 Thanks so much for being with us at 8.4 folks here and also Panifold our sponsor for the Portable is on play Cool website. I self act. Don't risk your actual money great Back there link out script and jump eight, but just one Both the IP as well as We're gonna jump into the opening statement. I want to say thanks so much for being with us David and Issa He said we're gonna get over to you 20 minute opening hit floor or your well I want to thank my colleague here. Dr. David would So I will be taking the affirmative position is the prophet Muhammad or the prophet of Islam and I'm gonna use this once I'm not gonna say it throughout the presentation because I think it gets old So la hwade was someone which means like peace and blessings be upon him Is he a true prophet where can we find the truth in this space and it's me. It's my name. So Here we go. Let's begin So let's start off. What is a true prophet? That's the whole crux of what we're talking about What's a prophet like? What's a true prophet? How does it work? So when we think of prophecy we can think of someone like Nostradamus where you can get kind of this Fortelling of the of the future that can be a definition of what a prophet is as someone who can foretell the future and With the kind of prophets that I believe that we are gonna be looking at today That is an aspect that these prophets share in common that there is an element of foretelling the future However, we're looking at the kind of the archetype of the Hebrew prophet This is how in my in the defense that I'm going with the prophet a true prophet Is a prophet who fits under the archetype of the Hebrew prophet? So what is this? Who is this Hebrew prophet? It's one who delivers messages that are believed to come from God Just this is kind of a generic definition so we can kind of understand what our terms are Okay, so we're gonna look kind of How first we're gonna also kind of shift into what is an Islamic prophet in Conjunction with this Hebrew prophet So there are two kinds of constructs within the Islamic tradition You have the Nabi and you have the Rasul So Nabi is actually we can find that right straight from Hebrew, which is Nabi, which is prophet And a Rasul is a messenger. So in Islamic tradition you have the prophets Similar to the corpus of the Tanakh the Torah Naveem Katavim the the whole corpus of the Hebrew scriptures The there are like minor prophets and major prophets So that that archetype fits within the Islamic tradition as well where you have Kind of minor prophets and major prophets. So the Rasul fits sort of as the major prophet. So Jesus Christ, you know, you could say a side a salam or a Jesus Christ or Yes, or your hoshua Is considered one of these major prophets Moses considered or Mosa Moshe Are they slum or you know of blessed memory is considered a major prophet and The prophet of Islam is considered a major prophet So something that we see with the prophetic archetype is we see Wahi and Ilham And below this is there's this is kind of the message is an interesting film that Folks should probably see it's sort of like an Islamic and commandments in a sense. It's a big epic film It has its interesting take on the narrative, but you know, there's actually an Arabic and an English version of it But you have Wahi and Ilham Wahi is inspiration and people can have that Across the board and spiritual figures may have that and Ilham is revelation, which is what? prophets receive from God So what are the traits of these prophets? They are meant to be truthful. They are not seeking material gain. There's a divine call to action And there's an obeying to the call to action. They function as mediators and Usually within this archetype you see that the prophets are persecuted. We can see that like with the prophet Isaiah Jeremiah A lot of these, you know All these prophets usually face these the prophetic archetype you faces a degree of persecution as being a part of that and there's a focus on prayer and Depending on your interpretation of the tradition you can see all of this within the prophet of Islam There are other views which exist as well I am okay with the pluralistic space that there are other views that will not see this point of view But this is a perspective and view that exists Okay So looking at the prophetic connection between the Hebrew prophets and the prophet of Islam There's 124,000 prophets that are mentioned within the Islamic tradition and 25 are mentioned within the Quran there if we look at the Tanakh you have which Sorry, I didn't explain that perfectly. It's the way that How Christians will call the Old Testament? The Jewish community will call the Hebrew scriptures, which is the Torah, which is the five books You the Neveim, which is the prophets and Ketuvim, which is the words So we see 48 prophets and seven prophetesses it within the Hebrew teaching So this is that we see that there's this narrative of multiple prophets throughout the tradition okay, so We looking at the Hebrew prophetic timeline. We can see that there is There's this kind of very long lineage of the prophetic tradition and there are kings this Map does not show us the judges the judges are Can be a part of that continuum as well. So That's something to consider So it's interesting because we have to consider storytelling and the themes of stories and narratives So within the Islamic narrative you're gonna have multiple narratives within the history There isn't just necessarily a linear narrative So I'm showcasing within several of these spaces that there are different things that are focused upon and how these things are viewed upon Can vary so we you we start off at 570 and You get the revelation at 610 the prophet of Islam is born 570 and then the other map we can see Starts with the elephant There's a lot of different ways of how these Continuum in this narrative comes like it's hard to really convey all of it So I'm kind of giving a snapshot here that we can see of what this prophetic narrative is of the prophet of Islam So The situation how does this fit within the archetypal narrative that we see within the Hebrew prophets is that he similar to a the prophet Abraham kind of Gets clicked into this the tradition of monotheism Is you know comes to the mountain of Hera, you know He goes out and it's like a renunciate from the society And he meditates there and a revelation comes and it's this propagation of Teaching monotheism this same kind of continuum we can see throughout the other prophetic shared traditions I think the prophet Jeremiah is another perfect example of that So this is something that we can see that fits this Continuum okay, so this so looking at different timelines We see different focuses that it's the point of how we do narrative and story base Telling in an engagement with all of these spaces Okay, when we think of the prophetic continuation, what does this look like the prophetic continuation is It's an interesting thing because it's very hard to tie down timelines in the situation because we're dealing with a spiritual history as opposed to a Lateral historical narrative some folks like to use a literal lateral historical narrative I think that's totally fine, but this and this is kind of an archetypal space of looking at that and we could see throughout this type of Continuum of how we get from Adam to the prophet of Islam, so that's important to consider So We as humans tell many stories, so this is the important This is the important crux of this situation when we're looking at the prophet of Islam We're gonna see many different stories of who this person is We're gonna see a story that can be very hot in our modern-day society could be very highly charged Very negative to modern audiences But we also could see a story of a narrative of the protagonist who is very positive and Noble and a lot of Muslims and within the Muslim community hold to this archetypal figure to this prophetic character within their lives The question is what what makes someone a true prophet what is Truth in this space. How do we view what that looks like and what I would say is Does this connect and have a continuation with the Hebrew prophetic narrative and from What has been engaged right now that seems to be The space that seems that can be an argument that can be presented that this is a space that can exist and this is very important for those who are a part of the Muslim community and Take that position of faith. So I think we can take a position of yes and instead of yes But so that's the important thing to consider. Thank you very much We'll kick it over to David Hmm for his opening as well. Thanks for being with us David. The floor is all yours We're waiting want to give you a reminder if you're watching online Don't forget to hit that subscribe button. We have plenty more debates coming up today a debate con for players David Setting up this debate Most of the popular Dawa arguments from 20 years ago including argument from perfect preservation and the argument from scientific miracles are now being abandoned even the Dawa guys are finally admitting that arguments were in their words total nonsense So all of the work of the previous generation of Muslim apology people like Dr. Nike and Ahmed B. Dot is Being destroyed by a new generation of Dawa guys, but this raises an important question If the previous generations arguments for Muhammad were bogus, why should we believe in Muhammad now? Are there new arguments? So it's the only way to find out is to ask our Muslim friends So thank you, Issa for being here to explain your reasons for believing in Muhammad might think that The prophethood of Muhammad would be the go-to topic for Muslim apologists everywhere After all if Muslims could show that Muhammad was actually a prophet a final prophet that would settle a lot of other debates Islam would be true Muslims would win Ballgame So it's odd that Muslim apologists generally won't go near this top. He says one of the rare exceptions So hats off to him Now Issa's approach to the prophethood of Muhammad is a bit different from what we're used to from the Dawa crowd So here are my opening statement. I'm going to share my general thoughts on this issue And then we could take a closer look at Issa's perspective in the remainder Many people down through history have claimed to be Profit many people in the world today claim to be prophet But we can't accept what someone says just because he claims to be a prophet We need to test people to see whether their message messages really come from God and that is Since Issa's appealing to the Hebrew tradition That is a recurring theme that there are lots of false prophets and that you need to test these need to test people who claim to be prophet So someone comes with a revelation. There are three main possibilities that we should consider First the revelation might have a purely Human origin people sometimes say they're getting messages from God when the messages are really coming from their own minds Doesn't mean that they're intentionally Inventing revelations they could But they might really believe that their prophet and yet the true origin of their messages may go no further than their own Imaginations their own desires their own beliefs Second the revelation might have a demonic origin Christians and Muslims Believe in some sort of demonic forces and we agree that demons can influence people So we would agree that a person who claims to be a prophet could be getting revelations from demonic realm Third the revelation may actually come from God which case he should believe it So for examining the claims of Muhammad we should ask did these claims come from? Muhammad's own mind did they come from some demonic source did they come from God? Let's take a closer look at the possibilities In many ways Islam looks like a religion that came from the mind of a 7th century caravan trader Muslims believe that the message of Islam came down from heaven But we can find all the building blocks of the religion in the teachings and practices of the people around Mecca during the time of Muhammad Jewish monotheism had spread to Arabia use had also written tons of stories that were recorded in the Talmud and other sources many of these stories were based on Biblical characters, but they were later fabrication stories about Abraham being delivered from a fire or a bird Teaching Cain how to bury his brother or Solomon talking to animals these stories are now in the Quran There were also various teachings about Jesus and Mary that certain odd Christian groups believe things like Jesus speaking at birth these giving life play birds Mary giving birth under a palm tree and so on No historian on the planet believes that these late apocryphal stories are authentic But we know that some Christians in Arabia were teaching these things and these stories ended up in the Quran The sabbians who are mentioned in the Quran prayed before dawn before noon Afternoon before sunset and after sunset they prayed it to additional times, but five of their prayer times are now part of Islam Some of the Persians believe that after death of paradise sensual delights awaited them fleet with Hori the Virgins of the garden became the Muslim view of paradise And let's not forget about the pagan of Arabia the pagans of Arabia the polytheists Performed