The Debate
It is said that in the city of Baghdad, on an overcast night during the rule of the Abbassid empire, perhaps the height of the city’s standing in the world, two inconsequential philosophers, having had too much to drink at a gathering of some of the city’s intellectuals, were locked in a debate over the existence of god, much to the amusement of the other guests who gathered to laugh at and spur on the philosopher who blasphemed so openly.
The debate reached the point that is often reached in debates of this nature when the believer, a man known as al-Ghafir, said that god must exist by virtue of the complexity of life and the rich, rich tapestry of the universe, the intricacies of which could never be explained by medicine or astronomy. He added that the fact that the most meager, mangy dog or indeed even the plainest rock exists means that some first cause, some force that we cannot understand, predated and started the ball rolling, so to speak, on everything. The dog and the rock could hardly have arisen out of nothing.
The athiest, who no one seemed to actually know, and who was aware of the certain thrall in which he held the room, replied between fits of coughing that there was no logical reason to be sure that things hadn’t always been, or that a first cause was necessary; “cause and effect” was simply a pattern or technique that our minds had found gainful when it came to understanding the world around us. It was not a priori knowledge and had to be proved like any hypothesis.
The first philosopher was first a bit shocked at this position, but then laughed — an absurdity, he said, and half-seriously he challenged the athiest to try and disprove the “weak and unproven” idea of cause and effect by running shirtless through the rain that had quietly begun to fall outside during the course of their debate. The believer hypothesized that the athiest’s cough would become serious and that more likely than not, he would die.
To everyone’s horror, the athiest suddenly had a coughing fit that nearly shook his body from his chair. When he finally raised his head, he was given some water. At this point some suspected that he was trying to find a way out of his unenviable position in the debate, but after he took his last gulp of water, he smiled and agreed to try the experiment. Before anyone could stop him, he ran out into the streets waving his shirt in the nearly freezing rain, enjoying the clouds of his exhalation to no end and laughing like a maniac as he finally returned to see everyone waiting in silence and even pity.
As he dried off and was given a hot bowl of soup, he laughed trimphantly and said he felt cured. Indeed, he had not coughed since he walked in. He gloated to no end about how they were all pious fools who needed to find a new, more rigorous angle and to quit what he called their intellectual laziness in attributing everything to a god. When they all met in heaven, he said, he would clutch the cloud upon which they sat and tear the whole delicately woven tapestry to shreds to bring them back down to earth. Al-Ghafir replied, with slightly less conviction than he might have had earlier in the night, that they would not see the athiest, for he would be burning in hell.
When the rain let up everyone headed home, and the red-faced believer walked alone some distance behind the athiest, who was surrounded by laughing colleagues. At that moment he was thinking of a way to make sense of the events of the night, thinking that, in a way, the athiest’s recovery was a miracle in itself, and he ascertained that God was testing him, testing them all. He had to remain firm. It was just then that al-Ghafir was sent sprawling as, twenty feet ahead of him, a tremendous bolt of lightning struck and killed the athiest and two colleagues on the spot.
From then on, that neighborhood of the city became, even more than it had previously been, something of a religious stronghold. For the first time non-believers and, at the peak of the fervor, sometimes even people of other faiths, even “ahl al kitab” (people of the book i.e., Jews and Christians) were persecuted. The opinions of al-Ghafir, a convert himself, suddenly held great sway in many sections of society despite his having previously been looked upon as somewhat dull-witted, and he was ultimately able to argue with some success to intensify the persecution of non-believers.
But Al-Ghafir, as well as many of his colleagues, thought upon the first night’s events for the rest of their lives. One day, al-Ghafir fell ill with fever. In his delirium, he demanded to speak with the athiest to whom he had lost the debate, and asked that he be sent over immediately. When this meeting with the long-dead man was denied, he became upset and beat his servant as much as he was able, which, fortunately, was not very much. His state worsened, and feeling death creeping on, he calmed down, and on his deathbed, he renounced his faith.
Shortly after, both philosophers met in Hell, burning in their respective fires. After a few centuries, the philosopher who had been the believer suppressed the infinite pain of the fire, cleared his mind as best he could, and called out to the atheist, “What is your name, brother?”
The atheist walked out of his fire. He blew out his companion’s fire with a wave of his hand. He then reached down and pulled off the tapestry that had a moment earlier been the fiery floor and firmament of Hell to reveal the void. The two began a pleasant conversation, their first really.
