[0:00]

INTERVIEWER: Welcome back to the channel. Today’s conversation is about something that may be shaping your life without your knowing it. My guest is Dr. Zia H. Shah, a physician in Upstate New York who practices internal medicine, pulmonary medicine and sleep medicine. He is also chief editor of The Muslim Times and writes at thequran.love, where he has published hundreds of articles on science, philosophy and religion. thequran He has just finished three essays on what he calls “the anesthesia of familiarity.” Dr. Shah, welcome.

DR. SHAH: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. I should warn your listeners that I’m going to try to wake them up a little today.

INTERVIEWER: Let’s start there, then. What is “the anesthesia of familiarity”?

DR. SHAH: Let me answer as a physician. Anesthesia is something we give patients so they don’t feel what’s happening to them. The surgery still happens. The patient just isn’t aware of it. Familiarity does the same thing to the mind. The sun rises every morning. Your heart beats about every second. You breathe all night while you sleep without a single conscious thought. Because these things happen every day, we stop noticing them. They’re no less extraordinary on the ten-thousandth morning than on the first. thequran We’ve simply been put to sleep.

INTERVIEWER: Where does the phrase come from?

DR. SHAH: I want to be fair about this, because it isn’t originally mine. It comes from Richard Dawkins, the well-known evolutionary biologist and atheist. The first chapter of his 1998 book Unweaving the Rainbow is titled “The Anaesthetic of Familiarity,” and it opens like this: “There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness, which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence.” Wikipediaabebooks A little later he writes: “Breaking through the anaesthetic of familiarity is what poets do best.” narod I agree with every word of his diagnosis. Where I part company is the prognosis. Dawkins wants us to wake up to a world that is wonderful but points to nothing beyond itself. The Quran wants us to wake up to a world that is wonderful because it is a sign. We both agree that we’re asleep. We disagree about what we wake up to. thequran

[3:00]

INTERVIEWER: Before the big questions, can you give us an example of someone actually waking up?

DR. SHAH: My favorite story involves bats. In the late 1930s two young Harvard scientists, Donald Griffin and Robert Galambos, used new ultrasonic equipment to work out how bats fly in total darkness. They showed that bats send out high-pitched calls that humans can’t hear, listen for the echoes, and build a picture of the world from sound. psychologytodayWikipedia Griffin later coined the word “echolocation” for it. Wikipedia When they presented the work at a scientific meeting, the reaction was extraordinary. In Griffin’s own words: “One distinguished physiologist was so shocked by our presentation at a scientific meeting that he seized Bob by the shoulders and shook him while expostulating, ‘You can’t really mean that!’” boston

INTERVIEWER: He physically shook him?

DR. SHAH: He did. Radar and sonar were the military’s most guarded technologies at the time, and the idea that a small mammal had been doing something like it all along seemed outrageous. thequranthequran But this is the part I find most telling. Galambos later wrote that the explanation was “so simple, complete, and easy to understand that even schoolchildren told the story correctly after hearing it once.” boston So within one generation the discovery went from shocking a senior scientist to being something children recite. The bat hadn’t changed at all. We had just gotten used to it. That’s my whole argument in miniature. thequran

INTERVIEWER: And bats aren’t the only example.

DR. SHAH: Not at all. Dawkins himself, in The Ancestor’s Tale, has a passage I’ve quoted for years: “Whenever humans have a good idea, zoologists have grown accustomed to finding it anticipated in the animal kingdom.” equipnarod He lists echo-ranging in bats, electrolocation, the beaver’s dam, the parabolic reflector in limpets, the infrared heat sensor in some snakes, the hypodermic syringe in wasps, snakes and scorpions, the harpoon in cnidarians, and jet propulsion in squid. thequran Think about how we treat these ideas. When a human engineer invents one, we give out prizes. When nature had it first, we call it an accident. thequran

[5:30]

INTERVIEWER: Have there been newer discoveries along those lines?

DR. SHAH: Many. In 2021 a team led by Jingjing Xu and Peter Hore reported in Nature that, in laboratory tests, cryptochrome 4, a light-sensitive protein in the eye of the night-migrating European robin, is magnetically sensitive, and more sensitive than the same protein in chickens and pigeons, which don’t migrate. The leading hypothesis is that the bird has a kind of quantum compass in its retina, which lets it sense Earth’s magnetic field. ox I’ll be honest that the full mechanism isn’t settled yet. eurekalert But just think about it: a quantum compass made from a protein in a songbird’s eye. thequran

Pit vipers, pythons and boas can detect the body heat of their prey. A 2010 study in Nature by Elena Gracheva, David Julius and colleagues found that a heat-sensitive ion channel called TRPA1 does this job, and that the versions in these snakes are, in the authors’ words, “the most heat-sensitive vertebrate ion channels thus far identified.” Then there’s the great bowerbird of Australia. The male arranges objects on his display court so that the female, looking from inside his bower, sees a forced-perspective illusion, the same trick painters and filmmakers use. researchgatenih Research by Laura Kelley and John Endler, published in Science in 2012, reported “a significant relationship between mating success and the female’s view of the gradient,” although other researchers have disputed that finding.