ablutions these ceremonial washings. They took the pilgrimage to Mecca and circled the Kaaba. They kissed the black stone These were all pagan practices that were very dear to the polytheistic idle worshiping Arab now They're part of Islam The point I'm trying to make is that if you take Jewish monotheism and some fictitious tales from Jewish sources The false and sometimes heretical stories of certain Christian groups the Persian view of the afterlife Some of the prayer times of the sabbians and the practices of the pagans and you roll it all up into a ball You get Islam This doesn't look like something that came down from heaven. This is exactly the sort of religion We would expect to arise in seventh century Mecca But we have other reasons to believe that the true origin of Islam was the mind of Muhammad consider for instance Muhammad's self-serving revelations Only time to look at a couple, but there are a lot more of these Surah Surah 4 verse 3 says that Muslims can marry up to four women But we know from history that Muhammad had a lot more than four wives Probably says that Muhammad consummated marriages with 13 women We also know from references in Bukhari that Muhammad had at least nine wives at one time So if the Quran says that men are allowed to have no more than four wives Why did Muhammad get more? Well, Muhammad received another Revelation Surah 33 50 which gave him and him only special moral privileges I'll just say that it looks awfully suspicious when a prophet receives revelations that give him more sexual partners than anyone else Look at another revelation Muhammad had an adopted son named Zaid who was called Zaid bin Muhammad Zaid son of Muhammad One day Muhammad went to visit him and was greeted by Zaid's wife Dana Who was one of the most beautiful women in Arabia and who was wearing very little clothing at the time? Let's say Here's what happened according to Tabari She jumped up in haste and excited the admiration of the messenger of God so that he turned away murmuring something that could scarcely be understood However, he did say overtly Glory be to God the Almighty glory be to God who causes hearts to turn When Zaid found out that Muhammad was attracted to his wife He decided to divorce her so that Muhammad could have him could have her Muhammad, of course was worried about what people might think so he said no keep your wife But by that time Zainab had found out that Muhammad was attracted to her and so she began despising her husband and Zaid Wanting to give his adopted father whatever he desired divorced his wife Muhammad was still worried about what people might think if he married Zainab And the wife don't adopt a son, but then he began receiving revelations to justify the merit Received for a 33 verse 37 for instance, which says that Muhammad had to marry Zainab So that other Muslims would understand that it's okay to marry the wives of your adopted son Here again Muhammad's revelations theme a little too convenient and has happened over and over again Muhammad got caught having sex with his slave girl marry the cop in his wife Hafsa's bed He was allowed to have sex with his slave girl, but his wives were upset that he was doing it in their bed So they kept complaining until he swore by Allah that he would never have sex with that slave girl again War by Allah took a note Then he suddenly received a revelation opening verses of surah 66 Telling him that he could break that oath and go back to having sex with his slave girl The Quran is supposed to be the eternal speech of Allah and yet parts of it have way more to do with satisfying Muhammad's desires than with guiding humanity Interestingly Aisha herself Notice this Aisha as you may know was Muhammad's child bride Muhammad had a dream telling him to marry her when she was six Years later Muhammad received one of his morally convenient revelations and Aisha said to him I Feel that your Lord hastens in fulfilling your wishes and desires Anytime you want something you get it indeed Would we expect the creator of the universe to have nothing better to do than sit around handing out revelations to satisfy Muhammad's desires Of course not this seems entirely human And there are other aspects of Muhammad's teachings that seem all too human Things that are attributed to him often seem like they were composed for five-year-olds The Prophet said if any one of you rouses from sleep and performs the ablution He should wash his nose by putting water in it and then blowing it out thrice because Satan has stayed in the upper part of his nose all night A man was mentioned before the Prophet and he was told that he kept on sleeping till morning and did not get up For prayer Prophet said Satan urinated in his ears Allah's messenger said when the call for Salat is made Satan takes to his heels passing wind so that he may not hear the adhan and There's everyone's personal favorite the eyes are the leather strap of the anus This one fortunately was not written for five-year-olds. You want to know what Muhammad meant by this You can ask me during the Q&A had to do a little research to figure this one out So Satan peas in your ears Satan hides in your nose Satan passes gas during the call to prayer. There are tons and tons of these things But who care? What's the what what's the problem? I'm pointing out. Well, the problem with these passages is that Muhammad bragged about his supernatural eloquence His sayings supposedly contains some sort of internal confirmation of their divine origin According to Muhammad when he says the eyes are the leather strap of the anus It's some kind of evidence that he's a prophet Perhaps I'm missing something here, but this doesn't sound like wisdom from God It doesn't sound like the work of Satan. It sounds like the silly folk teachings of someone living in 7th century Arabia And when we combine this with the fact that Muhammad plagiarized practically everything in his religion from Judaism Christianity and so on and with the fact that some of Muhammad's revelations have no purpose other than satisfying his desires We can't help but think that these revelations are all too human So we have good reasons to think that the origin of Muhammad's message was his own 7th century Meccan mind, but we should also look to see if there might be something darker involved And here we find plenty of evidence that something beyond Muhammad was at work in some of his teachings We know from muslim sources that when Muhammad began receiving revelations his first impression Was that they were demonic? That was his first impression. I thought he was possessed We also know that after his experience in the cave he became suicidal and tried to hurl himself off a cliff We know that it was his wife Khadija and her cousin Wataka who persuaded him that he wasn't possessed. He was a prophet of God Now what happened to Muhammad in that cave when the Quran started coming to him? I don't know. I wasn't there but according to sources when Muhammad ran out of that cave Parified depressed and suicidal. He was convinced that he had encountered a demon Times your first impression is the correct one According to our earliest muslim sources Muhammad delivered a revelation from the devil and from the satanic verses Here's what happened Muhammad was preaching in Mecca. He didn't win very many converts But he wanted his countrymen to accept Islam and he was hoping to receive a revelation that would help them convert Then one day he got the revelation. He was looking for It said have you thought of a lot and al-lusa and manat the third the other These are the exalted cranes whose intercession is approved Just what surah 53 originally said it said that in addition to a lot there are three goddesses That muslims can pray to a lot al-lusa and manat Called them cranes because the idea is that they're like birds who can carry your prayers up to a lot So they're they they intercede for you Muhammad delivered these verses to his followers. He bowed down in honor of them and his followers bowed down with him But a little later Muhammad came back and proclaimed The devil made me do it He said that the satanic verses which he had delivered as part of the Quran weren't really from god They were from satan And he replaced them with the words we find in the Quran today So when you read surah 53 Keep in mind that it originally promoted polytheism and prayers to pagan goddesses And that Muhammad couldn't tell the difference between a revelation from god and a revelation from state even according to muslims sources Pretty disturbing, which is why muslim scholars tend to keep this a secret But there's more we know from multiple references in bukhari and other sources that Muhammad was victim Of black magic that made him delusional and gave him false belief According to the story one of the jew stole Muhammad's hairbrush and used it to cast a spell on him Spell lasted somewhere between six months and two years So god's last and greatest prophet could be driven temporarily insane By a magician Good demonic powers have been at work in Muhammad's teaching Muhammad's first impression of his revelations was that they were demonic Early muslim sources report that Muhammad delivered a revelation from the devil A magician could give Muhammad delusional thoughts and false beliefs simply by getting a hair from his hairbrush They find it simply shocking that there are muslims who see no problem here History is filled with people claiming to speak for god and their messages very often contradict one another Most of these people have to be false prophets So who are we going to listen to? I don't know about you But as soon as I hear that a guy thinks he's demon-possessed and that he delivers revelations from state and that people can cast spells on him Find it pretty difficult to take his claim seriously So we have reasons to think that some of Muhammad's revelations have a purely human origin We have reasons to think that something more sinister may have been at work in Muhammad's revelations The question before us now is whether we have any good reason to think that Islam is from God Is there evidence that outweighs the difficulties we've seen what evidence has he's given us? Well, we can we can talk about this in the remainder of the debate, but As far as what I jotted down Uh, he refers to traits of a prophet Someone who's truthful someone who doesn't speak material gain as a divine call to action and so on Um, I think you could Point out these traits in a lot of false prophets as well So i'm going to need a little more than that and even if you have reasons to think that they're not being truthful And someone their followers are generally going to say no, they're being truthful So we need a little bit more on how to distinguish someone who Simply claims to have these traits versus someone who actually has them And uh, isa says that Muhammad is the sort of continuation of the Hebrew prophetic narrative And there's that's that's partly correct in that you you have a lot of similarities um in doctrine and practice between Muhammad and Uh, the old testament prophets let's say But Muhammad is claiming to be a continuation of the Muhammad comes along you can see why Some jews and christians might have Been happy especially at first like like I mentioned, uh, I mentioned, uh, waterka Waterka is some sort of odd christian back then And he thinks it's great when Muhammad comes along and starts telling the polytheists of arabia that they should believe in one god And that they should believe in the old testament prophets And so you can see why why people might be persuaded by this and why isa might Think it's important to point out that Muhammad is a a continuation of the Hebrew prophetic narrative The problem is that Muhammad kept talking and talking and talking So he's contradicting the Hebrew prophets left and right contradicting Jesus over and over again while constantly claiming that their scriptures affirm him as a prophet Even though those scriptures contradict his poor teachings. I'd be happy to go through plenty of that so, uh I I just think it's uh, it's going you're going to need a little more than saying he's the continuation of these prophets Joseph smith would claim to be a continuation of these prophets lots of false prophets would say hey I'm part of that prophetic line. Uh, in fact, if you're if you're almost any false prophet Uh, in most parts of the world today, you're going to be claiming to be the successor of these uh earlier prophets So you're gonna need more than that And so putting all of this together We have good evidence that some of Muhammad's revelations had a purely human origin Islam just looks like a mixture of Apocryphal Jewish teachings apocryphal christian teachings and pagan practices It looks like something that came from seventh century arabia Many of Muhammad's revelations have no purpose other than satisfying his desires. Aisha herself noticed this. I'm not inventing this At the same time we've seen That maybe there's something darker at work in the formation of Islam Muhammad's first impression of his revelations was that they were demonic This they caused him to be suicidal Muhammad delivered a revelation from the devil not according to me according to muslim sources And according to muslim sources, he was a victim of black