One Way To Judge Skeptical Claims About Prophecy

Skeptics often object to Christian prophecy fulfillment on the basis that the prophecies supposedly are too vague, that many people could be said to have fulfilled the passages, that it's easy to fabricate alleged fulfillments by reading a later figure into the Old Testament, etc. One way, among others, of responding to such objections is to ask the skeptic to illustrate his claim with other historical figures. What sort of prophetic argument can be made for Buddha or Muhammad, for example? I've written about this subject before with regard to Muhammad, here and here. Another example of this kind of thing is the dismissive comments skeptics often make about Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy. See how much worse their explanations of the passage are. See my post here responding to Carol Newsom's commentary on Daniel, for example.

"Is David Wood's mockery Christ-like?"

1. David Wood defends his satire of Muhammad and Islam (it looks like this was filmed before Wood's most recent "mockery" which involved the "desecration" of the Quran):

The above is an excerpt, but the complete video is here:

2. I left my own comments regarding Wood's latest "mockery" in Peter's previous post.

Muhammad in the Bible? Live with Dr. Michael Brown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ6K7K5MbWo&feature=youtu.be

Muhammed meets Satan

Aisha

1. I believe White is responding to Steve Camp. It's my impression that Camp engages in virtue-signaling rather than serious apologetics or evangelistic outreach. This is just sending a message to other people that he's tough on Islam.

2. In addition, I agree with White that there are many other issues we can bring up besides Aisha. Islam is a target-rich environment.

3. Likewise, leading with Aisha can shut down discussion before discussion ever gets underground. A conversation-stopper rather than an opening.

4. That said, is White suggesting that Muhammed didn't have sexual intercourse with a prepubescent girl? When he makes dismissive comments about "ignorance-laden, bigoted attacks" on Muhammad in reference to Aisha, that seems to be what he means.

5. Moreover, White seems to be suggesting that Christian apologists should never bring up the issue of Muhammad's pederastic marriage. Yet this isn't just ad hominem. Muhammad is the role model for Muslims. And they consider unfitting behavior to discredit prophetic or messianic claimants.

Are we not supposed to talk about child rape in relation to Muhammad? What about cult leaders who practice child rape on the compound? Is that verboten?

White appears to be saying that Muhammad's sex life is offlimits in Christian apologetics and countercult ministry. That there's absolutely no circumstances under which a Christian can legitimately raise that issue. Does White think it's always wrong to "attack" Muhammad's character?

What about the moral credibility of Joseph Smith? Are Christian apologists not allowed to point to evidence that Joseph Smith was a con man? What about Benny Hinn? Does White have a consistent standard in countercult ministry?

What about the subculture of pederasty in the Catholic priesthood and episcopate? Are Christian apologists permitted to raise that issue?

Further, do you really, really think Dr. Yasir Qadhi has never heard surface-level, ignorance-laden, bigoted attacks upon Muhammad in reference to Aisha? Seriously? You think you have something to tell him on the matter? I can assure you, you don’t.

— James White (@DrOakley1689) August 11, 2018

If he had equal time he could bury you under references from historical sources off the top of his head that you wouldn’t even know how to pronounce, let alone access, let alone understand. 4) There is more than sufficient reason to discuss the Islamic claims concerning the role

— James White (@DrOakley1689) August 11, 2018

of Muhammad as an example, as THE example, upon which morals and ethics in sharia are to be based. I have repeatedly asserted that I believe a significantly better, less emotional, and more profitable discussion is to be had regarding Zaynab bint-Jash,

— James White (@DrOakley1689) August 11, 2018

for this allows one to go directly into the text of the Qur’an and make direct application to key apologetic issues—issues that, Steve, I do not believe you to be proficient in even outlining, let alone pursuing in such a conversation. But even here we have gone outside the

— James White (@DrOakley1689) August 11, 2018

parameters of the intended focus and topic of discussion, and again, I will honor the person with whom I am speaking, I will honor my word, and I will honor the audience, by not engaging in such grand-standing. 5) Finally, the only way to honestly approach the Aisha issue is

— James White (@DrOakley1689) August 11, 2018

with a broad and firm historical foundation. One must be prepared to answer such obvious questions as, “If your accusation is true, why are there not other examples alongside Aisha? Why are all of Muhammad’s other wives not only older, but had already been married?

