Nobody Can Really Know for Sure... Right?

A friendly note to my agnostic friends who feel there is just not enough evidence.

Let me start with a sentence I have heard so many times that I could probably recite it in my sleep.

"I believe there is something out there. Some higher power, maybe. But honestly, nobody can really know for sure. The universe is too big, and our small brains are too tiny to understand all of it."

Sound familiar? If you have ever said something like this, or thought it quietly while everyone around you seemed so certain about their religion, then this one is for you. No pressure, no shouting, no "you are going to hell." Just a chat, the way two friends might talk over teh tarik.

I recently came across a conversation between a Muslim and a young agnostic fellow named Joshua. Joshua said almost exactly the sentence above. And the way the conversation unfolded was so clean and so honest that I wanted to write it down in my own words. Because I think a lot of us are stuck at the same spot Joshua was stuck at, and we do not even realise it.

First, let us untangle two things that keep getting mixed up

Here is the thing Joshua kept doing, and I have done it too. He kept mixing up two completely different questions.

The first question is, can the human mind even understand the idea of a Creator? The second question is, is that idea actually true?

These are not the same question, but we treat them like they are.

When Joshua said "nobody can understand everything about the universe," he was making the first question sound impossible. And you know what, he is half right. Of course we cannot understand everything. Nobody is claiming that. I certainly cannot. You cannot. Even the smartest scientist on earth cannot.

But that was never the question.

The real question is smaller and much more answerable. Can your mind grasp the idea that there is a Creator, who is powerful, who knows things we do not, who is not stuck inside time and space the way we are, and who made all of this on purpose? Not "can you fully understand Him down to the last detail," but "can you understand the basic concept?"

And once you slow down and ask it that way, the honest answer is yes. Of course you can. You just did, while reading that sentence. It is not too complicated for a human mind at all.

So here is the first thing I want you to notice. "I cannot fully comprehend God" is true, but it is not actually an argument against God. Nobody asked you to comprehend Him fully. You are allowed to know that something exists without knowing every single thing about it. You know the sun exists without understanding every reaction happening inside it, right?

"But there is no evidence" ... are you sure about that?

The other thing Joshua said, and again, so many of us say this, was "there is no evidence."

I used to think this was the strongest card in the agnostic's hand. Turns out it might be the weakest.

Because here is the reply that stopped me. The clearest evidence any human being can ever see is the universe itself. You are standing inside the evidence. You are made of it.

Think about it for a second, without rushing to disagree. The universe is not a messy pile of random junk. It runs on incredibly precise laws. Gravity holds to the decimal point. Galaxies spin in order. There are systems inside systems, from electromagnetic waves right down to the way a single leaf feeds a tree. Scientists spend entire lifetimes just trying to describe a small corner of it, and they still cannot fully explain how finely tuned everything is.

Now, a made thing tells you about its maker. If you found a working handphone in the middle of the jungle, you would not say "wow, lucky how the sand and rocks arranged themselves into a working phone." You would know, immediately, that something intelligent made it.

The universe is a far more complicated thing than a handphone. So when we look at it, we are not looking at "no evidence." We are looking at a signature. And that signature points to something that has knowledge we cannot even access, power we cannot imagine, and that is not trapped inside time the way we are. In fact, whatever made time and space cannot itself be stuck inside time and space. Which means it knows the past, the present, and the future all at once.

That is a lot to read off from one universe. But it is honest reading. "No evidence" was never really true. We were just not looking properly.

Okay, a Creator. But why this Creator, and why this religion?

This is where it got interesting for me, because this is the exact question I would ask.

Fine, say we accept there is a Creator. That still does not tell you which religion, if any, got the message right. Anybody can stand up and say "I am God's messenger." So the fair question is, how do you check the claim?

The answer is the same way you check any big claim. You ask for evidence that a normal human being could not fake.

The old prophets came with what you might call live miracles for the people of their time. Moses and the sea. Jesus healing the blind, and being born without a father. Abraham thrown into the fire and walking out unharmed. These were things ordinary humans simply cannot do, done right in front of witnesses. That was the proof for the people who were there.

But there is a small problem with live miracles, if you think about it. They are amazing for the people standing there on that day. For us, sitting here centuries later, we can only hear the story. We cannot rewind and watch.

So for the final messenger, the argument goes, the evidence had to be a different kind. It had to be something that survives. Something you and I can still open up and check today, on our own, without needing to have been there.

The part that made me sit up: prophecies you can actually check

Here is one of those surviving evidences.