magic Not the sort of guide trust is the final authority in matters of religion What evidence do we have that outweighs these difficulties? Well simply claiming that he has the characteristics of a of a prophet and then he the continuation of This prophetic line isn't going to do it because that's what almost any prophet nowadays would say And so, uh, he says a very nice guy much nicer nicer guide than uh Almost every almost anyone I've ever debated But he's a being a nice guy is is not a good reason to believe Muhammad All right, we're gonna kick it open to 12 minute rebuttal period. We're gonna give it over to He's the first 12 minutes to come what just heard there Well, thank you David that was Definitely intense. There's a lot of things to cover there. Um, okay, so I'm gonna try to cover all of these aspects as best I can Um, so in the beginning of David's uh position, uh, we heard about The arguments of older Delegandus or da'i, you know, uh people who are propagating Islam Which is an interesting thing because in Islamic tradition You have different kinds of movements. You have folks who are Kind of taking that movement and you have people who may be doing more inner work But it's interesting that there are there's a community And so the community who is trying to propagate have a certain kind of narrative of what they're trying to get at Um, I don't think that that is where I'm gonna go with it. Um We can see the situation of that How the newer generation takes a different position than the older generation. I do think it's interesting to consider the points of scientific theory I I I have find a lot of problematic elements of trying to connect religion to science. I don't think That works and that's why I would never debate Is religion scientific? I think they just operate in different operating systems. So I don't think that those two things work Um, there's a new approach. I'd love to hear more about the new approaches of The folks who are taking that position Um And so and also David brought up the point that there are a lot of people who claim to be prophets How do we know what's a true prophet and what's not a true prophet? And I think that's a really difficult question. How do how do we say? Is the Mormon prophet not a prophet, you know To Mormon folks, he is a prophet and to people who are not Mormon He's not a prophet. So this isn't this is an interesting question Um, so I would kind of take the position that the prophet of Islam is a prophet to Muslim folks It's hard to say again if you're taking kind of a pluralistic position. It's going to be difficult to say, hey um There's this absolute truth and I think that the people who take that position the Dallagandists or the uh, dais Uh, their folk this kind of position is that they are exceptionally correct. I'm not taking that position I don't I don't think that that I don't even see the the validity of that a lot of folks who take that position Have never even explored other alternative positions. So I don't even see how One could take that position, but it's an interesting thing to consider The next thing is the three possibilities human origin demonic origin and may actually come from god um Yeah, this is this is interesting I would say there's probably lots of other origins too, but going to these kind of Elements taking these three, uh elements that a person basically constructed religion. They just made it up. Um It's possible. Um, I've it's it's an interesting thing. How do what is the litmus test? That's an interesting question What is the litmus test to prove any of these situations? And I think you're gonna have multiple litmus litmus or lit litmus litmus. I test um multiple kinds of tests that you could do and depending on what your framework is and what you're You know cosmology ontology all of these types of frameworks you use you may come with different positions on it It would be interesting how what would what would be our litmus test of trying to prove these situations Is it self-serving? Well, this is interesting because the narratives that we've heard from David are really kind of are more traditional Ahosunabu-jama or your Sunni narratives, which is your traditional kind of hadith, which there's like 30,000 hadith. There's so many the hadith corpus is Insurmountable, um, and there's some repetitions within and the system in of itself is um Based on transmission. We don't necessarily know about veracity of information within the hadith tradition But you know if this is an important framework for folks, you know, I say have that for the folks who utilize that framework um So you have the the hadith tradition and that's primarily where most of our kind of conceptions of all of these arguments are coming from And that's that's the difficulty. It's a very difficult thing to kind of look at. Um Another element is who were the folks in ancient Arabia? This is another difficult situation I'd done research in this actually the ancient Hebrews. I did a whole Like research element of was Gordon Nubi has a whole book on the Jews of Arabia and it's very complex It's very difficult to know how these Jews are because even if we look at ancient Hebrew traditions Let's say we look at the first century of Jews or Israelites Hebrews, whatever term we want to use We see that um, there were different kinds of narratives You have the seducum or the sadducee position position the phariseic position or um, the prushik prushim position Um and the phariseic position kind of is the most position that Jewish people have to this day It's interesting. There's these interesting narratives. What is meant in the Quran by what is a Jew? I think this is an interesting question to ask What are these archetypes? So what I would present is that the Quran is a spiritual text as opposed to a literal historical A text that is you know narrative based and I think that's how we should look at any Spiritual text is that we look at them as spiritual texts and try to Understand them through that lens if we want to take the archetype of the historical narrative We can do that as well, but I think It's important to try to place ourselves in the way that others think Also, we have to look at our modern state of affairs We live in a predominately kind of the ethos that we live in predominantly now is a Protestant Christian lens So we're a lot of folks are influenced by this lens. So Muslims are also influenced by this lens So it's interesting because I've I've heard with From conversations with dr. Wood where he engages Engages other folks there's this point that they're like well We believe in the Torah and we believe in the gospels, but now they're no longer relevant Which is a really interesting position to take because if you take that position You face a whole theological crisis you could take a spiritual perspective saying these are spiritual texts I don't literally understand them that helps you kind of escape that quagmire, but that's a an important thing Is this a spiritual text or are we going to look at it through an absolutist historical narrative? You can do that as an academic that is that's a fair position to take But I don't think it's the only position to take and that's what i'm offering There's an alternative position here. Um, there's different kinds of things like Um, the Bringing life to clay birds and um the delivery of abraham the prophet abraham. Um Yeah, these are it's an interesting thing. How do these narratives come about? I would say is that necessarily a bad thing? Is that a terrible thing to have a situation where you have a conglomerate approach if we look at the arc of the covenant? For example, there's definitely Babylonian fusion in infusions within that I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think that that's a part of humanity is that We dialogue and these things interconnect with each other. I don't think that that dismisses that someone could be a prophet It just depends on your um archetypal spiritual narrative um Yeah, um the point on the stories of the caravan trader, um That is a position one could take. I don't think you have to take that position It's all about what narrative and archetypal Space you want to take on this. So that's one position one could take. There's definitely other positions, too Um, again talking about the persians ceremonial washings. Again, I don't I don't think that that's necessarily a problematic element I think that's that's okay. If that's if there's imported elements Um and kind of a fusion of stuff self-serving revelations was another point that came up Um, I had a response to this because you could take there's a chapter in the Quran called abasa Which is key frowned which is actually In that particular sort if one wants to take that approach He is the prophet of Islam is actually, um What's the word that I would use is kind of, um Challenged on his approach of who he is engaging with so it's not like every verse is Completely self-serving. So I think it I don't know if we want to take that kind of absolute approach because there is a response for that um, so that engages the self-serving elements zed And yes the isha situation which wasn't brought up at that you could have that too, I guess, um And the maria the copped yes And the eternal speech I think this just depends on people's theology. What is the theology people want to take? I don't think you have to take this absolutist Islamic approach where you have to say this is absolute um And I think that that's unfortunately a space that folks take they say well, this is absolutely The way it has to be and what it is is I think it's a tribalistic response It makes people say I am the chosen one. I'm the best. I'm the greatest and they've again as I had said before Reinforcing and reifying that original position People want to be special they want to be chosen and I think that that type of narrative Allows them to be chosen and special They haven't had a lot of these folks who say that the Torah is corrupt Have they actually read the Torah? No Have that did they learn Hebrew? Did they take time to learn ancient greek? No, they didn't learn any of these things They didn't do the work But they want to do it because they were born in the right family at the right time in the right space So I don't know if I would say that that Condemns the prophet of Islam. I think this is just one interpretation of who the prophet of Islam may be um Yes, so I mentioned surah basa Morely convenient. Yes, okay The satan so then going to the demonic approach. This is an interesting question So a lot of folks when they are faced with like an overwhelming presence It that could be something that could be an explanation is that one could say wow this was um This is something that it's scary. It's terrifying. We don't really know because it's beyond our pay grade It's beyond our position to know if what what this spiritual force is But people have their feelings it could be even completely imaginary. We don't know there's not some perfect space that we can prove that position um, let's see Okay Yeah, the indigenous traditions. Yes, that was engaged to about the ark of the covenant um The black magic Yeah, that's an interesting thing We we use these terms to explain things that we don't understand. We use things like black magic. We use things like these kinds of concepts and I think Even like if you're reading poetry or a spiritual kind of text, um Um You might have certain language that's used from a certain time that has a certain kind of context and understanding I don't think that that we need to throw the baby out with the bass water and dismiss all of that within that kind of space So I think it's interesting. How would we define what a false prophet is from a true prophet? I think that's an interesting question in and of itself um Yeah, and going back to the huber prophets I think Going uh going with that kind of space it it is a consistent situation um And that's what we can see with that particular situation. Yeah. Thank you Very much appreciate that So we're gonna get over to give it his 12 minute bottle as well. Thanks for the floor Oh, thank you james and isa uh isa began there by um distinguishing his approach from It's funny. He did actually use use the word dawgandist I'm starting to like you a lot he's but um And and he and he pointed out some some of the differences between Some of the approaches of the the dawg guys in recent years and his approach and uh, he pointed out with the you know Very popular to be using scientific arguments for the quran the quran supposedly came Had all these scientific miracles this argument came out in the 1970s And uh, then was developed in the 80s and the 90s and uh was used on people who weren't actually looking up the passages when you actually looked up the passages The argument started to fall apart and now Even people like ollie dawg are saying that the argument was has been debunked and he calls it absolute nonsense But but I would actually agree with isa isa that you shouldn't this probably shouldn't have been an argument To begin with and uh, it's it's it's one thing where I would actually I mean I assume isa would have the same perspective here. Uh, if he's interpreting this as a For the the spiritual message when I was looking at some of the Um scientific miracles