Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend and the phrase: “I may not agree with what you say but I shall defend to the death your right to say it?” came up. This phrase is often attributed to Voltaire, though there is some evidence that someone else may have come up with it instead. However, it really doesn’t matter who said this stupid phrase, since I’m going to refute it anyway.
Christopher Hitchens
I was recently going through my book collection which is getting pretty large these days. I happened to come across a book that was published in 2007 and that I read in 2008. This was my early days of apologetics. The book was written by Christopher Hitchens and titled: God is not Great: How Religion Poisons everything. Ah yes, what a catchy subtitle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxjH5hZYTbQ&t=184s
As an apologist who deals with Islam, I believe that we should be careful about the arguments that we use against them. They should be thought out and well researched. In terms of those blog posts on Surah 5, they actually came after carefully researching the passage through Islamic commentaries and the historical context and even field testing them against Muslims. A good example would be to look at Protestant arguments against Catholicism. Here’s an example:
On the cross, our Lord said: “It is finished”. That speaks about our redemption, does it not? How come in Romans 4:25 St. Paul says: “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” which seems to link redemption with the resurrection of our Lord. A contradiction perhaps? Scott Hahn opens up with this dilemma presented to him by his Pastor of the Evangelical Church he was attending many years ago. In the sermon, the Pastor throws out the dilemma but admits that he didn’t know the answer. Over the next several years, Scott Hahn would figure out the answer, give numerous speeches about it, and eventually publish The Fourth Cup which was released this January.
My free Quran form the Local Mosque
When a Christian and a Muslim debate, often the holy books are in the crosshairs. The Christian tries to find errors in the Quran, and the Muslim will do the same thing with the Bible. A good tactic? I don’t think so.
I’ve seen this little Muslim meme trending online lately so it’s time for me to respond to it. It’s actually not hard to respond to in the slightest. The Christian has a few options and I’m going to go through them. Ijaz Ahmad has put this on his website and it’s getting a lot of attention. Unfortunately no one is responding to it properly. This type of argument is exactly what to expect from street dawah and dawah booths in Western countries. We need to be prepared. Before you read any further, think about how you might respond to this.
Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. There is a lot of tension between the Jewish community and the Catholic community these days. This is especially evident amongst Israeli Jews and Polish Catholics. American Rabbi Shmuley Boteach shared a meal with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. The account can be read here:
It is true that most Christians don’t know the Bible that well. In this day and age, we’re bound to run into some young zealous Muslim who engages in dawah and wants to sell Islam to us. The answer is simple, we need to know our Bible and how to debate.
Over the weekend, I was in my hometown for a pro-life banquet. One of my friends is a member of the organization that put on this event so he reserved a seat for me. These events are always fun. I saw a bunch of people who I hadn’t seen since this same banquet last year. I also saw a lot of pro-life politicians. One of them I hadn’t even seen in three years, naturally at the same banquet. Seeing a lot of old friends was fun, but what made the night amazing was seeing elite pro-life apologist Scott Klusendorf speak.
On Tuesday I saw the third installment in the God’s Not Dead franchise entitled God’s Not Dead: A Light In Darkness. While the first two movies are happy, triumphant, and yes, shallow, this movie tries for a more darker and serious tone. How did Pure Flix do with this one? Unfortunately it was a complete disaster. I’m not a fan of the first two movies but they at least do what they set out to do, which is throw red meat to an Evangelical audience. This movie tried to do too much and because of that it ended up being incoherent.