If the Creator truly knows the future, then He can tell His messenger about things that have not happened yet. And Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, made not one or two, but tens of these predictions. Specific ones. About specific people, specific places, specific events. Some of them due to happen hundreds of years after he had already passed away.

Let me give you just a few, so you see what I mean.

He told a man who had come to kill him that this man would one day wear the bracelets of the Persian emperor, the most powerful ruler on earth at the time. That man lived on, long after the Prophet died, all the way until the day the Muslims defeated the Persian empire, and he wore exactly that.

He said the poor, barefoot desert Arabs would one day compete with each other in building the tallest towers. Look at the Gulf today. The tallest building in the whole world, Burj Khalifa, sits right there in the Arabian desert.

He said the land of Arabia, all that dry sand, would one day become green with meadows and rivers again. That word "again" is interesting, because it means it used to be green in the past. Today NASA has articles about the greening of the Arabian peninsula, and researchers have found fossils and traces of ancient lakes showing that yes, long ago, that desert was full of water.

Now, here is why this matters, and why "aiya, coincidence lah" does not really work as an answer.

A coincidence can maybe explain one lucky guess. Maybe two. But not tens of them, all specific, all correct, spread across 1,400 years, with not a single one turning out false. And remember, every single prediction was a risk. If even one had gone wrong, the whole religion would collapse on the spot. A person who is just guessing does not bet his entire message on naming specific people and specific centuries. That is not how guessing works. That is how knowing works.

"But how do we know the book was not changed over 1,400 years?"

Good question. This was Joshua's worry too. So many mouths, so many hands, so many years. How do you trust that what you are reading now is really what was said back then?

For the Quran, the answer has two legs.

One is memorisation. From the time of the Prophet right up until tonight, there have always been people who memorise the entire Quran, word for word, letter for letter. Not a handful of people. Millions, alive today. In the month of Ramadan they stand and recite the whole thing from memory in the mosque, and if the person leading makes even a tiny slip in a vowel, the people behind him correct him instantly, because they have it memorised too. The joke, which is actually true, is that if every printed Quran on earth disappeared into the sea tomorrow, it could be written back out perfectly within the hour.

The second leg is the physical manuscripts. We have very old copies, carbon dated to the earliest years of Islam, some going back to the lifetime of the Prophet himself. The one in Birmingham. The ones in Sana'a. The one in Topkapi. Same text. When you compare them to the copy sitting on the shelf today, it matches.

So this is not a game of "trust me, bro." The book you would be testing is the same book. You can check it yourself.

Now here is the real reason most of us stay agnostic

I saved this for last, because I think it is the actual heart of the matter, and it has nothing to do with evidence.

Near the end, Joshua admitted something very honest. He said, more or less, "even after all this, maybe there are questions I do not know about yet, so I will just stay where I am."

I want to be gentle here, because I have used this exact line myself. But we have to be honest about what it really is.

"Maybe there is something out there I do not know, so I cannot commit to anything" is not a reason. It is a door that never closes. You can say it about literally anything, forever. Buy a house? Maybe there is a hidden problem I do not know about. Marry someone? Maybe there is something I have not discovered yet. Accept any truth at all? Maybe, maybe, maybe.

If "maybe there is an unknown" was a good enough reason to never decide, then you would never decide anything in your whole life. You would be frozen. Nobody actually lives like that. We commit to things all the time on good evidence, even while a tiny "what if" hangs quietly in the air. That is just what being a reasonable adult looks like.

So there is a difference, and it is a big one, between two kinds of "I am not sure."

The first kind is honest. "I have not really looked into this yet. Give me some time to actually read and check." That is completely fair. That is rational. Joshua had never even watched a single video, so of course he needed time. Nobody should be rushed into believing something they have not examined.

The second kind is not so honest. "There will always be something I do not know, so I will stay agnostic forever, no matter what I find." That one is not caution. That is just a comfortable place to hide so you never have to make a choice.

So what do I actually want to say to you?

Just this.

You do not have to accept anything today. Nobody is standing over you with a stopwatch. But do not let "nobody can really know" become the blanket you pull over your head so you can go back to sleep. It sounds humble, but a lot of the time it is just avoidance wearing a nice coat.

If a Creator made this universe, and if He left us evidence we can actually check, then the honest thing, the brave thing, is to go and check. Not to decide the answer in advance. Not to declare "no one can know" before you have even looked.

And here is a comforting thought to end on. Even if you stumbled onto the truth completely by accident, by pure chance, it would still be the truth. How you found it does not change what it is. So there is no shame in where you are starting from, or how you got here, or that you still have questions. Questions are good. Questions are the whole point.

Just be honest with yourself, and actually go and look.

That is all any of us can ask.