On the weekend, I watched a new debate featuring famous Muslim scholar Shabir Ally, and a pastor named Anthony Rogers. This was a moderated debate, with timed speeches. I have been watching debates with Shabir Ally since 1997, when he took on William Lane Craig. So, I was anxious to see what he considered to be the strongest arguments for Islam after all his years of debating.

I found a great review of the arguments posted at Laura’s blog “An Affair with Reason”. In her post she linked to the video of the debate, summarized and evaluated the arguments, and then explained what she would have done, if she had been arguing Anthony’s position. I recommend reading the whole post, but let’s see Shabir’s arguments first. Or rather – argument – since, he only presented one.

Laura writes about Dr. Shabir Ally’s Argument:

To demonstrate his point, Dr. Ally gave a few examples of numerical patterns that exist in the Koran. For example, the number 7 and the number 19 both hold an important place in the Koran because Surah 15:87 mentions the number 7 and Surah 74:30 mentions the number 19. Additionally, the name Jesus appears in the Koran the same number of times as the name Moses appears. If we take note of where each name occurs, we find that the 7th appearance of the name Jesus coincides with the 19th appearance of the name Moses, and the 19th appearance of the name Jesus coincides with the 7th appearance of the name Moses. And on he went, sharing a few more mathematical coincidences.

Now, you might have seen this argument before. A couple of Christian neophytes wrote an entire book about it called “The Bible Code” a while back. It was panned by every single professional apologist as being an ineffective argument. They asserted that the same mathematical coincidences could be found in any book.

Here is one Christian response to the “Bible Code” from Dr. Robert C. Newman, in which he finds similar coincidences in “The Gettysburg Address” by Abraham Lincoln. Scientists call this “cherry-picking” data, and it’s frowned upon.

What’s so special about 7 and 19?

Now, you might be wondering what Dr. Ally’s source is for the significance of 7 and 19.

I asked Laura about where he got 19, and she replied to me so:

According to Muslim scholar Bilal Phillips, in order to arrive at a word count of parallels, one must follow “a haphazard system of word identification that totally contradicts both classical and modern rules of Arabic grammar.”

It’s true that the number of chapters in the Quran is divisible by nineteen and that the first chapter to be revealed to Muhammad—chapter ninety-six—does have nineteen verses, but such examples of repetition of a number can be found in nearly any book. Further, when one reads Quran 74:30 in context—that’s the verse that supposedly identifies the number nineteen as significant—we see that this verse refers to the number of angels who are wardens over the hellfire; it is not a reference to miraculous patterns throughout the Quran.

As Bilal Phillips stated, “It may be concluded that the theory of nineteen as a miraculous numerical code for the Quran has no basis in the Quran itself and the few instances where nineteen and its multiples do occur are merely coincidences which have been blown out of proportion.”

Not even Muslim scholars found this convincing.

Laura’s case against Islam

In her post, she also laid out a 4-point case against Islam that she would have used if she were debating Dr. Ally. You can check it out if you are interested in seeing how a professional would handle a formal debate situation.

I think it’s really important for Christians to get into the habit of watching debates on a wide variety of subjects, to help them decide what to believe, how to support their beliefs, and how to respond to objections. I’ve been watching debates since around 1995, and used to have them imported to the country where I am originally from. I have an old VHS tape of the Craig-Ally debate from 1997. Back then, we only had William Lane Craig and Michael Horner debates, and there was a good debate book featuring J. P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, too. I’ve probably listened to over a hundred debates, on topics like the existence of God, Darwinism, intelligent design, origin of life, morality, philosophy of mind, problem of evil, New Testament reliability, rational grounding of objective morality, secular humanism, the resurrection of Jesus, Islam, Hinduism, etc.

Debates are great because not only do you learn how to debate, but your character also changes to become more tolerant of different points of view. You become the opposite of the little fascist drones that are being churned out by the public education system, in that you can think critically, and stay calm during disagreements. It’s good for Christians to be open-minded and tolerant, because the other side is growing increasingly incapable of it. Soon, everyone in the middle will be turning to us for discussions, because we’ll be the only ones left who are thoughtful and safe to talk to.

Last week, the leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination, a large Protestant denomination, decided to have a convention. They voted down a resolution (resolution 9) that condemned Critical Race Theory. Unfortunately, no black conservatives were allowed to speak about CRT at the convention.

This is from the Tennessee Star:

Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist, Dr. Carol Swain, to the newsmakers line to talk about her experience at the Southern Baptist Convention where she and other minority messengers were prevented from speaking up on Critical Race Theory.

Leahy: We are joined on the newsmaker line right now by our good friend All-Star panelist, Carol Swain. Good morning, Carol.

Swain: Good morning, Michael. How are you? I’ve missed you.

Leahy: Well, you’ve been so busy on the national airwaves every time I turned Fox News, there she is. Carol Swain, articulately making the conservative case. Carol, you were at the Southern Baptist Convention. And I guess there was a bit of skullduggery afoot there. Fill us in, please.

