Epigraph

أَنزَلَ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَسَالَتْ أَوْدِيَةٌ بِقَدَرِهَا فَاحْتَمَلَ السَّيْلُ زَبَدًا رَّابِيًا ۚ وَمِمَّا يُوقِدُونَ عَلَيْهِ فِي النَّارِ ابْتِغَاءَ حِلْيَةٍ أَوْ مَتَاعٍ زَبَدٌ مِّثْلُهُ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ يَضْرِبُ اللَّهُ الْحَقَّ وَالْبَاطِلَ ۚ فَأَمَّا الزَّبَدُ فَيَذْهَبُ جُفَاءً ۖ وَأَمَّا مَا يَنفَعُ النَّاسَ فَيَمْكُثُ فِي الْأَرْضِ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ يَضْرِبُ اللَّهُ الْأَمْثَالَ 

Thematic Summary

The video presents an optimistic narrative of human progress driven by reason, science, and secular humanism. It argues that since the Enlightenment era, humanity has made unprecedented strides in well-being by embracing rational inquiry and empirical science in place of superstition or dogmatic authority. Enlightenment thinkers championed the motto “Dare to understand!” – rejecting the “dogmas and formulas” of religious or political authority in favor of free reason and open debate weforum.org. According to this view, applying human reason and scientific methods to solve problems has yielded dramatic improvements in life expectancy, health, safety, and freedom. For example, the video highlights that today “newborns…will live more than eight decades,” food is abundant, clean water and sanitation are readily available, infections are cured with medicine, wars are rarer, women can walk safely in public, and free speech is protected – benefits virtually unheard of in pre-Enlightenment timesweforum.org. These gains are portrayed as humanity’s own accomplishments through rational effort, “not cosmic birthrights” bestowed by fate or divine interventionweforum.org. In other words, progress is credited to human intellect, scientific inquiry, and secular governance rather than any supernatural force.

A key argument in the video is that this modern progress required a break from the past dominance of religious dogma. It notes that Enlightenment philosophers deliberately built a secular foundation for ethics and knowledge, spurred by the bitter lessons of history. They were, as the video suggests, “haunted by a historical memory of centuries of religious carnage: the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, [and] wars of religion.” In response, they developed humanism, a value system that “privileges the well-being of individual men, women, and children over the glory of the tribe, race, nation, or religion.”weforum.org. By elevating universal human welfare above sectarian or supernatural concerns, Enlightenment humanists sought to replace both superstition and cruelty with reason and compassion. The video gives the example that Enlightenment ideals led thinkers to condemn not only religiously-motivated violence but “also the secular cruelties of their age, including slavery…despotism… and sadistic punishments.” This intellectual movement ultimately pushed for reforms – from the abolition of slavery and torture to the expansion of individual rights – which are held up as undeniable moral progress in human historyweforum.org. Proponents of this view (often secular humanists) contend that if ending slavery and brutality is not “progress,” nothing is. Thus, the video’s core thesis is that human progress has been powered by our capacity for rational, scientific thought and a secular moral vision, which together have enabled society to overcome ages of ignorance and injustice. As one commentator summarized, “the evidence shows that most of the moral development of the last several centuries has been the result of secular forces, and that the most important of these are reason and science, which emerged from the Enlightenment.”catholicmoraltheology.com In short, reason, science, and secular humanist values are credited as the engines of progress, lifting humanity from darkness into an era of unprecedented enlightenment and prosperity.