— James White (@DrOakley1689) August 11, 2018

And why does it seem that, aside from Kadijah, Aisha was the closest to Muhammad throughout the rest of his life (not the norm for such relationships)?” There is no question that the example Muhammad established has been destructive to many young women down through the centuries,

— James White (@DrOakley1689) August 11, 2018

but you are actually *distracting* from that serious and real issue by using Aisha as a brickbat without fairness and accuracy as your goal. Muslim apologists are often unfair with Christian history (look at what many of them do to Paul, for example), but we as Christians

— James White (@DrOakley1689) August 11, 2018

do not have the right to turn around and return the favor. It is far better to be cautious and careful than it is to be bombastic and in the process profane the truth.

— James White (@DrOakley1689) August 11, 2018

James, Jude, and Abu Talib

James and Jude are neglected books compared to other NT writings. However, one value of James and Jude is having two writings that emanate from the immediate family of Jesus. No one knows you better than your own family. So it's useful to have James and Jude vouch for their stepbrother. 

To take a comparison, Muhummad had an uncle (Abu Talib) who was his guardian. Yet his uncle remained unconvinced of Muhammad's prophetic claims. That's damaging to Muhammad's credibility. 

Muhammad on the psychiatric sofa, part. 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wikEctQIRSs

Splitting the moon

The Koran never explicitly attributes a miracle to Muhammad. One possible candidate is surah 54. The Koranic reference is elliptical, but when supplemented by the Hadith, it attributes a miracle to Muhammad, to verify his prophetic credentials. Here's one discussion from a standard reference work:

The first two verses of al-Qamar ["The Moon"] are understood by the vast majority of commentators as a reference to a miracle performed by the Prophet. One evening, he was addressing a group of disbelievers and Muslims on the plain of Mina, just outside of Makkah. The disbelievers had been disputing with the Prophet for several days, demanding a miracle as proof of his prophethood, and they began to do so again. The Prophet then raised his hand and pointed to the moon, whereupon it appeared to separate into two halves, one on either side of the nearby Mt. Hira. He then said, "Bear witness!" (IK, T) and the line of separation disappeared. All were left speechless, but his opponents soon discredited it as an illusion produced by sorcery. According to one account, one of the disbelievers said, "Muhammad has merely bewitched us, but he cannot bewitch the entire world. Let us wait for travelers to come from faraway places and hear what reports they bring". Then, when some travelers arrived in Makkah a few days later, they confirmed that they too had witnessed the splitting of the moon (IK). "The Moon," Seyyed Hossein Nasir, ed., The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015), 1299. 

1. One obvious problem with this report is that it relies entirely on Muslim sources. 

2. But a deeper problem is the scale of the reported miracle. For the phenomenon would be visible to everyone on earth who happened to be facing the moon (assuming clear skies in their neck of the woods). And many of these involve literate civilizations. Add to that the fact that ancient people took a keen interest in celestial portents and prodigies, and you'd expect to have multiple surviving records of this event from geographically diverse localities. So a reported miracle that's cited to verify Muhammad's prophethood actually undercuts his prophethood, given how unlikely it is that a natural wonder of this magnitude would leave no trace in historical records outside the Muslim world. 

3. Perhaps a Muslim apologist would counter that if this is a problem for Islam, then there's a parallel problem regarding Joshua's Long Day (Josh 10:12-14), the sundial of Ahaz (Isa 38:8; 2 Kgs 20:9-11; 2 Chron 32:31), and darkness during the crucifixion (Mt 27:45; Mk 15:33). 

i) But even if (ex hypothesi) these were problematic for the historicity of Scripture, that doesn't let a Muslim off the hook. That doesn't resolve his own problem.

ii) The miracle attributed to Muhammad (7C AD) is far more recent than the NT example (1C), much less the two OT examples (8C BC & 2nd millennium BC). It's unsurprising that records wouldn't survive for much earlier events.

iii) The crucifixion darkness may simply be darkness over "the land" (i.e. Erez Israel). Indeed, that's practically an idiomatic synonym for Palestine. In that event, it's not on the same scale as the miracle attributed to Muhammad. 

It might be caused by swarms of locusts covering the sun. That would be a suitable omen of divine judgment. 

iv) Commentators often compare the crucifixion darkness to the Ninth Plague (Exod 10:21-23). That, however, was a local rather than global spectacle. Moreover, Goshen was exempted–which, again, stresses the local nature of the miracle. So it's not on the same scale as the miracle attributed to Muhammad. And if that's truly analogous to the crucifixion darkness, then that's another argument for the local nature of the phenomenon. 

v) The sundial of Azaz was evidently a local miracle, confined to the land of Judah (2 Chron 32:31). Had it been a global phenomenon, Babylonian emissaries wouldn't travel to Judah to enquire about the sign. Rather, they were following up on a report–given Babylonian interest in astronomical portents and prodigies. 

