Intro
Ahmadi’s claim to be rational and etc, however, that is a lie upon cross examination. In fact, Ahmadi’s believe in prayers over medicine (see pages 15 and 16) and mostly love to use homeopathy, which doesn‘t work. It seems that Mirza Nasir Ahmad started this connection of Ahmadiyya and homeopathy.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________Mirza Nasir Ahmad once said

“Once I was agonised with pain which persisted for several days. One day I prayed, ‘My Lord, Thou hast charged me with a grand mission. I am in poor health.  Please grant me strength to fulfil this obligation’. After this prayer, I took a homeopathic medicine lying in front of me. Immediately thereafter, God Almighty relieved the agonizing pain. Good health is ineed only granted by God Almighty”. (Alfazal, 1971).

The words of the Khalifa in Ahmadiyya
Generally, every random utterance of a khalifa is recorded and treated as an almost compulsory instruction on how to live your life. Many Ahmadis, for example, prefer (or did, 10-20 years ago) Sprite to Coke because Mirza Tahir Ahmad reportedly didn’t like the fact that Coke had colouring. When someone catches them in an embarrassing position like homeopathy, they’re then able to distinguish the institution of khilafat from the person occupying the office in a way that’s generally done, and say that while the khalifa promotes it in official channels, as do jamaat materials and clinics, this actually doesn’t matter, and is just a choice.

This is exactly the thinking that Tahir Ahmad uses in his pseudo-scientific explanations of the world and religion. He took major scientific accomplishments and reduced them to mere verses of the Quran and pretended like of course it all makes sense because we have always known it to be so through the Quran, etc. It’s just not true. I think it is dangerous that the jama’at latches onto (pseudo) scientific things like homeopathy and then justifies them through religion and vice versa. Every youth event has these terrible speeches given by doctors about the dangers of alcohol and marijuana that are simply not grounded in science. They simply find things that vaguely agree with their own viewpoints and then run with it. What makes me most sad is when scientists/doctors get up on stage and peddle this BS. I’m sure they don’t believe in it, but it’s just what you have to do to be part of this organization. And those of us who’ve had enough of it simply leave.

This is a copy and paste job

Why does a supposed community of Nobel Laureates in science peddle in so much pseudoscience and quackery? from islam_ahmadiyya

The Data

I can understand faith. Faith does not require empirical evidence. That’s what makes it faith. The concept of a God or other supernatural entities cannot be empirically investigated simply since they are outside the domain of science. You either have faith that they exist (theism) or that they don’t (atheism), and so on. I even appreciate mysticism and what insights it has to offer us through meditation and understanding ourselves. I also am not opposed to the idea of prayer, and can understand what solace it would bring to people. However what I don’t understand is when empirically-validated conclusions on natural phenomena are thrown away in the name of dogma and faith.

A lot of Ahmadis are extremely dogmatic about a few things that science has already determined to lack empirical evidence, all the while claiming to be members of the Jama’at of Dr. Abdus Salam, and claiming to have a rationalist interpretation of Islam that goes so far as to suggest that all miracles were metaphorical or explained by natural phenomena, that Jinn are all bacteria, and that evolution happened (albeit guided by God). It’s really strange therefore, when Ahmadis actively promote pseudoscience in the name of their faith, in a very similar way to other religions since time immemorial.

Being a person with an education in science who wishes to pursue science as my career, this is something I am finding more and more unpalatable when in the Jama’at. It’s something where I simply cannot bring myself to believe certain things that Ahmadis believe in deeply and with a religious reverence. That said, I still identify as an Ahmadi due to various reasons (unrelated to this post), chief among them being that I still like the idea of mysticism and think that Ahmadiyyat is still the best interpretation of Islam.

In any case, there are four main things upon which I simply disagree with Ahmadis who believe them, due to being based on pseudoscientific principles:

  • Ahmadis religiously believe in the clinical efficacy of a German school of medicine called homeopathy, although it has been proven numerous times through myriad scientific evidence that it has absolutely no effect on any illness more than a placebo and is based on absolute pseudoscience such as the concept of ‘water memory’ – the idea that water retains memory of molecules that used to be in them, or the idea that more dilution with a liquid can cause a substance to have more effect (which is absolute nonsense according to known laws of chemistry)

  • Ahmadis (though some disagree) believe that humans have their own separate evolutionary lineage unrelated to any other animal on earth, and that we do not share a recent common ancestor with apes. This theory is simply incorrect according to the empirical evidence that we have. And there is no empirical evidence justifying Ahmadis’ theory in this regards, even though the onus of evidence is on them for making such a claim.

  • Ahmadis believe that sex-education should be banned in schools (they literally tried to make this a thing and lobby the government in Canada) even though all the evidence shows us that abstinence-only education produces more teenage pregnancies and increases the risk for STI’s among youth. For example in Texas, many schools have abstinence-only education (due to religious fundamentalism, albeit of a Christian kind, being rampant there) and yet Texas has more teenage pregnancies than liberal states that have sex-education such as California.