Critique of the Secular Paradigm

While the secular-rationalist narrative of progress is compelling, it faces significant critiques on historical, philosophical, and moral grounds. Historically, critics argue that it is an oversimplification to claim progress occurred solely due to abandoning religion. The relationship between religion and progress is far more intertwined and complex than the “religion vs. reason” dichotomy suggestscatholicmoraltheology.com. For instance, modern scholarship has debunked the old “Dark Ages” myth which implied that scientific thought lay dormant until secular Enlightenment thinkers revived it. In reality, systematic science and rational inquiry were developing in religious contexts long before the 18th century. Historians note that the essential methods of empirical science were “well-developed during the Christian Middle Ages”, undermining the notion that science only arose by rejecting faithcatholicmoraltheology.com. Likewise, key ideas that enabled progress – such as the belief in an orderly, law-governed universe – originated within religious worldviews. As one analysis observes, the very belief “that the world is governed by natural laws that can be discovered and understood” was made possible by the Christian idea of a transcendent Creator who designed an intelligible natural ordercatholicmoraltheology.com. In other words, the secular-scientific outlook itself drew upon metaphysical assumptions inherited from religion. This suggests that religion and reason have not been strictly at odds; rather, they often co-operated in advancing knowledge (for example, many pioneering scientists were themselves religious). It is therefore misleading to attribute progress exclusively to an “atheist paradigm” – the reality is more nuanced, with secular and religious influences deeply intertwined in the story of human progresscatholicmoraltheology.com. Modern moral achievements – from movements for abolition, civil rights, to humanitarian ideals – frequently involved people of faith alongside secular thinkers, working from a shared moral vision even if they differed on its ultimate source. The secular narrative, by ignoring this synergy, can lapse into a faulty, one-sided history that discounts how religious ethics and communities also helped propel reforms toward justice and human dignity.

On philosophical and moral grounds, the idea that human rationality alone guarantees progress is strongly contested. Critics point out that “progress” can be a double-edged sword when guided only by human intellect without a moral compass. The English philosopher John Gray, for example, argues that modern humanists have turned “progress” into a sort of unquestioned dogma or “article of faith” – a “superstition, further from the truth about the human animal than any of the world’s religions.”fs.blog He and others caution that outside of material science, the notion of inevitable moral progress is not a law of nature but a cultural myth. History shows that knowledge and technical power do not automatically make us better as a species. Scientific advances have undeniably given humans greater control over nature and improved our living standards, but the same advances have also magnified our capacity for cruelty and destructionfs.blog. The 20th century, for instance, witnessed industrialized warfare and genocide on an unprecedented scale – horrors perpetrated not by superstitious primitives, but by regimes often justifying their actions in secular, “rational” terms. As Gray observes, “our tools allow us to go to the Moon but also murder each other with great alacrity. They have no morality attached to them.”fs.blog A society may become highly advanced in science and still commit gross moral evils – a sobering fact that challenges the equation of intellectual progress with moral progress. Rationality, when severed from higher ethical values, can even rationalize evil: history has seen “enlightened” philosophies perverted into pseudo-scientific racism, eugenics, or totalitarian social engineering – all in the name of creating a better world. In short, human reason is a tool – one that can be used for good or ill. It does not inherently provide moral guidance or ultimate purposes. Gray puts it bluntly: “Knowledge does not make us free. It leaves us as we have always been, prey to every kind of folly.”fs.blog From this perspective, the secular faith that human rationality alone will inevitably guide us to moral truth is naïve. It overlooks the enduring “flaws in human nature” – greed, power-lust, tribalism – which reason and science by themselves cannot erasefs.blogfs.blog. In fact, when progress is measured purely by material or technical metrics, it may mask underlying moral decay (for example, a society might be very wealthy and scientifically advanced yet rife with injustice or spiritual emptiness). True progress requires wisdom about good ends, not just clever means.

Furthermore, insisting that progress stems “solely” from secular forces ignores how moral vision and value-based commitments (often rooted in religious or philosophical convictions) have been critical to humanitarian progress. Even avowedly secular authors concede that we need a richer explanation for why we choose to use our knowledge for good. The Catholic moral theologian Matthew Shadle, while valuing science and secular institutions, emphasizes that we should “question the premise that we must choose between religion and secularism” when explaining moral progresscatholicmoraltheology.com. He notes that secular rationality did not simply replace religion in a vacuum; rather, modern moral achievements emerged through “complex ways that secularism and religion are intertwined” in our cultural evolutioncatholicmoraltheology.com. In many cases, religious ethics provided the original impetus for concepts like human rights, equality, and the intrinsic value of each person – principles that later became enshrined in secular humanist thought. Without a transcendent basis for human dignity, purely materialist worldviews can falter in defending why humans ought to treat each other justly (beyond practical self-interest). Thus, a purely materialistic or atheistic interpretation of progress is limited: it can describe how things improved (through science, technology, policy, etc.), but struggles to fully explain why humanity embraced certain moral progress in the first place, or why we should consider it “progress” at all. It is here that many see an opening for deeper metaphysical or theological explanations – ones that ground human rights and ethics in something higher than shifting human preferences. The secular paradigm, by denying any divine or cosmic moral order, ultimately lacks an objective anchor for values – it must borrow from a humanistic “faith” in goodness that it cannot empirically prove. This inherent limitation invites us to consider an alternative perspective: that moral and civilizational progress may be underpinned by a divine providence guiding humanity toward truth, rather than by human rationality alone.