arguments from the dawg guys It was it was almost like they're ruining the passage because some of the passages had an important meaning They get can that gets completely Derailed once you start looking for the scientific accuracy. So uh in in the famous passage about embryology Um, you had the dawg guys. They try to show that this lines up with modern embryology. It doesn't it doesn't at all but When you take it down that road and start examining it scientifically you miss the entire point of the passage the point of the passage was It was about people who deny the resurrection It says you deny the resurrection because you don't think god can put you together Again after you die, do you know how god put you together at the beginning at first? And so the point was it's pretty amazing that you were put together at all You shouldn't find it too uh unbelievable that god could put you together again So it was a perfectly uh interesting point which which any theist who believes in a resurrection could agree with And it gets completely derailed by uh looking at down the scientific route um, so uh isa has um Given assist thoughts for believing in Muhammad. I've given several reasons for why I don't believe Muhammad the prophet And uh, let's go through some of these. So uh, yeah, I broke it down into sort of three categories and keep in mind. It's not A person falls into one category or the other you could be you could truly get some sort of revelation from god over here And yet you could be talking just from your own mind over there something It's looking at the revelations. What's the what what does the actual origin? look like so I began by Looking at Muhammad's teachings to see whether they might have a human origin And I said that we have many good reasons to think that the the true origin of Islam was the mind of a seven century arabian man Isa in response to the points I brought up so I brought up that the sources of Islam You find all the building blocks of Islam in the surrounding Culture of Muhammad lots of competing groups Islam sort of lends a lot of them together I pointed out that they're self-serving revelations and a lot of silly teachings I wouldn't think the silly teachings are really a problem except for Muhammad claiming that is uh Is uh saying that's some sort of supernatural eloquence Isa points out that i'm relying primarily on the Sunni tradition That is correct and I am Open to other views and I'm more open to other Views on Islam than I used to be my my thoughts generally come from Sunni sources. I used to think it's obvious That Sunnis have the most correct Islamic position I mean you're talking 80 to 90 percent of Muslims in the world are Sunni Muslims and it's why did Islam make this Why did Islam have this big impact there? Why is that the dominant position? Whereas in more recently I've come to think that the Sunni sources are Very very problematic a lot of ways. They're extremely late Um, so the the main sources Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim you're talking two centuries after the time of Muhammad I used to think that you know They probably they're probably doing a good job retaining that information for a couple centuries The closer you look you find out they're inventing stuff left and right back there The difficult methodology trying to figure out what you can take seriously and what you couldn't Take seriously but Just to give everyone an idea for anyone who's new to this you have people who are completely skeptical of The Sunni sources in other words on a scale of one to ten they their skepticism is ten They don't trust they don't trust any of it If you go back like two years go back two years I would have been like A five or a six five or a six on how skeptical I am of these sources So I believe there's a lot of reliable information and made up stuff But recently recently, um, this is this is joshua little who believed that he was defending Islam from Islamophobes by attacking some of the information in Sunni sources to show that we shouldn't be using it because it's not actually reliable but uh in his doctor is oxford doctoral dissertation he breaks down the Sunni historical methodology and is way way way worse and sloppier and more deceptive than I was aware of so Now I'm uh, I'm significantly more open open to Shia interpretations Sufi interpretations and so on because the sources are way worse and way weaker than I'm aware of so A lot of what I'm saying a lot of what I'm saying comes from Sunni sources And so again this would apply to the vast majority of Muslims who believe in those sources, but There is plenty of room for disagreement among Muslims. And so some if you're you're a minority Muslim Shia or are Sufi or something like that you might be able to just reject a lot of what I'm saying and say hey, that's that's So um, so a lot of this will only apply to Sunnis Issa says that you know, we should be reading the Quran as a spiritual text Not is not just looking at it at the historical narrative and There there's That makes some sense But there's another problem if we're going to examine Muhammad as a prophet Then we have to know who we're examined right if we take a copy of the Quran and say is this from god Seems like we should know about the person who brought it. Otherwise. We're just we're just you know, we just got a book It's just hanging out there in midair um in other words if you're If you're trying to discern whether someone is a true prophet or a false prophet He would probably want to look at his life and Uh, the rest of the things he said and and so on and so i'm not quite sure you can treat something just as a kind of spiritual text without Examining Muhammad's life, but where are you going to examine Muhammad's life and say is this a guy? We should believe it. How are you even going to the Quran and having any clue what a lot of it is talking about? Lots of the Quran you cannot understand without going outside of the Quran The Quran says that Muhammad is your pattern of conduct Quran doesn't say a whole lot about the life of Muhammad You have to go outside of the Quran to see what your pattern of conduct is There are all kinds of passages in the Quran You can't you can't understand what these passages are about without looking at the historical background And so we kind of need these other sources But we're kind of getting to part of the problem here Most of what we would look at would be Sunni sources that come from two centuries after the events to try and understand What the Quran is even saying and so if we're not taking those sources seriously Then it's not clear why we're going to have any clue what the Quran is talking about some of the Even if we're just interpreting it spiritually Um, so how else can I mean how else we're going to examine? Muhammad's life if we're we're not going to the sources the only sources that we have on his life Um Issa says that the Quran drawing on apocryphal sort of apocryphal sources or the surrounding Stories of his time wouldn't mean that the Quran is wrong Uh, I I actually agree with him here. I actually agree with him on this It's it's not the normal muslim approach the a a normal dawa guy would be horrified at what at what issa just said Uh, there are exceptions to be our li I was in a debate with Shabir Ali and I was bringing up some of these Passages where we know exactly where the passage comes from we know exactly the source where Muhammad was getting a story And it's not an accurate source It'll be a source from like the fifth century or something like that And Muhammad tells the same story. So we look at that and say hey, you got a problem here your prophets plagiarizing false stories Uh, but shabir pointed out and again, this would horrify the vast majority of especially studi muslim shabir's response Was look if someone's preaching or something like this and and he just you know, the marvel movie is out And he says hey, it's just like the hulk when the hulk does look could you do that and be you know Using that for a message to someone At the end of the day, I say I say yeah, so I don't I wouldn't think it's a terrible terrible problem Even if Muhammad is using uh, sort of apocryphal sources Uh, it would be a problem for for the way lots of muslims interpret their source But isa is uh is saying no, it's okay Okay, to even use some of these apocryphal sources even if they're not correct You can still use them for the message or something like that. I don't actually have a terrible problem with that Um, so we've got the the issue of the sources of islam if if if we don't actually uh have a terrible problem of Muhammad Um getting his information from the sources that are popular at his time whether they're right or wrong Um, okay, we're good As far as the self-serving revelations uh isa's Main response here was that not everything in the muslim sources was self-serving towards Muhammad And that's correct too. There were times when Allah would rebuke Muhammad and and tell Muhammad to repent and tell him to ask forgiveness of sins and In the hadith it says that Muhammad would ask forgiveness of his sins 70 times a day So he's obviously doing something that he thinks is wrong So he's not receiving revelations to justify everything But I don't think this is enough to Um To deal with some of these issues In other words to say that someone is receiving self-serving revelations You don't have to say that every single revelation he ever received is self-serving Some of these really really look problematic again Muhammad swears an oath by Allah. I will not have sex with that Well, I will not have sex with that slave girl again because I disrespected you my wise by doing this in your bed So, uh in the sort of punishment to myself I I'm not going to have sex with my slave girl again. Are we good? Yeah. Yeah, we're good Hey, wait a minute. I got a revelation in the Quran for a 66 versus one to two Allah says hey, I didn't tell you to make that oath tells them it's okay to break it That looks really really suspicious and and again This this wouldn't be a a complete deal breaker You could have a problem with this and then have that problem outweighed by other considerations In other words, you could have that kind of problem And then Muhammad does this awesome miracle that sort of confirms that he's through profit something like it So these are things that could be outweighed My question is what is it that outweighs these problems because I look and I see problem after problem after problem after problem after problem And I never see the evidence that outweighs the the problem And so we've got the spiritual issues. We've got Muhammad thinking that he was demon possessed To be fair, I do think there are ways Around that sort of thing if Muhammad's just freaked out and he doesn't know what's happening He could interpret this as him being possessed and just be wrong and then find out later Uh, so you have things like that the satanic verses Not so much because the the crux of that story is that Muhammad actually couldn't tell the difference between a revelation from God and a revelation Say That should be pretty scary. Hey, I'm a prophet. By the way, I can't tell the difference between a revelation from God and a revelation Okay, then I I don't know how to distinguish you between a Whether you're a true prophet or a false prophet The black magic and so on Um, again, you could you could say, you know with the black magic that Muhammad is just uh, you know, Muhammad doesn't know what's going on And he thinks it's black magic you could explain you could work around these things But the the core problem still remains you've got all of these problems the question is what what is there to offset these problems? And make us think that we should believe in Muhammad as a true prophet I still haven't seen All right, we're gonna kick it into an eight minute rebuttal period for isa. So isa floor yours Wow, um So I have to thank David. He we had we were definitely affirmed on many different spaces. Um Yeah, I definitely take a different approach than the usual approach But I think every approach is not going to be perfect They're going to be flaws in every kind of approach to this as I had broadened up before folks will say Well, the Sunni traditional Sunni approach is the best approach But then what do you do about the Torah and the gospel? You can't just utterly reject them and then say in your creed that you believe in the books that it just doesn't work You're your those these the puzzle is not coming together. So everybody's gonna have their flaws and so he brought up uh The spiritual element Uh within the situation, how can the prophet? Like who is this prophet like from reading this text? And I mean this this is a question And it's interesting because I have a certain way of looking at this. I um I took a class on uh Hebrew prophets Um, and I did And judges and I did a whole paper anybody wants to read it. I published in academia.edu It's about Shamgar Ben Anath very interesting figure within the shofdom or the judges We don't really even know much about these judges in general They're so little that's Said and basically the only one that you see in a lot of like you go to your like Christian movies and stuff Uh, you see samson or shimshah and that's the only figure that you actually