Recently, a Christian apologist who goes by inspiring philosophy posted a video entitled Muslim accidentally shows Islam must be false. And as we can see by the thumbnail, he's talking about me. So, I prepared some clips from this video that I would like to address.
Now, his foundational argument is that he will not accept my response to the so-called Islamic dilemma because what I have said goes against AAM's razor, which is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. And this principle is attributed to a 14th century English philosopher, William of Akam. So, without further ado, let's check out some clips that I prepared from his video.
So here he's going to explain what is required of Muslims according to him to give a satisfactory response to the so-called Islamic dilemma. They have to come up with an explanation that doesn't violate AAM's razor. AAM's razor is an important principle which says we do not multiply assumptions or entities beyond necessity.
In other words, the best explanation is often the simplest which can account for all the data. So, Muslims, until you come up with simpler explanations that posit less assumptions than what we Christians are offering, the Islamic dilemma stands. In offering the convoluted explanations you have, you've demonstrated that we are right.
They just can't come up with any explanation. They have to present a more parsimonious explanation than what Christians are offering. Namely, that Muhammad made a mistake in that Islam is false.
He is using Akam's razor as the foundational measuring stick regarding truth. So when he comes across something in the Quran that he deems to be a contradiction rather than someone explaining how it's not actually a contradiction, it's much simpler and easier and more parsimmonious as he puts it to just say Muhammad made a mistake. So unless we can give an explanation as simple as that, he is encouraging people to reject our explanations.
Now the thing is my explanation overall is quite simple and we'll get to that inshallah. But first I want to emphasize that as Muslims we do not use a theory attributed to William of Aam to determine what's true or false. Thankfully we have authentically preserved divine revelation and that is what we refer to.
However, if inspiring philosophy does use this as a foundation of truth then I have good news for him because so many of the videos on his channel can be much better explained and understood. appealing to AAM's razor by internalizing the Islamic perspective. For example, let's consider his 37 video playlist entitled Bible contradictions refuted.
Look at all of these videos where he is attempting to explain Bible contradictions. I actually have a much more parsimmonious explanation and that is the Bible contains contradictions. It's not an authentically preserved divine book.
So, it contains contradictions. It also contains truth which is confirmed by whatever coincides with the Quran and authentic teachings of prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam. But a much simpler explanation than all of these videos is to just say, "Yeah, the Bible contains contradictions.
" You can use the same exact logic for your 24 video playlist about alleged Bible errors. And we can get more specific with some of your other videos. Take for example, why didn't Jesus and the Holy Spirit know the hour?
Mark 13:32 quotes Jesus as saying, "But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the son, but only the father. " So you go on to give a convoluted answer with diagrams, trying to explain how can Jesus be God but not know something. You talk about different passages.
You talk about looking at the cultural context. You relate it to marriage traditions when only the father knew when it was time for the groom to get his bride. But this didn't mean the groom didn't actually know when the time was.
But you know in Islam we have a more parsimonious explanation that fits with Akam's razor which is if Jesus said this it's because he's not God. He's not Allah. He was a prophet.
He was a messenger. So just like the prophet Muhammadat wasam didn't know the hour because only Allah knows the hour. It's the same sort of situation with Jesus.
Much simpler explanation. We can also apply this to your playlist the trinity explained. In this video, you say that according to the doctrine of the trinity, there's one God.
God is three coexisting eternal persons and each person is fully God. You have diagrams. You say that just because we cannot fathom how God can be fully three in one doesn't mean it's not possible or logical.
And then you start talking about uklidian geometry. A good example of this is seen in the study of ukitian geometry. This includes the study of higher levels of dimensions of space.
So the possibility of four dimensions, five dimensions or even 11 dimensions. Such things are completely impossible for us to currently understand. Yet they are mathematically sound, entirely logical and might even exist in some sense beyond our three-dimensional universe.
Well, that's quite mind-blowing stuff. However, might I offer a more parsimonious explanation? God is not part of a trinity.
There is only one God. That's it. Very simple.
There's one God, Allah. Jesus was not his literal son. Jesus was a prophet and a messenger who worshiped the one true God.
You even have a video trying to claim that the Trinity is found in the Old Testament. It's a pretty detailed theory. However, it seems like according to Aam's razor, a much simpler explanation is that the Trinity isn't in the Old Testament.
