…is that people can be convinced by religion.

You may be surprised by what I have said and it is the opposite of what is often suggested.

A common assertion made by atheists is the supposed scientific basis for their beliefs, and quoting theories such as Occam’s razor. What they do not tell you is that whenever there has been a major scientific discovery, the scientists of that generation often did not accept it. It was only the next generation that would take that information and apply it.

In contrast with Islam, people are convinced by it. Even those born in Muslim families have to accept it. While it may be easier for them to accept Islam, Islam also has a huge number of converts that accept the religion. Many of these do so in spite of infamy and bad information that is spread.

When discussing the rejection of scientific progress, this has happened various times. Galileo was persecuted mainly by the Catholic church for his theory that the earth was not the centre of the universe. But it is not limited to this.

One of the biggest debates in history that has been thought by philosophers and scientists in the universe, whether it has always been there, has it always been the same and whether it will end.

For Muslims, the theology here is simply. God created the universe, so it can't have always existed. God started it from nothing, so it is not static, and we know that there will be a Judgement day so the universe has an end.

For atheists likewise, the beginning of the universe is (or atleast was before the 20th century) a major sign of the existence of God. Thus a beginning was rejected. A changing universe is also a sign of the universe beginning and was also rejected because it would imply that God exists. It was also argued that the universe will always exist.

All of this was turned on its head at the start of the 20th century where the scientific and engineering discoveries allowed light from distance object in the universe could be measured and with observations such as the red shift, it was found that objects in the universe were spreading further apart and with the background radiation it was theorised that this was a left over from the “big bang” when the universe was first created.

So far so uncontroversial. We have all studied this in schools and colleges. There is nothing new here, nothing that confounds.

Except that it does. The creation and discussion of the universe was always a crucible in which the existence of God was debated.

The science above is that Muslims like Al Ghazali theorised and argued in their times, made famous through the “Kalam argument”. It was the exact opposite of what atheists argued.

As these new discoveries challenged the very atheist view of the universe, many rockstar atheist scientists such as Sir Fred Hoyle rejected the observations and their theories until their death.

It was only when the next generation of scientists grew up and were given an education which did not treat these discoveries as alien did these concepts, while not universally accepted, are no longer considered controversial but mainstream science.

It has even come full circle today when some atheists will use these very theories and discoveries to expound the virtues and the excellency of the scientific method.

The Creation, expansion and end of the universe is an obvious crucible of debate between theists and atheists, so some may suggest that just like Galileo's theories which also had a religious element, maybe these are not the best subject to look at scientific impartiality.

But this is not the only element where such observations have been made. The same has also been observed in other fields, such as in the study of diseases and germs, where theories relation to germs made by Ignaz Semmelweis, were rejected by his peers until they found greater acceptance and importance in the subsequent generation of scientists 30 years later.

The polite way to put it is that the assertion that the scientific method has always convinced people with fact is in itself unscientific.