see but there are several other figures but This character shamgar only has two paragraphs in the entire corpus that talks about him And who is this character? How do we figure out who he is? What he is what's he what he's about? These questions are all there and that's what I kind of explore in my texts. I'm like who is shamgar ben anath Who is this person? I don't know um And I've got no problem with that um But shamgar ben anath has two paragraphs and If we don't know much about who the prophet of islam is I don't know if that's a problematic space I don't know if that actually hurts our understanding our engagement I think each person has their own engagement with spirituality and religion if you're a christian you have your own engagement And many people have different engagements with their faith Or if they don't have faith if you're a secular humanist, you're going to have different positions within secular humanism And I think that's okay. I I take the position of pluralism and perennialism I think that people can have different points of view and different perspectives and they can coexist I do think it's difficult when you have people who uh take the position of essentialism and I think that that is definitely what uh doctor What is engaging is these essentialistic positions where people are like well, this is the truth This is right. I am right. They've never explored anything else. They don't know anything else But they know their little narrative They know their story and they keep pushing that story and they want to be special and better than other people as I've stated before And um, that's the perspective I don't I don't think things that are complex and controversial are necessarily bad things And it's interesting if we literally took the hebrew scriptures At face value. There's a lot of controversial things that we may see there, you know, we can see, you know, the story of David funny enough talking about David Uh king david prophet david depending on your faith tradition. It's an intense story. It's not an easy story Um, but there's a lot of wisdom to be gained from it. And that's how I think we should look At scriptures, you know, there's a term in german heilsgeschichte, which is like a salvation history Um, and I would take it in my own interpretation of a sacred history And it can you can have a sacred spiritual story and I was thinking of the narrative of hercules You have the greco Roman story of hercules who has to go on these 12 trials And it's pretty horrific how he even gets there. He kills his family goes in a rage Then you have disney's hercules very different characters, but a part of the same archetypal narrative And people have different narratives is disney disney's hercules false I wouldn't say so. It's a different kind of telling. It's a different kind of narrative So people have different narratives and muslims have different narratives on who the prophet of islam is You do have this narrative of someone who You know justifies, you know, what certain communities like the I don't even want to say there. I'm not even gonna say their names paramilitary groups that do very bad things. Um You know, uh, you know that I would say do terror They have their own narrative of the story and if they're Presented with an alternative narrative. They're like this, you know, that narrative is false Everybody is trying to say whose narrative is true. Whose story is correct So what I'm offering is that there's a different narrative that can exist too. Um When they had the story of the message that movie They had a certain kind of archetypal narrative of how they explored that story And I don't think these stories are wrong. I don't think it's wrong to have alternative Narratives, I think it's difficult when you take a hyper essentialistic one. Excellent. Uh, we moving in All right, correct. All right, just double checking. All right, Dave floors yours eight minutes on the floor. Good job there All right, so we're in our uh, we're wrapping up our our second rebuttals here. Uh, let's see. We're where we're at evidence-wise Um, I laid out a pretty simple case. Someone comes along claiming to be a prophet There are a lot of people down the history making those kinds of claims and Run into some really bad problems. You just believe anyone who comes along Telling you that he's a prophet you're basically begging to be a victim If you're going to side with anyone who claims to be a prophet So, uh, we need some sort of criteria in place for distinguishing a true prophet from a false prophet And uh, fortunately, if you have a lot of information about someone you can start to examine Didn't know anything about someone he comes up and he says prophet might not know what to leave Uh, if you've been following him for a while or he's got an entire community around him That's been recording things that he's done Then you have a you have a better ways of examining him and when we examine The life and teachings of Muhammad some things start standing out so things like Muhammad receiving revelations that don't seem to have a purpose other than getting him out of some Moral condemnation at some particular time people don't realize how Uh, how obvious this is in the muslim sources. So I mentioned Muhammad's relationship with uh, with zaynab Muhammad had an adopted son his adopted son named zayn Uh, zayn has a wife zaynab. Muhammad sees her. Um, he's attracted to her Zayn eventually divorces zaynab so that Muhammad can marry her. This was considered Uh, bad since it was considered bad because they didn't they didn't draw a Clear distinction between an adopted son and a regular son So that was almost on the level of incest for the surrounding culture You're taking your adopted wife. I mean your adopted son's wife. What the world is going on here I mentioned that Muhammad received Sort of 33 verse 37 where a lot tells him breaks it down to him says Muhammad you have to marry this woman. You have to why? Well, so that other men understand it's okay to to marry the divorce wives that their own adopted son Now notice how many people struggle with that how many how many people down through history struggle Should I marry the wife of my own adopted son or not doesn't seem like a terribly important issue But this is amplified because Muhammad also receives in order to justify this relationship He also receives a sura 33 sura 33 versus four to five Which in order to completely justify it abolishes adoption in Islam So think about this And the final straw in justifying Muhammad's marriage Zaynab was to abolish adoption in Islam Now According to sura 33 verse 37. Why did Muhammad need to marry her? So that people would understand it's okay to marry the wives of their own adopted son But then Muhammad also receives a revelation saying there is no more adoption So it's a problem that will never arise again So Allah is telling Muhammad you have to marry this girl. Why so that everyone understands It's okay to marry your your the wives of your adopted your adopted sons And it's something that will never happen again. So it's completely pointless Because there is no more adoption This is the sort of thing we're looking at here And it just looks awfully suspicious. There would have to be some seriously good evidence to outweigh this sort of thing Uh, if you're again, you can combine this with uh With Muhammad Breaking his oath you could you could combine it with all kinds of things But this does seem to happen over and over and over again. The question is why should we be believing this guy? And I still haven't seen the reasons why we should be taken Muhammad seriously Um, so we we look at all the reasons we have for thinking that Muhammad's Uh revelations have a human origin either from his surroundings or from his own desires and so on Again, these these problems wouldn't be insurmountable. They could be offset by other factors I'm just not aware of what these other factors are um As far as us relying on later sources and if we don't trust those then you know, we wouldn't have a lot to go on Issa brings up the issue of of Shamgar in the bible We don't know a lot about him, but we can believe in him and believe the little bit that we know without knowing a lot of details Well, that's true, but there's a pretty big difference between Shamgar and Muhammad How much theology and practice in Christianity and Judaism and Islam relies on Shamgar? Uh, none So you don't need to know a lot about it If if everything rested on this one guy and he was he was uh proclaiming all sorts of things and we knew nothing about him That would kind of be A different a different story in Islam Notice in the bible, you've got 66 books. You've got about 40 different authors You have a you have a cloud of of witnesses of different situations In the Quran, it's just Muhammad who's receiving these revelations And so everything in Islam rides on Muhammad. So if you can't trust him, you kind of can't trust the whole thing Um Issa points out that uh, you know, there are controversial things in the Hebrew scriptures You've got you know things that king David did. Yeah, you do you have you have king David Uh having his buddy killed to cover up the uh adulterous affair with his wife He's condemned for that. He's condemned for that in the bible if Muhammad had Done things in the Quran that he's condemned for it would have zero problem with that. I wouldn't even bringing it up Uh from from a from a Jewish perspective and a Christian perspective We look at our prophets and we view them uh very frequently as massive screw-ups that god uses anyway in spite of how much they messed up That's not the islamic view of a prophet at least in sunni islam. They had the doctrine of ismat al anbiya That's that's Allah's protection of the prophets. They believe that a a prophet is going to be protected from any sort of Committing any sort of major sin and so That's one of the reasons you have all these things that Muhammad is doing and they're constantly being justified by By god rather than condemned so Muhammad can even break his oath to Allah Haken to all kinds of things and the muslim source keep justifying What he did so I would say very very different different situations here um Issa points out that He's okay with uh different narratives and and different interpretations of islam and yes There are different interpretations of islam and I've mentioned I've mentioned that I I don't necessarily have a terrible Problem with some of these other interpretations in fact uh at this point at this point um I'm finding some of the alternative interpretations of islam much more attractive, but This doesn't mean I can ignore the fact that one particular Interpretation Of islam keeps rising to the surface over and over and over again And that the more islam expands around the world the more this interpretation of islam Becomes dominant to the point where? Let's face it if certain people in the world who want to have their way get their way is is in trouble Issa would be in trouble for things he said right here He would be in massive trouble There are people who would want to execute issa for things He's he's said during this debate who would obviously want to execute Both of us for things we've said in this debate Now if that were some weird Misunderstanding of islam that would that would be one thing There are people who misunderstand all kinds of things but That kind of that's that's that's increasingly becoming the the most popular most dominant position It just seems to grow keeps keeps rising to the surface And so when i'm looking at islam i'm kind of looking like there are two possibilities here Either The position of these guys who would want to execute us both is what islam actually teaches Or islam just sounds like it teaches that so much so that that's the position that keeps winning And either way this would seem like a pretty a pretty serious problem All right, we're going to kick it into 25 minutes open discussion And then we're going to go into q&a so 25 minutes What do you want to talk about issa um Anything anything okay well I think it's really interesting. I wanted to talk about that execute point I think about people who would want to execute yes and execute us I think that this has to do with the space of power dynamics um And we're dealing with postmodernism and nationalism I think we have to incorporate these things and tribalism so people like I was saying before in the debate In our conversation People think that they're the chosen one they think that they're the best so they say well my story is correct So they're afraid it's it's a space of fear, you know, I work in therapy, too That's one of the fields one of my many hats, but this is a space of fear It's a fear response that they have does that mean what they're doing is truthful Is that mean what they're right? They don't even know anything like of course. Oh, they're going to execute me Have they gone to like graduate school? Have they studied this stuff? No, they they heard what someone else told them and they're a parent they repeat what other people tell them to repeat, you know, and Doing self exploration and actually engaging these things It's a different space and you're right a lot of people don't even know anything about these sources because most of it's just in