Qur’anic Argument from Surah Ar-Ra’d (13:17)

From an Islamic theological perspective, lasting moral and civilizational progress is seen as a manifestation of divine truth and providence working through human history, rather than the exclusive product of human intellect. A powerful illustration of this view is found in Surah Ar-Ra’d, verse 17 of the Qur’an, which presents a vivid parable about the relationship between truth and falsehood – and by extension, about what truly benefits humanity. The verse reads: “He sends down water from the sky, and the valleys flow each according to its measure, and the torrent carries a swelling foam… Thus Allah illustrates truth and falsehood. As for the foam, it vanishes like scum; but that which benefits the people remains on the earth. Thus does Allah set forth parables.”internetmosque.net. In this metaphor, the rainwater flowing in streams represents truth – life-giving and nourishing – while the frothy scum or foam that rises to the surface represents falsehood – empty and transientacademyofislam.com. Just as useless foam is carried away and disappears, leaving behind clear water that sustains life, falsehood is ultimately swept aside, whereas truth endures and provides real benefitacademyofislam.com. Allah “likens the foam and scum to falsehood, while the water that remains and is beneficial to human beings is likened to truth”academyofislam.com. This Qur’anic parable carries a profound implication: only truth (al-haqq) yields enduring progress and benefit for mankind, whereas falsehood (al-batil) – no matter how prominent or pervasive for a time – will fade away without lasting gain.

In the context of our discussion, “truth” in the Qur’anic sense encompasses the moral and spiritual truths revealed by God – the principles of justice, compassion, and righteousness that reflect the divine will – whereas “falsehood” can be understood as ideas or practices contrary to that divine guidance, including the error of denying God’s providence. The Qur’an thus offers a metaphysical framework in which human progress is not measured only by material output or intellectual feats, but by alignment with eternal truth and goodness. Divine providence is central to this view of progress. It is God who “sends down” truth and guidance (just as He sends the life-giving rain) for the benefit of humanity. Islamic theology holds that human reason and ingenuity, while valuable, are themselves gifts from God and are meant to operate within the moral order that God has established. When individuals and societies adhere to that divinely revealed moral truth, they thrive and advance in a way that is truly beneficial (materially and ethically). But when they chase “false” ideals – e.g. ungodly ideologies, injustice, materialism devoid of morality – any apparent progress proves illusory or short-lived, like foam dissipating on water. History, as seen through the Qur’an, is replete with examples of powerful civilizations that collapsed due to moral corruption, despite their material prowess, because they were built on arrogance, oppression, or spiritual falsehood. As the Qur’an elsewhere reminds, “Falsehood is bound to perish,” and truth, by Allah’s decree, will prevail in the endacademyofislam.com. In fact, Allah explicitly states in another verse: “We hurl the truth against falsehood, and it breaks its head, and behold, falsehood perishes!”academyofislam.com. This conveys a strong sense that God actively intervenes in support of truth, ensuring that over time truth triumphs over lies. From this angle, the moral arc of history is bent by divine hand: what we call human moral progress (such as the abolition of certain evils or the spread of greater justice) can be seen as the gradual victory of truth over falsehood by God’s plan, rather than a random byproduct of value-neutral evolution.