The accounts don't describe anything happening directly to the sun. Rather, they describe the counterclockwise effect of the shadow. Perhaps a preternatural or supernatural optical illusion. 

vi) Regarding Joshua's Long Day, it's hard to pinpoint the nature of the phenomenon because we lack a direct description of the event. The passage is poetic, and filtered through a secondary source, which makes it hard to identify the "mechanics" behind the miracle. But in context, the miracle involves prolonging daylight to give the Israelites extra time to defeat the enemy, so, at a minimum, a preternatural or supernatural optical effect is in view.

To Appreciate Christmas, Read The Quran

I want to expand on Steve's recent post about competing miracle claims. One way to falsify the ridiculous skeptical suggestion that Christianity's miracles aren't significantly different than the competing miracles of other belief systems is to set Christianity next to each of its primary competitors, one-by-one, and see how they contrast. Islam, the second largest religion in the world and, in that sense, Christianity's biggest competitor, provides a good illustration. Contrast Jesus' credentials to the lack of credentials for Muhammad. Contrast Biblical prophecy to the Quran's lack of anything comparable and the pathetic nature of Islam's attempts to come up with something comparable. Contrast Muhammad's credibility problems to the credibility of early Christian leaders like Paul and James (former opponents who converted upon eyewitnessing the resurrected Christ and died as martyrs) and Luke (a demonstrably reliable historian who goes into a lot of historical detail in his writings). Contrast the vagueness and lack of historical context, names of individuals, place names, etc. in the Quran to the large amount of such details in the gospels, Acts, Paul's letters, and other Biblical documents. And so on. The idea that the credibility of Christianity and that of Islam are comparable is absurd. The claim that the two are comparable undermines the credibility of the person making the claim.

I referred to how large Christianity and Islam are. Their size doesn't, by itself, prove that either is true. But it is a significant factor that should be taken into account. The fact that Christianity is the largest religious movement in the history of the world gives it a lot of plausibility as a candidate for a Divinely-revealed religion, more than any of its competitors. The vast majority of Christianity's competitors down through the centuries either don't exist any longer or are far smaller. The largeness of Christianity takes on even more significance when you consider how the religion's growth was so unlikely and fulfills some unusual prophecies. I wrote about this subject several years ago in a couple of posts at Christmastime (here and here). The opening of Isaiah's Suffering Servant prophecy (52:13-5) is especially striking. You wouldn't expect a Jewish Messiah to initially be rejected by most of the Jewish people, then become widely accepted among Gentiles, including Gentile rulers. (For more about the Suffering Servant prophecy in general, see here. Not only is Jesus' rejection by the Jewish people and influence on the Gentile world beyond reasonable dispute and something that continues to unfold in modern times, but other aspects of Jesus' life that fulfill the prophecy are also highly evidenced: his crucifixion, the earliness of the belief that his death was intended to make atonement for the sins of others, etc. Isaiah's prophecy is detailed enough to single out Jesus among the billions of people who have lived throughout history.)

You'll have a greater appreciation of Jesus and his prophecy fulfillments at the time of his birth and his other miracles if you contrast them to what we see in Islam and other competitors. The large majority of those competitors are on the ash heap of history while Jesus grows increasingly "great to the ends of the earth" (Micah 5:4).

What really happened to Muhammad?

According to Muslim tradition, the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad from time to time to give him revelations. For Christians, that raises the question: What really happened to Muhammad? 

Short answer: I don't know. I know what didn't happen to him. I know he didn't have an audience with the angel Gabriel. But barring that, what are the alternatives? 

In principle, there are naturalistic and supernaturalistic explanations. We can also distinguish between mental and extramental experiences. 

i) An angel did, indeed, appear to Muhammad. But of course, some angels are fallen angels. 

ii) Arguably, not all evil spirits are demonic. Ghosts are a well-attested phenomenon. What if the souls of the damned sometimes appear to the living? That may be what happens during some seances. 

For all we know, Muhammad dabbled in necromancy. 

iii) He was possessed. I presume that's the most popular explanation among Christians. It can't be proven or disproven in Muhammad's case. 

At his trial (according to Plato's Apology), Socrates talked about a "demon" (daimonion) that used to give him guidance. Of course, he didn't mean "demon" in the Christian sense, but he may have spoken better than he knew. Perhaps Muhammad's case was similar. 

iv) He was psychotic. Suffered from hallucinations. That might be a naturalistic explanation. 

On the other hand, possession and psychosis are not mutually exclusive. 

v) William Blake was a visionary. As I recall, Kenneth Clark attributed his "visions" to Blake's eidetic memory. That's a naturalistic explanation. Might apply to Muhammad, although that's not the first explanation I'd reach for. 

vi) He was a charlatan, like Joseph Smith. He made it all up. 