INTERVIEWER: Some listeners will say that evolution explains all of this.

DR. SHAH: That’s an important objection, and I want to answer it carefully. My quarrel is not with evolution as a scientific account of how living things change over time. Natural selection isn’t “pure chance.” It’s a non-random filter acting on variation. I believe God can work through guided evolution as one of His creative methods. My quarrel is with the add-on that turns a lawful process into proof that there is no Lawgiver. Evolution explains how life diversifies within a framework. It doesn’t explain why the framework exists: why there are stable, mathematical laws, why chemistry allows complex molecules, or why anything exists at all. A mechanism and an ultimate ground are two different kinds of explanation. thequranthequran

[8:30]

INTERVIEWER: Let’s move from biology to physics. You write a lot about fine-tuning.

DR. SHAH: Yes. Take carbon, the basis of all known life. The astronomer Fred Hoyle realized that carbon forms efficiently inside stars only because of a nuclear energy level placed at just the right value. He predicted it, and Willy Fowler’s group at Caltech confirmed it. thequranmindmatters Hoyle was no friend of organized religion, yet in 1981 he wrote: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.” thequrantodayinsci In my essays I discuss how the strong nuclear force, electromagnetism, gravity and the cosmological constant all seem to sit within narrow ranges that allow stars, chemistry and life. thequran

INTERVIEWER: Couldn’t a multiverse explain that?

DR. SHAH: The multiverse is a serious scientific proposal, and I want to be honest here. Fine-tuning is not a mathematical proof of God. Philosophers argue about how to assign the probabilities. But notice what the multiverse reply concedes: the fine-tuning is real enough that you have to posit vast numbers of unseen universes to explain it away. themuslimtimes At the very least it is a genuine puzzle, and design is one reasonable answer to it. thequranthequran

There’s an even deeper wonder, which is that the universe can be understood at all. Einstein wrote in 1936: “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.” And then: “The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.” amacadinformationphilosopher In 1960 the Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner said that mathematics fitting the laws of physics so well is “a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.” vaticanobservatorycosmichorizons Notice the words those physicists chose: miracle, gift, deserve. A gift implies a giver. Wigner didn’t draw that conclusion. The Quran invites us to. thequran

[11:00]

INTERVIEWER: Let’s talk about the psychology. Why do our brains do this to us?

DR. SHAH: This is where my medical side comes in. The simplest form of learning, found even in very primitive nervous systems, is habituation: a stimulus that keeps repeating and proves harmless gets a weaker and weaker response. You stop hearing the refrigerator hum and stop feeling your clothes on your skin. That’s efficient, because a brain that responded fully to everything would be overwhelmed. But the cost is that whatever is always there, like the sun, your heartbeat, the air or gravity, becomes invisible precisely because it’s reliable. The more faithful the gift, the less we notice the Giver. thequran

Our happiness works the same way. In 1971 the psychologists Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell described a “hedonic treadmill.” A new house, a promotion, even recovering from an illness thrills us for a while, and then it becomes the new normal. yukaichou +2 Attention is also limited. In the famous “gorilla” experiment by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris in 1999, people counting basketball passes were asked about a person in a gorilla suit who walked right through the scene, and only 44 percent had noticed it. pacificuresearchgate When the Quran says people “have eyes with which they do not see,” in 7:179, I hear a description of attention, not of physical blindness. thequran

INTERVIEWER: So what wakes us up?

DR. SHAH: Awe. In 2003 Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt proposed that awe has two key ingredients. One is a sense of vastness. The other is what they call a “need for accommodation,” meaning an experience you can’t fit into your existing mental framework. scispace +2 The bat discovery was exactly that kind of experience in 1940. Later research by Paul Piff, Keltner and colleagues, published in 2015 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology across five studies with 2,078 participants, found that awe makes people feel smaller and act more generously. In one study, simply standing in a grove of towering trees increased helping behavior and reduced entitlement.

I do need to add a warning. Feeling awe doesn’t prove God exists by itself. My argument is not “I feel awe, therefore God.” It’s that familiarity shouldn’t be allowed to pass itself off as an explanation. Awe reopens the question, and then reason has to examine it. thequran

[14:00]

INTERVIEWER: So what does the reasoning look like?