You have a video on why the trinity is necessary where you say we are attributing salvation to a created being and not god himself. Is any created being who is by definition limited in power, knowledge and love really able to take the full weight of our salvation and save us from our sins? The Bible also says salvation only comes from the Lord.
But it was Christ on the cross who atoned for our sins and gave us salvation. So only God can atone for our sins, not a created being. So by deduction, whoever was on the cross had to also be God.
I have a much simpler explanation. If God wants to forgive somebody, he can forgive them. God doesn't have to be part of a trinity.
God doesn't have to become a man. God doesn't have to be crucified. God, Allah can just forgive someone's sins.
If somebody repents to him, if somebody asks for forgiveness from him, Allah can forgive them. Much simpler explanation. Anyways, I'm sure we could spend all day going through your videos pointing these things out, but clearly you yourself have no problem giving more complicated answers to things than just by going with AAM's razor to give the simplest, easiest explanation.
Therefore, you shouldn't have an issue with my playlist where I'm explaining certain things. In fact, my overall argument in response to the so-called Islamic dilemma is very simple. All I'm saying is the Bible that you have today is not the authentically preserved scriptures that were given to past prophets.
There's nothing convoluted about that. In fact, some of the Christian apologists were making fun of this video here where I was trying to be very clear in showing how the Bible is not a preserved book of Allah, but rather it's more like a less authentic biography or book of Sierra. You yourself have a video arguing that the gospels are ancient Grecoman biographies.
In the first video, we argued the gospels are ancient Greco Roman biographies. Yeah, I agree with you. Ancient Greco Roman biographies is not the same as a book from a law.
So, my response is actually pretty clear. However, the reason I go more into detail is because I am responding to misrepresentations of certain verses, which you seem to think is okay for you to do. I'll close with this.
You know what this reminds me of is the story mentioned in surah al bakar the second surah of the Quran. You see in this story Moses said to his people indeed Allah commands you to slaughter a cow. They said do you take us in ridicule?
He said I seek refuge in Allah from being among the ignorant. I mean this is a pretty simple command right? Allah commands you to slaughter a cow.
Just go and slaughter a cow. But the thing is they didn't want to slaughter the cow. So they kept making excuses trying to avoid doing this.
They said call upon your lord to make clear to us what it is. So you know what happened? It went from being something very simple, very parsimmonious to more and more specific.
Moses said, "Allah says it is a cow which is neither old nor virgin but median between that. So do as you are commanded. " But did they stop there?
No. So things got more specific, more detailed. They said, "Call upon your Lord to show us what is her color.
" Moses said, "He says it is a yellow cow, bright in color, pleasing to the observers. " Was that enough for them? No.
They said, "Call upon your Lord to make clear to us what it is. Indeed, all cows look alike to us. And indeed, we if Allah wills, will be guided.
" Moses said, "He says it is a cow neither trained to plow the earth nor to irrigate the field. One free from fault with no spot upon her. " They said, "Now you have come with the truth.
" So they slaughtered her, but they could hardly do it. So the reason this situation reminds me of this story is because if you want to appeal to AAM's razor with a simple explanation, we've done that. We've given you a simple explanation, but some people don't want to accept it.
So then we go into more detail, and we go into more detail, and we go into more detail, and then we're told by some people, you're going into too much detail. We can't accept these explanations. They're not simple enough.
Anyways, my final word to inspiring philosophy is, if AAM's razor truly is your gauge of truth, then please consider accepting the Islamic perspective and do away with all of these convoluted explanations of all these different things we went over in this video. A much better explanation that is in line with AAM's razor is that Jesus peace be upon him was a prophet was a messenger. He worshiped Allah alone.
There's only one God. He is not part of a trinity. Human beings are going to be held accountable for our own actions in the hereafter.
And Allah can forgive us if he wants. Allah can forgive us if he pleases. He doesn't have to take the form of a man and be sacrificed and be part of a trinity.
And because the scriptures and teachings of past prophets have not been authentically preserved, he sent his final messenger, the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, who taught the same underlying message as all of the prophets throughout history. But Allah has preserved that revelation for us so we may be guided by it to this day. Allah knows best.
Thank you for watching. May Allah guide all of us to the truth. Asalam alalaykum.