That's entirely possible. There's certainly evidence, even in Muslim tradition, that he sometimes improvised. 

We can't say for sure because we don't have as much information about Muhammad as we have about other cult leaders like Swedenborg, Joseph Smith, Sun Myung Moon, Herbert W. Armstrong, or Ron Hubbard–to name a few

In the case of Smith, Hubbard, and Moon, a naturalistic explanation is preferable. 

In the case of Swedenborg, it may be more than that. Unlike Smith, who was a social climber, and had much to gain by conning suckers, Swedenborg came from the upper crust. He was a noted scientist. At the same time, he inherited his father's esoteric theology. 

In his case, I tend to think something weird really did happen to him which could either have a naturalistic or supernaturalistic explanation. Psychosis. Possession. Perhaps he dabbled in the occult. Or maybe he suffered from mental illness.  

There's the same range of diagnostic possibilities for Muhammad. Our information about Muhammad is one-sided, although it includes hostile testimony. 

Did Muhammad exist?

When I read Muslim apologists, I'm struck by how shamelessly they quote "skeptics" about the Bible and church history. In that vein, it's useful to compare skepticism about the existence of Jesus or NT history and Christology to skepticism about the existence of Muhammad. 

You have mythicists like Robert Price and Richard Carrier. For his part, Hector Avalos clams to be agnostic about Christ's existence. This, in turn, has parallels with the minimalist school of Biblical archeology. 

Now, compare this to scholars who deny the existence of Muhammad and the traditional historical narrative. 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122669909279629451

http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/roark/muhammad_exist.html

http://www.meforum.org/1038/crossroads-to-islam

My point is not to endorse that position. But if you deny the existence of Abraham or Moses or Jesus, if you deny the Exodus, why not deny the existence of Muhammad? Be consistent in your methods and assumptions. Radical skepticism about Jesus and the Bible doesn't come to a screeching halt when we change the subject to Muhammad and the Koran. The same logic (or illogic) applies with equal force.

World's oldest Koran may predate Muhammad

I wouldn't take this report as the final word on the subject, but it's interesting. Let's see if it holds up:

http://www.jpost.com/Not-Just-News/Oldest-Koran-in-the-world-may-predate-Muhammad-Oxford-University-researchers-say-413963

The False Prophet Muhammad

Apparently, there's a trend in the western media, as well as among some professing Christians, to refer to Muhammad as "The Prophet Muhammad" or simply "The Prophet." I say "apparently" because I don't read, watch, or listen to these people, so my information is admittedly secondhand. 

There are several issues here:

i) Some people defend it on the grounds that so many Muslims are named Muhammad that you need some additional descriptor to distinguish the founder of Islam from his many namesakes.

ii) Some people defend this honorific usage on the grounds of politeness. 

iii) Apropos (ii), some people say we should avoid giving unnecessary offense. 

Let's run back through these:

i) The problem with (i) is that some proper names and place-names have a default referent. The very lack of further descriptors means they denote the most famous referent. 

ii) In addition, the context often determines the referent. If I'm reading a commentary on Romans, "Paul" denotes the Apostle Paul. That's understood. 

iii) Apropos (i), it depends on where we enter a discussion. If this is an ongoing discussion which someone else started, the identity of the referent may be a given. That was established at the outset.

If a Christian initiates the discussion, he might use a descriptor like "the founder of Islam" to establish the referent. But you don't need to repeat the identification throughout the conversation. Having established the identity of the referent, thereafter you can simply say "Muhammad."

Or, the identity of the referent might be implicit from something related to Muhammad, like the origin of the Koran. 

iv) There's a difference between deliberate offense and gratuitous offense. I agree that Christians should avoid giving unnecessary offense, but sometimes it's necessary or simply unavoidable to give offense.

What doesn't offend Muslims? Muslims are offended by the existence of anyone who is not Muslim. If you're not Muslim, you're an infidel. First and foremost–it's not what you say or do, but what you are, that's intolerable. You could say nothing, or you could mouth all the right honorific titles, but that's insufficient to placate Muslim sensibilities. 

For that matter, it's not enough to be Muslim. It's offensive to be the wrong kind of Muslim. Sunnis are offensive to Shiites, and vice versa.

v) Apropos (iv), it's not enough to say "the Prophet Muhammad" or "the Prophet." You're supposed to add "Peace be upon him" every time you say or hear his name.

vi) Apropos (iv), Muhammad is a paradigm false prophet. He's typecast for how the OT defines a false prophet. And he's the most influential false prophet in history.

