[First written as the Sixteenth Note of the Seventeenth Flash, this part of the Risale-i Nur was later designated as the Twenty-Third Hash because of its importance. For it puts naturalistic atheism to death with no chance of reani¬mation, and totally shatters the foundation stones of unbelief.]
This treatise explains through nine 'Impossibilities,' themselves compris¬ing at least ninety impossibilities, just how unreasonable, crude and supersti¬tious is the way taken by those Naturalists who are atheists. In order to cut short the discussion here and because these impossibilities have been explained in part in other sections of the Risale-i Nur, some steps in the argu¬ments have been skipped. It occurs to one, therefore, how is it that those famous and supposedly brilliant philosophers accepted such a blatantly obvi¬ous superstition, and continue to pursue that way. Well, the fact is they can¬not see its reality. And I am ready to explain in detail and prove through clear and decisive arguments to whoever doubts it that these crude, repug¬nant and unreasonable impossibilities are the necessary and unavoidable result of their way; in fact, the very gist of their creed.¹
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
Their prophets said: "Is there any doubt about God, Creator of the heavens and the earth?"²
By declaring through the use of a rhetorical question that there cannot and should not be any doubt about God Almighty, this verse clearly dem¬onstrates the Divine existence and unity.
A point to be mentioned before our discussion:
When I went to Ankara in 1922, the morale of the people of belief was extremely high as a result of the victory of the army of Islam over the Greeks. But I saw that an abominable current of atheism was treacherously trying to subvert, poison and destroy their minds. "O God!" I said, "this monster is going to harm the fundamentals of belief." At that point, since the above-mentioned verse makes self-evidently plain God's existence and unity, I sought assistance from it and wrote a treatise in Arabic consisting of a proof taken from the All-Wise Qur'an that was powerful enough to disperse and destroy that atheistic current. I had it printed in Ankara at the Yeni Gün Press. But, alas, those who knew Arabic were few and those who considered it seriously were rare. Also, its argument was in an extremely concise and abbreviated form. As a result, the treatise did not have the effect it should have done and sadly, that current of atheism both swelled and gained strength. Now, I feel compelled to explain a part of the proof in Turkish. Since certain parts of it have been fully explained in other sections of the Risale-i Nur, it will be written in summary form here. Those numer¬ous proofs in part unite in this proof; so each may be seen as an element of this proof.
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1. What occasioned lhe writing of this treatise were the attacks being made on the Qur'an by those who called everything that their corrupted minds could not reach a superstition, who were using Nature to justify unbelief, and were vilifying the truths of belief in a most aggres¬sive and ugly fashion. Those attacks stirred up in my heart an intense anger which resulted in those perverted atheists and falsifiers of the truth receiving vehement and harsh slaps. Other¬wise, the way generally followed by the Risale-i Nur is a mild, polite and persuasive one.
2. Qur'an, 14:10.