graduate school You don't actually talk about this stuff So I want I was I'm curious What do you think about this kind of like bandwagging thing just like like for example, I think in america There are a lot of people who call themselves christian They said I believe in jesus, but i'm gonna enslave people and I do all these horrible things In my opinion that has nothing to do with jesus at all and if we look at the text I don't see that but these people claimed that it was So what how would you address that particular? Let me go back to what you're mentioning a sure moment ago because Moment ago sounds like you're you're more appealing to kind of human nature like so humans have a actually now i'm thinking of uh Thinking of george orwell's review of hitler's mind top just because You could read that today and sounds like talking about the world today, but anyway once upon a time When hitler started rising to power george orwell wrote a review of hitler's mind top and He starts talking about how Sort of modern liberal society they tend to think that what people actually want is You know, they want a little bit of revivduction in In how much they work and they'd like a little bit more comfort and like a little bit more pay and like a little bit More ease in life and some more vacation days and so on and If you just give people what they want that that's what they want And he says well people may want that sometimes But people also want rallies and be marching with their flags and saying we're the correct ones and everyone else is wrong and want They want to be dominating and owning everyone everyone around So he's pointing out that this is part of human nature And he he he argues that even though he's condemning hitler. He's blasting away at hitler But he points out that uh that fascism is psychologically sounder than what people in In in great britain and so on were teaching at that time about what human beings really want Basically saying certain guys understand They want to a crowd wants to rally around someone and Declare that they are that they have the correct position everyone else has to be crushed So you can see that whatever your position is there are going to be people in your position who want to do that We have to go out and destroy everyone else and refute everyone else and own everyone else So taking that point you could say that there are people in the islamic tradition who are like that And so you've got the dawg guys and the dawg guy will stand up and say ah, I'm gonna I'm gonna rescue us from all these people who are criticizing islam and going to destroy them all And uh people will rally around him so I you'd say ah that that doesn't necessarily have to do a lot with love The problem is it does it sounds that sounds exactly what I read in the muslim source If you if you go through the life of muhammad and you go through the Quran It really looks like you have this three-step process where I'm not in i'm not inventing this. This is what most commentators say It's oh, I mean, I don't mind if he's fine. I like what he was saying, but it's I don't mind. We don't need your input, james Yeah, you're right Yeah, let's go. I'll wrap it up. Um Was I talking? Oh, so anyway, so it really looks like in the muslim source is what you have is this When muhammad was the persecuted prophet with like 100 200 followers in mecca The message there was peace of tolerance once he had a More supporters and informed more alliances then it changed to we'll fight But only if someone else is doing something first The message changed the kind of defensive jihad Then once he's the most powerful force in arabia, then it changes again to one of offensive jihad fight those who do not Believe in Allah like those who do not believe in Allah there. You're fighting people because of their belief have assages in the Quran Surah 4 verse 65 says you have no real islamic faith Until you make muhammad Judge in all disputes that you have and you have no resistance against any of his decisions That's in the Quran. You can't say that's some later sunni story The Quran says you you you're not a real muslim unless you have no resistance against any of muhammad's decision Well, that leaves a big question. Where are you getting those decisions from sunnis have their sources? And so It's not just people who want to have some, you know, just human nature people want to be on top people want to To own everyone else. It seems to be built into the system. I think that's part of the reason why this this keeps rising And I and I totally hear that and I validate and honor that position I definitely think there are people who do take this story a narrative because it's an easier story a narrative to take It's an easier nor narrative in story to say well, I have all these puzzles pieces that fit together Thus it means this I have these hadith it fits but if you really explore the hadith there's difficulties that we face because There's so much information. You did a series called the sama size me. It's a very interesting satirical piece I I saw it twice. I said I could make sure I saw the whole four hours, but um It's you know little side note on that uh, not to interrupt but a little side note there I got lots of messages from shia muslims saying we love that series Like because the vast majority was straight out of it's right out of the suni sources And it's also you took a very Salafi approach some Salafis really take that And it's interesting because all of the violence that we see within the islamic world are jihadist Salafis Every single group you're not going to see sufis. You know, you might see the hasballah or the militant shia, but like that's the unique standalone but practically all of these paramilitary groups are all Salafi Wahabi groups and they like to put the big dot on their head the zabiba They want to rub their head on the ground and they want to pull up their pants and grow a beard and say You know, ah ki I can have full wives You know like they like to play that kind of that kind of game, but It's a narrative. It's a story that they tell But the thing is if they asked if you asked them like, do you know the sufi story? Do you know who shaykh alblokadr jilani is? Do you know who seyed ahmed refai? Do you know any they don't know any of these people and you know the funny irony is they quote the shaykh named imman taimiyah All the time the Salafis the granddad, but he's a sufi He was a qadiri a sufi and they don't even know that they don't even know the guy was a sufi He was a part of a sufi lodge. He just had very strong opinions. So they like that they like that guy because It fits their story, but they don't know the whole thing about him. So You know, um, yeah, let me let me bring up one short issue along the lines of what you're saying here So I mentioned surah four verse 65 of the Quran where Allah says If you have real islamic faith you have you have any faith you're going to submit to all of muhammad You're going to submit to muhammad as judge in all disputes And you're going to have no resistance against any of his teaching Kind of combine that with muhammad's warning About the sin of biddah. So coming up with your own interpretation called innovation right coming up with your own interpretation Your own way of doing things something like that muhammad says that that biddah or innovation is a one-way ticket to hell innovators go to hell so this is This hey i'm coming up with my own interpretation of islam or some teaching something like that or my own way of doing You combine those things So surah four verse 65 that you can't have any resistance against any muhammad's decisions and the idea that innovation is this the is is is ticket hell It's not it's not saying that this could be the outcome, but the actual outcome Historically seems to have been That muslims get worried Hey, if i just know a little bit of something if i just read the koran on my own And maybe learn a little bit about the koran Well, i'm probably going to make some mistakes I'm probably going to be on the wrong side of issue and therefore I better not do i There are two options either learn it all or shut up and listen to what your your scholar says Those are the options either learn it all and become a scholar in which case you'll know that you're not committing innovation or any of these other things Uh and that you're not you're not resisting muhammad So either learn it all and become an expert or shut up and listen to the expert And so the the tendency and you can see this in the dawa community There will always be one one dawa leader and then A group of followers around him who don't know anything except listen to the dawa guy right and they stand around him You know i'm right, right? Right, so there was always like that. There's the dawa guy And then there's his followers his followers don't know anything except just what what he tells them But anyway, the the the point is that seems like a problem that are that arises from within his law If you're if you're being warned, hey, you can't have any resistance against muhammad's teaching And you can't come up with your own understanding And therefore notice if you are just trying to interpret the koran on your own and you can't understand What the koran is talking about without looking at the historical background which you get from the commentators from the hadiths or something like that Therefore you have to know all these sources to understand what the koran is saying Anyway, the point is it seems like this situation is arising from his law I mean I definitely think it's an opinion that we see with the islamic tradition and The thing is it's like i had mentioned before it's like post-modernism people are trying to Kind of unify under a banner, but it's interesting if even if we take sunni traditions What does the ahl sunna ujima say about this? They say there's 73 groups. So which group is right? I don't know What about um The khawarij, that's another group. They said these people who look like they're super muslim But they're actually bad people you have these in the traditions too So how about if these people don't even know if they're right like people are are diving into an absolutist position But they even if they're taking their position they fail they fail their own position You know and it's the same thing of the literalistic approach and I think you fairly put Haka kichu to task and you put his feet to the fire and you should have where you said is the torah and the gospels Um, are they corrupted? It's not in the teaching But your literalistic teaching says it is in the teaching So which one is it and if you want to say that it's not in the teaching you face a huge crisis of faith Is god a deceiver is god incompetent you face all of that by just taking that position because your literalism It isn't working. So yeah, okay, so we're gonna just because we got q and a at the end of this other debate coming up on top saying Who went I went for so it now No, you're good. You're good about it first So you're using the european system That's fine Okay, maybe they have yeah in america. It's whoever goes. I'm sorry about that You stay the you stay the same order throughout and I noticed that in europe they they reverse whoever goes first also goes last But I'm totally totally fine. Um, all right, so uh in my um In my opening statement. I I gave a quick outline of just just my thinking on this issue Uh Just because it it seems like a Easy framework to keep in mind if someone's claiming to be a prophet He could look okay is this guy saying he got a revelation from god does this Does this look like something that came from god or this this guy's getting something from his own mind Is he is he making everyone around him serve him and do things for him? If so that looks suspicious I would need some good evidence that this guy's actually a prophet so you have issues like that Uh, then you have specifically in the life of mohammed some of these spiritual issues of I mean again He he delivered a revelation Then comes back it promoted polytheism and then he comes back and says, you know I got tricked into into delivering this revelation. Mohammed goes around. He's having delusional thoughts false beliefs Looks like he's going crazy comes back says that he's a victim of black magic a jewish magician cast Fell on and this looks awfully suspicious and so I look at this and I say, okay, what's the actual evidence that mohammed Is a true prophet what outweighs those things because there could be some there could be something that out outweighs kind of problem Uh, and I just haven't seen I haven't seen any as far as the way I would normally look at these things in the way most muslims Christians so on would look at these issues We'd be saying okay, what why should we believe in this guy? There are tons of false prophets Why should we believe that mohammed's a prophet doesn't seem to be lining up with other things that he seems to be affirming and so I'm inclined to reject mohammed as a as a as a prophet um isa There at the end um of our discussion period brought up something that's interesting by it would have been interesting to uh to discuss that a little bit Maybe we'll discuss it later because I actually I thought about using as a point in My opening statement what we call the Islamic