DR. SHAH: It’s very old. Plato and Aristotle both said philosophy begins in wonder. Leibniz asked the deepest question of all: why is there something rather than nothing? Wittgenstein put it beautifully: “Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.” Science answers the how brilliantly, but the that lies outside its methods. In the Islamic tradition, Ibn Sina distinguished contingent things, which could fail to exist and depend on something else, from a Necessary Being whose existence is underived. Ibn Rushd said the Quran itself contains two arguments that anyone can follow. The first is from providence: the world is fitted to the welfare of living beings. The second is from invention: living things and their faculties show that they were brought into being. thequran

This also answers Dawkins’s question, “Who designed the designer?” thequran That question works against a complex engineer who is one more object inside the universe. Classical theism proposes something else: a necessary ground of being, not an assembled machine. thequran And there’s consciousness. The philosopher Thomas Nagel, who is not a theist, argued in 2012 that materialism has failed to explain the mind. You can map neurons, about 86 billion of them according to a 2009 count by Azevedo and colleagues, but no physical theory yet explains why there is something it is like to be you.

INTERVIEWER: Doesn’t this become “God of the gaps”?

DR. SHAH: No, and this distinction matters. The God-of-the-gaps argument says, “We can’t explain X, so God did it.” My argument says, “We can explain X, and the very lawfulness, intelligibility and fine-tuning that let us explain it point to a Creator.” Einstein’s comprehensibility and Hoyle’s carbon resonance aren’t gaps in our knowledge. They’re what our knowledge found. The sun didn’t become less of a sign when we learned it’s a fusion reactor. It became a more detailed one. thequran

[16:30]

INTERVIEWER: Bring in the Quran for us. What does it say about all this?

DR. SHAH: The key word is ayah. In Arabic it means both a verse of the Quran and a sign in nature, so there are two books by one Author and both are meant to be read. In 17:44 the Quran says everything in the heavens and the earth glorifies God, “but you do not understand their glorification.” I think that clause is the Quran’s own diagnosis of the anesthesia. The praise is going on all the time. It’s our hearing that fails. thequran

The Quran’s cure is to redirect our attention. In 88:17 it says, “Do they not look at the camels, how they are created?” For a seventh-century Arab nothing was more familiar than a camel, which is exactly why it starts there. thequran In 56:68 to 70 it asks: “Have you seen the water that you drink? Is it you who brought it down from the clouds, or is it We?” thequran In 51:20 to 21: “And on the earth are signs for the certain in faith. And in yourselves. Then will you not see?” As a physician I can tell you that the anesthesia is strongest “in yourselves.” Most of us notice our bodies only when something goes wrong. thequran

The most direct challenge is in 67:3 to 4: “Return your vision; do you see any breaks? Then return your vision twice again. Your vision will return to you humbled while it is fatigued.” Arberry translates it as “dazzled, aweary.” So the Quran doesn’t tell us not to look too closely. It tells us to look again, and again. And in 41:53, in the future tense: “We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth.” I see bat sonar, the carbon resonance and the robin’s compass as fulfillments of that verse. As 35:28 says, among God’s servants it is those with knowledge who truly stand in awe of Him. thequranthequran

INTERVIEWER: And this message is for believers too?

DR. SHAH: Especially for believers. In Sahih al-Bukhari, Ibn Abbas reports that the Prophet, peace be upon him, sat up in the last third of the night, looked at the sky, and recited 3:190: “Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding.” sunnahprophetmuhammad In a report from Aisha recorded in Sahih Ibn Hibban, he wept and said of that verse, “woe to the one who reads it and does not reflect upon it.” sunnahsunnah A believer can recite those verses five times a day and still be anesthetized. That’s why prayer, tafakkur (reflection), and slow, attentive recitation are really disciplines of de-habituation. thequran

The theme isn’t limited to Islam, either. The Quran says God sent guidance to every people. Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” Paul writes in Romans that God’s invisible qualities are “clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” Abraham, whom Jews, Christians and Muslims all honor, looked freshly at the star, the moon and the sun, noticed that they all set, and turned to “Him Who created the heavens and the earth.” So the real divide is not between religions. It’s between being awake and being anesthetized. thequran

[19:00]

INTERVIEWER: We’re almost out of time. What’s your final message to the agnostic, the atheist, and the believer who has stopped noticing?

DR. SHAH: G. K. Chesterton wrote that grown-ups aren’t strong enough to exult in monotony, but perhaps God is: “It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon.” clarendonhousebooks +2 Al-Ghazali taught something similar a thousand years ago. What we call laws of nature are God’s faithful custom, and every sunrise is a fresh act. The Quran says, “Every day He is in a new splendor.” If that’s true, then familiarity isn’t just a habit of the mind. It’s a mistake. It confuses faithfulness with mechanism, and constancy with absence. thequranthequran

So my challenge is this. Tonight, step outside. Look at the sky, then look again. Feel your own breath going in and out. Ask, as the Quran asks, “Will you not see?” Knowledge doesn’t have to be the funeral of wonder. Properly understood, it can be its resurrection. thequran

INTERVIEWER: “Knowledge doesn’t have to be the funeral of wonder.” Dr. Zia Shah, thank you. His three essays on the anesthesia of familiarity are at thequran.love. Thanks for listening, and keep looking again.

[20:00]