Swain: Yes, it is my first time attending a Southern Baptist Convention. And I arranged my life to give two days to this convention because I wanted to participate. And I was most interested in the Critical Race Theory issue and a resolution that the Conservative Baptist Network crafted and put forward.

And I am on the steering committee of that network. Our resolution was killed by the resolutions committee. And they put forth a substitute that was vaguely worded and did not mention intersexuality or Critical Race Theory itself.

[…]…then they shut down any debate about how the issue was handled.

[…]I was there to try to explain to people how dangerous Critical Race Theory is and how it manifests itself and how it is destroying churches. I never got to speak during the time of the business meeting. And they used parliamentarian rules to control what it’s about, I guess, at meetings.

But two people were allowed to speak for their resolution. One person spoke briefly against it and then someone called for the vote. And this was after someone from the stage had given this impassioned plea that we don’t want to look bad to the world and all of this stuff like that.

As a black Christian conservative, I’m very familiar with conservative black leaders like Dr. Carol Swain. She’s done several videos for Dennis Prager’s famous Prager University.

I recently watched an interview with Candace Owens, as well:

I recently heard her talk about “Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington – a book I also have blogged about – on the Daily Wire Book Club podcast:

Very accomplished woman. She knows a lot about race and racism in America. She lived through it. I would think that her perspective would be valuable.

Here’s another black Christian I like, Dr. Voddie Baucham. He has a new book out called “Fault Lines”, which is amazing. I’m currently reading it, after watching some of his lectures and sermons online.

Here’s one I really liked, about homosexuality and transgenderism:

And another one, about cultural Marxism:

Here’s what Dr. Baucham had to say about the Southern Baptist convention, as reported by Capstone Report:

The Southern Baptist Convention messengers were cowards for not repudiating Critical Race Theory by name, said Dr. Voddie Baucham on the Todd Starnes Show.

“I don’t think it was so much buying in (to CRT) as much as white guilt and cowardice,” Dr. Baucham said. “It was obvious building up to the Convention that the issue at hand was Resolution 9 on Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality from two years ago and how that was going to be responded to. And when you respond to it with a Resolution that refuses to even name Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality, that is an act of cowardice.”

Dr. Baucham urged conservative Christians to continue in the fight against Critical Race Theory.

“I think we continue to press the issue,” Dr. Baucham said. “I think we continue to name this for what it is and continue to expose the tenets of this ideology. I think we continue to demonstrate that this it antithetical to biblical truth.”

Dr. Baucham described Critical Race Theory as a “demonic ideology” that the Church must fight. The “hegemonic power” that these Critical Theories are fighting is, “at the end of the day, Christianity,” he said.

What I like about Voddie is that he isn’t afraid to name names. Here’s a useful quote from his new book Fault Lines, explaining some of the famous people and groups on both sides of the debate.

Why are people and groups like Thabiti Anyabwile, Tim Keller, Russell Moore, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, 9Marks, the Gospel Coalition, and Together for the Gospel (T4G) being identified with Critical Social Justice on one side of the fault, and people like John MacArthur, Tom Ascol, Owen Strachan, Douglas Wilson, and the late R.C. Sproul being identified on the other? These are groups and ministries that have embraced CRT, and those are problematic. But there is a larger group that is sympathetic to it because of their desire to fight what they see as a problem of racial injustice.

—
Baucham, Voddie. Fault Lines: the Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe. Salem Books, an Imprint of Regnery Publishing, 2021; pp. 2-3.

Do you recognize any names in the group that supports Critical Race Theory? I used to read some of those people, but then I just stopped, because they were too liberal for me. I never read anything by John Piper or Max Lucado or Philip Yancey. The liberal Christians never had anything convincing to say against atheism, feminism or socialism. Like Mormons, they always seemed to appeal to emotions and mysticism. So I didn’t read their books.

Instead, I like to read people who have evidence, like Hugh Ross, Walter Bradley, Wayne Grudem, Stephen C. Meyer, Michael Behe, Michael Licona, William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Scott Klusendorf, Robert Gagnon, etc. It’s much easier for me to be bold in defending Christianity when I am ready with an answer. I’m not really interested in surrendering to the secular left just so that they will like me. I’d rather stand up to them, and win a debate against them. It’s more work, but I would rather do the work than be lazy, ignorant and cowardly.

It’s my understanding that Southern Baptist seminaries do not teach evidential apologetics at all. Just some pious fideism, that they’ve re-branded as “presuppositional apologetics”. And what do they do for evangelism? They’ve adopted the Mormon standard of speaking Bible verses, then hoping for an emotional reaction to them, i.e. – “a burning in the bosom”. Can you really expect fideists to stand up to the secular left? They’re anti-intellectual fideists.

When I look at the Bible, I see Jesus using evidence to convince his opponents. He uses evidence to confirm his theological claims. But the Southern Baptists seemed to have left the use of evidence far behind. No wonder they are capitulating to non-Christians. When you give up on truth, all that’s left is to try to get people to like you with marketing gimmicks.