Surah Ar-Ra’d 13:17 offers a richer metaphysical understanding of progress by framing it in terms of what is ultimately real and good rather than what is temporarily effective. The “foam” of falsehood may loom large for a while – much as purely material or atheistic philosophies may achieve short-term success or popularity – but it is insubstantial and “empty inside,” destined to be cast offacademyofislam.com. By contrast, the water of truth is quietly powerful, nourishing life without needing to draw attention to itselfacademyofislam.com. This suggests that many flashy accomplishments that lack a foundation in truth (moral goodness) are, in God’s eyes, weightless – they do not feed the true growth of humanity’s soul and may even wither away with time. Only what is grounded in truth – in alignment with God’s will – will take root and remain. Applied to the notion of human progress: technological or social changes devoid of moral truth are like a showy foam, perhaps praised as “progress” in their time, but ultimately not enduring in value. For progress to be real and lasting, it must rest on the solid ground of ethical truth and divine guidance. From a Qur’anic viewpoint, human reason and science are not rejected – they are in fact encouraged – but they are not self-sufficient sources of guidance. They need the illumination of Revelation to ensure that our advances are directed toward beneficial ends. The Qur’an says that God’s guidance comes to all, much like rain reaching every part of the land, but each human heart or society accepts it according to its capacityacademyofislam.com. Those who absorb this divine guidance can cultivate fertile, flourishing communities, whereas those that shut it out remain barren or are overwhelmed by the froth of false pursuitsacademyofislam.com. In Islamic theology, this is seen as part of divine providence (al-qadar) – God, in His wisdom, allows societies to rise or fall, but He ultimately nurtures the good and lets the evil erode. Crucially, human intellect (al-‘aql) is seen as a God-given tool that works in tandem with revelation (wahy). When we use our rational faculties within the moral boundaries God has set, we achieve genuine progress that benefits mankind and pleases God. But when intellect is divorced from divine guidance, it can produce “clever devils” – intelligent but misguided efforts that may advance material capacity while harming our moral purpose.

In sum, the Qur’anic perspective (exemplified by 13:17) invites us to view human progress not as a purely human conquest but as part of a larger spiritual narrative. It asserts that truth (and true progress) comes from God, and that any advancement is ultimately enabled by God’s providence and the timeless moral truths He instilled in creation. What the secular-rational narrative calls “progress” is not rejected, but it is reinterpreted: those improvements in human welfare are not solely humanity patting itself on the back, but rather signs of mankind gradually discovering and implementing values that reflect divine truth (such as justice, mercy, the sanctity of life). Even atheists or secular people, from this view, achieve good things only by operating within the natural moral order (fitrah) that God ordained – often unknowingly upholding parts of the truth (e.g. honesty, compassion) which their conscience, a God-given faculty, perceives. The limitations of a purely materialistic account of progress become clear when we consider the ultimate outcomes: Material progress can turn to “scum” if misdirected, whereas progress grounded in morality and faith leaves a lasting legacy. Thus, the Qur’an offers a teleological and moral dimension to progress – it’s not just the quantity of life (longevity, wealth, knowledge) that matters, but the quality of life in terms of righteousness and justice. In this theological view, Divine Providence is the author of the moral arc of history. Human reason and effort are instruments, but the credit for guiding humanity toward betterment belongs to the Truth that God sends forth, which gradually purifies human civilization much like water cleansing away impurities. As the parable of Surah Ar-Ra’d (13:17) teaches, falsehood will not last – only truth and the good it brings to humanity will endureinternetmosque.net. Therefore, moral and civilizational progress is secured not by reason alone, but by reason guided and restrained by the divine truths and values that Providence provides. This richer metaphysical understanding of progress situates our achievements in a cosmic framework: what is of true and lasting benefit to humankind is that which aligns with God’s will (the truth), and it is ultimately God who causes such truth to prevail. In contrast to the secular paradigm, which credits human intellect as the sole driver of progress, the Qur’anic paradigm humbles us to recognize a higher source behind our advances – one that ensures that good ultimately triumphs and endures, whereas unguided human endeavors crumble like foam in the tideacademyofislam.cominternetmosque.net.

Sources:

• Pinker, Steven. Enlightenment Now – Excerpt on the ideals of reason, science, humanism and progressweforum.orgweforum.orgweforum.orgweforum.org
• Shermer, Michael. The Moral Arc – Claim that reason and science (secular forces) drive moral progresscatholicmoraltheology.com
• Shadle, Matthew. “Secularism, Religion, and Moral Progress.” Catholic Moral Theology – Critique of the secular-progress narrative and the intertwining of secular and religious contributionscatholicmoraltheology.comcatholicmoraltheology.comcatholicmoraltheology.com
• Gray, John. Straw Dogs – Criticism of faith in progress as superstition; technology’s ambivalent impact on good and evilfs.blogfs.blogfs.blog
• Qur’an 13:17 – “Allah shows forth truth and falsehood…” (parable of water and foam)internetmosque.net with commentaryacademyofislam.comacademyofislam.comacademyofislam.com detailing truth’s enduring benefit vs falsehood’s evanescence.