1990).
3. Emre, Yunus. The City of the Heart: Yunus Emre’s Verses of Wisdom and Love. trans. Süha Faiz (Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element, 1992).
4. al-Haddad, Abdullah. The Book of Assistance (London: Quilliam Press, 1989).
5. Hammad, Ahmad Zaki. Lasting Prayers of the…

Amongst the most memorable names to cross my ears as a child, growing up in a South Asian Muslim household, was that of (sir) Salman Rushdie. There was always an air of frustration, anger and utter hatred that seemed to accompany it’s mere mention by those of my kin. I was unaware, as a child, precisely what all the fuss was about. What I ended up gathering from the various snippets of conversations and outbursts was that he was a writer who had written some sort of novel in which the Prophet Muhammad, alongside Islam in general, was portrayed in a most vile sense. The grouping of words of those around me – including the words of those on television who would discuss him – was enough to create an authoritative perspective on the issue that I slowly, with a naive mind, took on as my own.

Regardless of what…

Hamza Andreas Tzortzis recently published an essay on consciousness, in which he aptly demonstrated that materialism cannot explain the phenomenon we know as consciousness in particular the hard problem of consciousness. He concluded his paper by inferring that God as the best explanation for conscious states. Furthermore Hamza explained why God was the best explanation by providing a five point breakdown which I have shared at the bottom of this post.

However some people have completely dismissed his explanation, claiming it does not explain anything, that this is the “GOD OF THE GAPS!” fallacy and so on, which is quite absurd. His inference quite clearly provides a cogent answer with great explanatory power, no one is trying to squeeze God into a gap. It seems to me that the problem is not that God is the best explanation; rather the problem seems to be well why should we accept this explanation since we don’t…