dilemma namely that the That Allah and mohammed and both the Quran and the hadith Over and over and over again affirm the inspiration and the preservation and the authority of the jewish and christian scripture and yet um Your your average muslim today almost every muslim you'll ever run into will tell you the Torah and the gospel have been corrupted When that wasn't the original position, that's not what the Quran and the hadith say That's not what the first the first century of muslim said they believe that jews and christians were Misinterpreting and misrepresenting and misapplying and even covering up with their scriptures day But not that their scriptures were corrupted They didn't believe that that the jewish and christian scriptures could be corrupted because they believe that Allah's protecting those scriptures as well Eventually people Realize wait a minute the Quran doesn't line up with these uh with these other scriptures on certain doctrines And so the conclusion was either well, mohammed got it wrong Or the scriptures have been corrupt and by that time you couldn't say well, mohammed was wrong because you get your head chopped off So they had to start saying well the bible's been corrupt bible's been corrupt And that's been the story that's been the story for the vast majority of muslims uh down through the centuries Uh isa makes a good point if you are interpreting the Quran differently And i'm not agreeing with him that that is the way to interpret the Quran i'm pointing out that If you are interpreting the Quran a bit differently not literalistically Um not looking at it and looking for contradictions with the with the earlier scriptures and so on Uh, but you're taking it as sort of a spiritual guide Then you wouldn't you wouldn't have that problem just that problem wouldn't arise wouldn't wouldn't bother you nearly as much and bless you kind the the issue i'm facing now is As uh as as much as i like isa as much as i like isa and as much as i um Would agree with him on that issue if you're reading the Quran I mean matter of fact if you're just reading the Quran straightforwardly you say hey, it's affirming these other scriptures uh as much as you could could You know take that in a in a spiritual In a spiritual sense and say okay, you have different groups in different times in this spiritual These are books these books are spiritual guidance for uh for all these different groups I don't know that that's actually open to muslims given what the Quran Seems it seems to be claiming over and over again that it's clear and finding So the problems are going to arise because of that I'm going to need some uh some better evidence that we should interpret it in this spiritual step Well, thank you One thing i heard i was looking at the chat and it said that uh, dr. Wood's mic isn't working They said that there's a lot of bleep. So i want to make sure that He's being able to be heard sure um, okay Well, I want to thank uh my colleague here my esteemed colleague um So why should we take? The prophet of islam as a spiritual Figure and the Quran is a spiritual text I think this is the way that I think is the best way to look at religion and spirituality and try to give The best benefit of the doubt to the text I think when we put historical lenses and literalistic lenses We can kind of take away from the text if that is our initiative and if that is our goal Then then that is actually something of use then you could do that and that actually works However, if we're trying to see You know the spirituality of the muslim community and where muslims You know present and where they're at then it's a you know You're going to have a whole diverse opinion pool of thought but there is A narrative where we can see that the prophet of islam is viewed as a kind of a noble person There are alternative narratives that do not have that case. I was very transparent in the beginning I'm not going to You know Say anything i'm not going to present an untruthful perspective of this I'm going to try to do my best to be as truthful as I can But we have a holistic kind of narrative that we need to look at Going back to the beginning argument I Engaged the space is you know, the prophet of islam connected to the hebrew prophets. I think that still stands I don't think and I don't think dr. Wood negates that but he also makes a fair point that I will not negate either where he said Well, what's the true prophet? And I think that that is an interesting question at the end of the day I can only show you because you know, I am not the master of spirituality. I'm not the serif I'm not an angel that has the truth. So I'm not going to pretend to be that person So I'm not going to give you the definitive truth that I know that because I don't know that And I think that that's a fraudulent position when someone does take that position However, what I would say is we can have a case that the prophet of islam can fit as a true prophet That doesn't mean he has to be a true prophet But he can fit that narrative and that was the point that I was trying to engage today And I think that that did come across But I do think that we do need to engage all the other spaces that are there Of how that may not suit other people's cases for that. Um, let's see um Yeah, so it's important to I think at the end of looking at all of this it's important to look at this as a spiritual text The quran is a spiritual text see the prophet muhammad So as long as this protagonist within within this text, I don't think it really met I don't think we necessarily have to have a literalistic um position I don't think that that's necessarily needed. Um, I don't think we need an absolutist position And I think we can have a pluralistic position. So thank you very all. Thank you all for hearing us out Excellent. All right, we're going to kick it into our q&a So I'm just going to stand up here and I got this fancy dancing mic because uh, we had a couple mic issues there So let us know in the live chat if you're watching if you're here in this well So we're going to make a line just up to here. See there that outlet is Just the fun of your foot there if you want to ask a question So if you want to make a line head towards the back And if you're in the front, we'll look at that you get very easy access So I'm going to do a little pulling on that cord and I will hold the mic just because it's a little strange Okay, there are three issues that I wish David might have mentioned One is that I've heard that Muhammad had the nickname the ear Because every time he would hear something then magically it would appear in one of his revelations shortly after Also the uh issue of his his dying of Saying my aorta is being caught And the third thing that that I was surprised you didn't mention was that he seemed to be very very interested in personal gain material gain And having the extra wives is is part of that whole realm But but he was very much about collecting stuff stealing stuff I'll say a few words about that and then he's going to respond as far as uh So Muhammad being called the ear yeah that that ties in with a lot of The claims that Muhammad is getting this stuff from people he's here So he's even that is a charge that's Leveled against him repeatedly in the Quran The Quran is repeatedly responding to people were saying we've heard this before we've heard this before we've heard this before He's just in he's just an ear that's in the Quran But that that's the same point I was making and so if if Isis perspective is actually it's it's it's okay It's okay or Shabir Ali if it's okay that he's hearing these things and Incorporating there that you would have a kind of issue like wait a minute Supposedly the eternal speech of Allah So how's this connecting you have some issues to bring out there, but yeah, we did have a discussion about that I didn't bring up that particular First though, but there's that and then with Muhammad dying and saying that he could heal his aorta being severed I'm guessing that Isis might not necessarily take that seriously because uh the The saying is in the Quran where Allah says that he would sever Muhammad's aorta if he were to fabricate revelation but the The sources saying that Muhammad Was dying claiming that he could feel his aorta being severed. That's from Sunni sources. I don't know if he's but Believe in those or not. What was it was the last personally? Oh for personal gain. Yeah, and there there's actually You could argue both way in the Muslim sources. There are there are in the even in the Sunni hadith Saying that Muhammad was was not financially well off. I mean he was still borrowing stuff Even up to his death you say the wives and so that's part of the reason that he was never well off You've got you know nine wives at one time and he's maintaining separate separate Residences for all these wives, but uh doesn't look like he was actually Rich apart from that Looks like he had a pretty pretty modest figure like apart All right your question Yeah, I had a question. Oh, but oh Did he still want to respond if it's okay? I don't mind a small response on that actually. I think you covered most of it you the It was the ear. Yeah, I don't have a it does that's not like I don't think this is a huge problem The chi bar situation. I think that that's your turn about the severing of the aorta That's a narrative. Um, that's a Sunni narrative I think if people want to believe that fine, they don't You know, this is the problem. I think is when you take that the Ahadith Literalistically true and linearly true you face a lot of problems because there's a lot of inconsistencies that don't really Have a coherent narrative and exactly. I was going to say the same point about the personal game It really just depends on how you look at it because if you read even these traditions a lot of impoverishment That there's not enough clothes. There's not there's a lot of that if we even engage the Sunni tradition So, um, I think that could be contested, you know that argument, but Yeah, so long story short those Those would be problems for lots of people perhaps most Muslims if they got brought up, too If you're looking at things differently might not be All right, thank you for that your question there Yeah, ec you often bring up spiritual archetypes and to me these seems like psychological archetypes Me personally are rejecters a spiritual realm at all so it doesn't appeal to me so Um, and it also doesn't seem like you're seeing they are true So if you're seeing it's a narrative to me that's somebody's story of what they feel like The truth is so how do you determine? between if they're first of all if there is a spiritual realm or spirituality at all Versus which one's narrative is true And that's a good question. This is hard because what is truth in this space? It's hard because we're dealing with the space of absolutes. Oh, you have something else. You wanted to follow up. Okay Well, when I say true, I mean, how do I? Determine if it reflects reality. So when I look out I can see stars. I can see the ground I don't need it. I don't need a taste touch sense it or I just need to have a way to distinguish it from peer fantasy And being objectively true. I don't know if your fantasy is unreal though This is my that would be my issue like I don't I think that we all we're creating We have narrative based and we create stories So I don't I understand your point But I it's hard because like if I'm a person who's blind I have that reality of blindness I have a very different reality than someone who you know sees and it has color and has all of these Experiences and hearing and sight like you know if if dr. Wood and I take off our glasses It's going to be very difficult. Well our whole reality changes Yeah, and ryan our whole reality changes and transforms You know that someone else who doesn't and I think that that can Uh translate into the space of especially philosophy and theology. It's it's a whole other ball game I don't know what you're talking about. I don't wear glasses. Oh, you don't You're kidding. All right next question. Thank you for being here So I just actually wanted to hear what either of you guys thought the worst argument was from each other Really You may as well just said fight fight It's it's hard. I think I think it he was very I think David was very fair You know, I think he engaged the points and he totally reflected like when he brought up like the suni tradition He's like, yeah, this is a suni tradition. So, you know, I think he was completely accountable and completely fair I have I have no like I can't say anything really It's wrong uh Yeah, I think it's already come up in the in the q&a a little bit, but I think is uh Just thinks about these things a lot if like whatever your perspective I think is Thinking is a lot different from the way the rest of us whether atheists or muslim or christian or whatever He's thinking he's coming at this in a completely different in a completely different mindset And I think that's that's the real that's the difficulty that he's Almost kind of like he's speaking a different language in a sense that's going to be hard for people to To grasp so A1 your question So he's who argued that every approach is flawed when trying to identify a profit One assumes this means either