  • Ahmadis believe in pseudoscientific propaganda about marijuana, making false statements regularly about the herb such as that it will cause long-term lowering of IQ or that it’s extremely dangerous to health. They also oppose its legalization even though all the statistical evidence we have shows that legalization actually leads to reduced consumption of the drug (as in Colorado and Portugal for instance), keeps it out of the hands of youth more efficiently since you would require ID and there wouldn’t be a very good black market for the drug, would stop gang activity and prevent them having a monopoly of shares of the drug (as in Uruguay which legalized it to stop the gangs), and other beneficial effects exist as the direct result of legalization. Also they ignore the many health benefits of marijuana, or the fact that it can be isolated in a way to have only the cannibanoid CBD rather than THC (THC is the chemical that makes you high) so that it becomes medically beneficial without any high, and that this is especially useful for people with clinical anxiety, epilepsy, and cancer patients. I’m not saying marijuana is without it’s harmful effects. Smoking anything may be harmful to you in the long-run although it doesn’t need to be smoked but this is the most popular method of ingestion, and marijuana does deter neurological development in youth and poses the risk of people developing schizophrenia who have a genetic diathesis for it. What I am saying is that Ahmadis are horribly misinformed about the science and evidence about marijuana and blindly promote making it illegal again in Canada, even though it’s one of the safest drugs for recreational use and the tax revenue alone from the marijuana market would be greatly beneficial to the nation in the long-run. Not to mention that keeping it illegal would mean people (usually of colour) going to jails for victimless crimes, which is literally how modern-day slavery is perpetuated in America against black people (since the 13th amendment does not forbid slavery against felons).

The last two points Ahmadis believe in I think due to a feeling of general puritanism without thinking through the ramifications, while the former two points Ahmadis believe due to dogmatic adherence to religious leaders.

The homeopathy stuff annoys me the most because it seems very cult-like to an objective onlooker that people would believe in what is clearly quackery to be clinically effective – even though it’s from Germany, randomly – simply because one of your religious leaders believed in it. The messages about ‘homeopathic iodine to prevent radiation in case of WWIII’ are the strangest.

All homeopathy has is anecdotal evidence. And here’s the thing: for any case of homeopathy ‘working’, there’s no way for you to know it was due to homeopathy. It could have been due to changes in diet or lifestyle; it could have been due to your body naturally healing itself; it could have been due to other medications you may have been taking at the time. There is absolutely no way to determine that it was homeopathy that caused your medical condition curing, if it’s a personal incident.

This is why science exists. Scientific experiments ISOLATE homeopathy as a specific independent variable, and make sure that all other variables to the best of the scientist’s ability are also controlled, and then the scientist measures the effect of the homeopathy on a specific dependent variable. When you do this you can clearly see whether homeopathy has a causal relationship with a specific effect.

And well, whenever scientists have done this on homeopathy, they’ve found it has no more effect than placebo. Even scientific studies by homeopaths (who have a vested interest in proving its usefulness) show it has no clinical effect.

On the flipside, when scientists have done this form of testing with other drugs and medical therapies that actually work – like tylenol for instance – they have found actual empirical support for those things. When you isolate tylenol as the independent variable and give it to 2 groups – 1 experimental group and 1 placebo group – and then control other variables, and see if the tylenol causes the reduction of headache…then you will actually see results that indicate that it DOES have that effect. When you try the same thing with homeopathy and pretty much any illness or medical condition, you will not find statistically significant evidence that it has any effect. This is why the large majority of scientists and medical practitioners say homeopathy has no effect more than a placebo. Not because they hate the Jama’at or Ahmadis or Germans (the inventors of homeopathy), but because the best method to determine whether homeopathy actually does what it’s purported to do, shows us that it DOESN’T do what it’s purported to do.

It’s really that simple and unfortunately many Ahmadis are scientifically illiterate so they don’t understand you when you point these things out, and instead claim you’re being disobedient to the Jama’at. Homeopathy – being a purported medical therapy – is in the domain of science and should be subject to scientific experimentation just like any other supposed medical therapy.

Just because some guy – no matter how religious or venerated or intelligent that guy is – says that something works as medicine, why should we believe that claim when we have science to SHOW us, if it works or not? We aren’t living in the ancient world where all we had were the opinions of random men. Now we have science so let’s use it for what it’s meant to be used for.

If I randomly today said that by eating orange peels dabbed in hot sauce, it will cure your every illness, and called it “strepopathy”, would you believe me? Or would you demand evidence?

And honestly the more Ahmadis follow this line of pseudoscientific reasoning, the more it makes me disappointed. We are supposed to be the Jama’at of Nobel Laureates in science, yet we promote pseudoscientific hocus pocus nonstop.

Ahmadi medical doctors and evolutionary biologists both would have to ignore large parts of their education and research in order to support the claims behind homeopathy, the idea that humans and apes don’t share a recent common ancestor, and Ahmadis’ claims on marijuana. And not due to any scientific evidence. But due to blind religous adherence to dogma.

It’s ridiculous and slightly embarrassing.

TLDR: Ahmadis believe in pseudoscience like homeopathy, disbelieve that apes and humans share a recent common ancestor, believe that sex-education is harmful to young people, and believe that marijuana is entirely harmful and that it should be illegal

Homeopathy

Homeopathy has become an integral part of the Jamath. Khalifa himself recommending it to people. Many faithful Ahmadis, since the Khalifa thinks Homeopathy is good, adopt homeopathy even for serious illnesses which makes this a very serious and dangerous issue.

The theory of evolution proposed by Ahmadis is silly. When asked about evolution, Mirza Masroor Ahmed’s counter arguments for Darwin’s theory is that ‘if we came from apes, why are there still apes in the world?’. This shows he doesn’t even know the basics of Darwin’s theory but makes these stupid arguments nevertheless.

Speaking of sex education, Some Ahmadis claim they are against the sex education given at a very young age. Proper sex education must be given when a child reaches may be 15 or 16 (I heard it from an Ahmadi, I don’t know whether this is the official position of the Jamath). I think this is funny, because same Ahmadis who argues to lengths about how marriage of Aisha at 12 years is justifiable, thinks sex education must not be given that young!
_____________________________________________________________________________________________Links and Related Essays

https://ahmadiyyafactcheckblog.com/?s=homeopathy

https://www.alislam.org/library/book/life-hazrat-khalifatul-masih-iii/
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