Muslims need to understand how Christians view Muhammad. And they need to understand why we view him that way. 

Some people have beliefs that are dangerously out of touch with reality. In that event, you can't avoid offending them if we tell them what they need to hear. 

vii) Whenever we defer to Muslim sensibilities, we empower them. We embolden them. We cede power to them. We give them power over the rest of us. That's power they will use and abuse. 

Lessons From Nabeel Qureshi's Book

I recently read Nabeel Qureshi's Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2014). It's the story of a Muslim layman's conversion to Christianity, written for the general public, so it addresses the issues in an introductory to intermediate way. Since Qureshi's conversion involved a vision and some dreams that apparently were miraculous, he provides eyewitness testimony to some Christian miracles. The book is interesting, moving, and well written. If you want to read more about it, there are hundreds of reviews of the book at Amazon alone. What I want to do in the remainder of this post is highlight some portions of the book that stood out to me on subjects other than Islam.

Are All Religions Basically The Same?

One way to increase your appreciation for the Bible is to read the Quran. Consider Antony Flew's experience, for example.

Flew was a prominent atheist philosopher who came to believe in the existence of God shortly before his death. He never became a Christian, but that makes his comments about the contrast between Christianity and Islam even more significant. Unlike many critics of Christianity who irrationally claim that there aren't any significant differences among the religions of the world, Flew acknowledged some important contrasts between Christianity and Islam:

"Between the New Testament and the Qur'an there is (as it is customary to say when making such comparisons) no comparison. Whereas markets can be found for books on reading the Bible as literature, to read the Qur'an is a penance rather than a pleasure....Whereas St. Paul, who was the chief contributor to the New Testament, knew all the three relevant languages and obviously possessed a first class philosophical mind, the Prophet [Muhammad], though gifted in the arts of persuasion and clearly a considerable military leader, was both doubtfully literate and certainly ill-informed about the contents of the Old Testament and about several matters of which God, if not even the least informed of the Prophet's contemporaries, must have been cognizant. This raises the possibility of what my philosophical contemporaries in the heyday of Gilbert Ryle would have described as a knock-down falsification of Islam: something which is most certainly not possible in the case of Christianity....The evidence for the resurrection [of Jesus] is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion….Well, one thing I'll say in this comparison is that, for goodness sake, Jesus is an enormously attractive charismatic figure, which the Prophet of Islam most emphatically is not." (208-9, 211 here)

How Islam's Prophetic Failures Support Christianity

Yesterday, I wrote a post about Muhammad that, in part, addressed Islamic claims that he fulfilled prophecies found in the Bible. I argued that Muhammad's alleged prophecy fulfillments are evidentially far weaker than Jesus' fulfillment of prophecy.

That contrast between Muhammad and Jesus illustrates the absurdity of an objection that's frequently raised against the Christian argument from prophecy fulfillment. Supposedly, according to atheists and other critics, the early Christians inserted Jesus into the Old Testament after the fact, without justification and without anything supernatural having occurred. Well, Islam is a religion with a lot of resources (many adherents, political influence, wealth, etc.), a religion that's had a strong motivation to find prophecies of its founder in the Bible and has had a lot of time to do it. (For those who don't know, the Quran suggests that the Bible predicted Muhammad. See surah 7:157.) So, why has Islam, after all this time, produced such pathetic results in its attempt to find prophecies of Muhammad in the Bible? They've had far more time and other advantages the early Christians didn't have, including a larger range of material to draw from (both the Old and New Testaments rather than just the Old). Yes, you could find alleged typological prophecy fulfillments for Muhammad, much as many of Jesus' alleged fulfillments are typological (e.g., Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15). But non-typological fulfillments are much more evidentially significant, and Christianity has many of those as well. Islam doesn't. If it was so easy to make it look like Jesus fulfilled prophecies as unusual as Psalm 22 and the Suffering Servant Prophecy, to align his life with Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy, to fulfill the Son of David prophecy, to fulfill the Bethlehem prophecy, etc., why have Islam and other competing belief systems failed to produce anything that even comes close to being comparable or better? Then there are the Bible's non-Messianic prophecies, which the Quran also has failed to duplicate or surpass.

See here for an index of our posts on Christian prophecy fulfillment, both Messianic and non-Messianic.

Muhammad's Lesser Credentials

There's a lot to criticize in the Quran, but the issue I'd suggest Christians focus on most is authority. We don't have sufficient reason to conclude that Muhammad was a messenger of God. And we have far more reason to trust Jesus than to trust Muhammad.