confirm or denounce if someone were running around Uh claiming to speak for me and represent my thoughts such that billions of people believed it And I have the ability to correct this with people I would do so so since You guys seem to think that it hasn't happened or perhaps it hasn't happened Why won't god take that completely effortless step to save us all this confusion? Wouldn't that be the perfect method to confirm or denounce any profit? Thank you Do you want to go first? Okay, well, it's great to see you matt. Thank you for coming and asking a question. Um I think it's it really just depends on your theology of this situation You could take a theology where you say this is a trial and a test from a higher power That puts us into the space where we need to be tried to be better human beings I think that's an explanation again I am not the expert or master on this but that I think gives a certain kind of explanatory power to An explanation that could be given and this wouldn't be uh You can even kind of get a similar Idea from the Quran itself, uh, you know, you look at surah nine final marching orders where it's despite those Law you got that but earlier in surah five for instance You get a different perspective where Allah Plains that he gave different religious communities so that these would all compete with each other in good works uh, so Allah reveals Allah Tells the jews. Hey, these are the revelations You have to judge by christians you judge by your revelations muslims judge by your revelations You can all you can all compete with each other in good works and so on and I don't uh, you know, I don't I don't believe in the Quran and so on but Uh My view is that we're I don't know. I just view it as we're we're more That it's not like we're pets, right? We're supposed to be we're supposed to be figuring stuff out We're supposed to be thinking about we're supposed to be wrestling difficult Issue and I don't know we're not we're not little kids who are just being Here's what you do and and don't think about All right next question Kind of have one for both of you. Um, because it seems to me that neither of you established a solid case Um, so you seem to say that it's possible to have multiple interpretations and imply that it's Potentially even possible to derive wisdom from untruth which Cool. I don't necessarily disagree Um multiple narratives are possible. Sure, but this doesn't establish what's actually true And I was wondering if that could be resolved and for david You seem to say that the prophet wasn't a very cool guy as one of the primary arguments which Okay, um, but that doesn't necessarily discredit a prophet because a prophet could be a really bad guy and still be receiving the word of God I'm wondering if it's an issue to demonstrate the falsehood of a prophet because that argument might be Detracted by the fact that you seem to maintain that there is at least one true prophet out there Yeah, not I acknowledge, uh, uh kind of dealt with this earlier that Islam has a different view of prophets You look in the bible and you see people who are just massive screw-ups And even people were like, I don't don't don't don't tell me just to go tell people this. I'm not doing this I'm not doing this, uh, or david, you know having is that Soldiers killed and so on so we look at these guys as Like messed up people that god can use anyway In Islam again, they have they have a different doctrine Allah's protection of the prophets which originally meant that Allah is going to Protect a prophet from persisting in any sort of major sin so he's Back then the doctrine meant that if you did something Allah is going to rebuke you and bring you out of it And so that's why early on It was standard to believe in the that Muhammad revealed the satanic verses They didn't have a problem with it because it fit the doctrine perfectly. It's Muhammad tells people to Uh, that they can pray to these pagan goddesses Then Allah sends Gabriel to rebuke him. What are you doing that satan tricking you and then god brings him out of it So it fit later on the doctrine came to mean that that Allah is going to protect a prophet from committing any sort of major error So the Islamic doctrine eventually became Allah is not going to let you do something really bad. So if you find if you find things that are really bad in the life of Muhammad It's like The system comes crumbling to the ground. Here's the really bad things and Allah's affirming them, but You're not supposed to be doing that. This is supposed to be the greatest guy In the world so just so if they didn't if they didn't hold that if they didn't hold that doctrine And Allah wasn't affirming these various things. Then yes, you could say of course Muhammad doing Of course, he's doing all sorts of stuff. So we don't forget there was a first part for Issa there Yes, uh, which is just largely how is it that you reconcile the fact that you seem to maintain that it's possible for Multiple interpretations to exist. How do you figure out which of those is true? But even like kind of in response to that Sure, it may be internally inconsistent But it doesn't sound like it's inconsistent for you specifically because you do seem to maintain that it's possible For a prophet to be a bad dude and still be receiving the word of God And by the way, that's what that's why I pointed out that any of these that's why I pointed out that any of these issues Could be could be outweighed by other other consideration Like again, if Muhammad if there were some slam dunk Argument for Muhammad, then I would say, okay, you got these problems over here, but there's this over there All right next question. Do you want me to answer that question? Sorry? Yes, I was the one that was adamant I no no no problem Just just to be fair. I want to make sure everybody who's coming up gets to be heard So the thing is I kind of answered I don't know the gentleman with the blue shirt in the back, but he had asked a question similar to that It's this thing is I'm doing the best with this concept of truth, especially from like a philosophical point of view I don't know if we can deem an absolutist narrative What we can do is we can say here's a certain framework. Does this fit the framework? I think we can say, okay, there's a framework where this fits So, yeah, I would it would be kind of foolish of me And I think it would be I would be a liar if I go and say I have an absolutist narrative that I can preach to you and tell you is the truth It's wrong and it would be wrong of me to do that. So and I'm not going to do that Thank you so much speakers and your question In your introduction, you tried to show the distinction between a rasul and a nabi And almost most muslim scholars Sheikh Usman Ibn Farooq, they would put the rasul as having a higher authority over a nabi Do you stay do you hold to that view that a rasul has more authority than a nabi? Oh, that was my position. I actually was saying I was taking the traditional position that the I was saying that the nabi is it's a minor profit like the Hebrew scriptures And then the rasul is like a major profit. These are the ones who get the kitab They get the books, you know, so Yeah, I'm saying that that would be a narrative that is taken for that. Sure And then the Quran admittedly and this is from Sheikh Usman Ibn Farooq's debate He tried to put the prophets and then the rasul and then the messiah now that that Has a big problem for islam in that Resolucive they have a higher authority And then the nabi being derived from the Hebrew scripture and the Hebrew narration And I You've clarified that that the nabi. Yes, that word. In fact, the word itself came from the Hebrew word. Sure. There was no nabi before Muhammad in arabia so How would how That's an interesting question. So it depends on your it's it's always about stories and narrative based things What is our story here? So the islamic truth, you know, if we take a traditional islamic approach, we're taking a sunni approach um, you have uh, you like have folks like salih not to say salih What's there? There's there's a few others, but Salih is supposed to be a middle eastern like an arabian prophet But I don't even know if this concept of arab even existed then, you know, like this concept came down the line Like it's funny people Try to wreck con stuff and try to make it always exist like arab this identity arab always existed It didn't it's an arabian identity means you're a fusion identity of multiple ethnicities brought together. So Yeah, so I would say to answer your question about um, were the this concept of nabi or nabi or um, bia Whereas was were there middle eastern prophets? It's possible It's potential that the islamic tradition kind of hints at some of these within the kind of corpus of the 25. So, yeah All right, your question. I'm ozian by the way, but ozian pleasure you too As a follow-up to my your last response to me um, so my narrative reality is that I I know I do not believe that a god exists so How do you differentiate how am I correct? Or are you correct? And if I am correct or if you're correct, and I'm wrong What's the consequences and this should be actually a good question for both of you? What are the consequences of me being? Wrong, I think that's a zero sum game approach I don't think that's the best way to look at this situation and saying well I have to be right or you have to be wrong. We can both be right you that's your perspective That's the way you view the world. I don't think there's anything wrong with the way that you view the world You know what I mean? Again, this is stuff. That's beyond people's pay grade. We're talking about you're talking about Supernatural spiritual things you you can't prove that you believe it you have faith in it So if you say hey, I don't this is not working for me. Oh cool beans, bro. Like I'm with you that that's fine There's nothing wrong with that All right your question So Oh, I mean Yeah, it's uh, we I just did a show about this with uh, Mike Jones inspiring philosophy and uh, you have different perspectives. You have the standard I believe you're gonna stand before god. I believe you're gonna stand before the almighty so uh, Have The traditional perspectives and so on uh, you run into a lot of other views Um In the world in the world of philosophy and so on they the other other views start rising to the surface and so on And it's just something that I haven't I haven't I normally don't take a firm position on something. I haven't studied and so I can say hey, there's the you know The literalist interpretation. There's the metaphorical interpretation. There's the annihilationist interpretation There's a purgatorial interpretation. There's the universalist interpretation. There's the you could have a postmortem and I Yeah, I don't have I I'm not putting my stamp of approval on any particular That's all I All right, your question Yeah, so I was hearing david give a lot of different arguments that suggests that mohammed wasn't a true prophet and What i'm hearing from you basically is Your rebuttal is it's just a different interpretation perhaps And so like for christians, you know, we are our jesus christ is who we look up to that's our You know made person right who christianity is all dependent upon And there's a lot of like evidence historically that points to that direction Um, you know looking at the cultural evidence Looking at the testimonial evidence and those kinds of things And you know testimony saying that jesus performed miracles and those kinds of things So my question is is there anything in particular that Mohammed said that resonates with you that makes you believe that he's a true prophet Is there some kind of specific evidence that you can point to other than I guess your interpretation of The writings that you read So it's an interesting position and I think even if we like all religions have diversity That's my thing. I'm a dei guy. So I love diversity equity inclusion. Um, but uh Some people might not but um When we look at the The kind of narratives people have very different views on who christ is for them in their life Like you had people who did crusades where you know my interpretation if I were to saying hey I'm a believer of christ. I would take a pacifist position from the text if I were taking a literalistic A textual position. That's the position. I would take even with the sword verse I would still take that because I wouldn't call that precedent But if I took a literalistic point of view, I would say I would take more of a pacifistic approach But people took a violent approach. That's the same thing with the muslim islamic tradition We have different kinds of approaches in islam. So I think in the approach of like irfan or tasawuf These are like mystical approaches. There's a lot of focus on moral self-cultivation And I think that type of thing can be a very good evidence for a practitioner within Islam All right, so we're going to wrap up our q&a there and uh, we're going to give a virtual applause for the people Tuning in online and a round of applause for our speakers here Thank you guys for coming out and having this discussion And then we're going to start the next debate just a few minutes after the hour Thank you so much. We'll have a little recess and we'll get back to it