William Lane Craig’s Bible Dilemma Worries Christians

Mohammed Hijab

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You've got two options, option one go literal. And then this is completely against science as William Lane Craig himself knows, because you'd have to say that the universe was created in 624 hour days and that is 6000 years old. Or you go allegorical, and if you go allegorical, you've still got the problem of contradictory metaphors.

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That job 10 discount code for 10% discount on a wide range of products including premium Ethiopian black seed products. Somali Kumara masala. Okay, so how are you guys doing today? I'm going to be refuting William Lane Craig locks William Lane Craig is a premier seasoned debater and apologists in the Christian world, a scholar, somebody who's gone through the academic route published many books, many, many books, in fact, is almost 70 years old, I think, if not, he has passed that age. So he's almost double my age, as somebody who's debated some prominent figures from the atheist community from even within his own Christian community, as someone who contributes and has done so, to the

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public discourse for last 3040 years. What I'm going to be refuting him on is his stance on this Genesis narrative in particular, and what he thinks of it. First of all, let's take a look at what he says in response to a question somebody else in the audience and then come back and comment on this. The first one, the Bible says God created the earth in seven days. How does the Big Bang Theory fit into this, the big bang theory would be incompatible with a literalistic interpretation of Genesis chapter one, an interpretation that takes the days to be consecutive 24 hour periods of time. However, since the time of the Church Fathers such as a Gustin, up until the present century,

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most biblical scholars don't adopt that sort of literalistic interpretation of the opening chapter of Genesis. And I say that not on the basis of modern science, but on the basis of the text itself. There are indications in the text itself, that the author didn't intend this to be taken in a sort of wooden literalistic way. And so someone like St. Agustin, for example, knew nothing of modern cosmology or geology, but didn't take this in a literalistic way. And I think that that is correct, I would say that there are many different non literal ways of construing Genesis one that are open to biblically faithful Christians today, and that are wholly consistent and consonant with the data

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of modern cosmology. So as you can see that what we saw is William Lane Craig answering the question very frankly, he thinks that the approach that should be applied, the hermeneutical approach is an allegorical or allegorized approach to the Genesis narrative or the creation narrative. In particular, when I looked into his website, this is what he had to say, as the reason why he does so this way says, He says, the author of Genesis seems utterly unconcerned to iron out the inconsistency is between chapter one and chapter two that commentators have struggled with for centuries, he does not seem to care that they're inconsistent, and attitudes suggestive of an

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intended non literal interpretation. When he goes on to explain why he speaks about the fact that in Genesis chapter one, that you know, the the plants had been created on the third day, in Genesis chapter one, verse number 14, or verse number 12. And in Genesis chapter two, verse number five, that no plant had sprung up yet. So he admits This is so telling, and this is extremely important. William Lane Craig, one of the premier apologists and scholars of the Christian world, admits candidly to one of the people that are asking him that there are contradictions in the Bible. He admits that because of those in consistencies and contradictions, that there must be an allegorize

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zation approach that is applied hermeneutically to the Genesis creation story. This is extremely important. Why because not just the fact that it's mentioned in the Quran, that if this book had been other from other than God that would have been leveraged to fee for the left and kathira they would have found in many in consistencies, but just a logical principle that if something is true, it has to fulfill the basic criterion of consistency. Now, that is, depending on or even if one is depending on a coherent syst understanding of truth, and not necessarily not necessarily a correspondence theory understanding of truth, where truth must respond with the objective world

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because

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One could ask a very important question. The question someone may want to ask is, why would you have? Or what use? Would there be of a contradictory set of metaphors in the Bible? Because they're saying it's metaphor eyes. But why should you have any kind of contradiction anyway? Even if you have metaphors that contradict each other, what function do they serve? And does this not not meet? Unfortunately, the basic criterion for truth in so much as it is inconsistent. So this is the first thing that you have a real hermeneutical problem on your hand. The second thing, which is extremely important, is the fact that he stated that the church fathers, the church fathers, were allegories,

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it's in the same way. Well, if you really think about it, you had an ecumenical writer or an ecclesiastic writer origin of Alexandria, who was very clear in his allegorized of these narratives, but the question is, why did he allegorize these narratives and very similar for the, to the reason that Craig employees, he allegorized it because it was unintelligible, if understood, literally.

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So, before I get to that, I want to take one step back, and I will be quoting lots of information here to prove these points. The first thing is the rabbi's in the what you call the Midrash, and the Tafseer, the x Jesus of the Bible, they all understood this, the Bible to be understood in the literal way. I'm reading for example, this is the mid Russian, okay? And so this is what's mentioned in the Midrash. And it was taught that light, which was created in the six days of creation cannot illumined by day, because it was because it would eclipse the light of the sun, nor by night because it was created only to illumine by the day, then where is it? Is it stored up for the righteous in

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the Masonic future as says, moreover, the light of the moon shall be the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be seven fold the light of the days. And this is in Isaiah chapter 30, verse number 26. And then the person who's executing this who's a rabbi, he says seven surely there were only three since the luminaries were created on the fourth day. So they problematized the consistencies that were in the Bible, but they did not allegorize the biblical text, something different to what William Lane Craig did, okay. This is very important, they properly problematize it, but they did not allegorize it. The second thing is, this is their cosmology, the rabbi's

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cosmology in the ex Jesus, they say the thickness of the feminine equals that of the earth. Compare it. It is He that sitteth above the hug circle of the earth, Isaiah 4022. And he walks in the circuit of the heaven. Job, chapter 22. Verse 14, the use of hug in both verses teaches us the like. So this is how the rabbi's understood it. This is aha said, one of the main exit sheets of the Old Testament, a Jewish exegete, of course, said in our honey in his name, it is as thick as a metal plate. Alright, so these are like two metal thick plates. Obviously, this shows that their cosmology was a flat earth cosmology, and that they were to like a sandwich, you know, the heavens and the

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earth acted like a sandwich. Okay, two thick plates above each other,

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like two fingers, they say in thickness. So this clearly cannot mean that the earth is round, as some have tried to use

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Isaiah 4022, to indicate. Now what origin, as we mentioned before mentions

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is he mentioned the same thing. So he problematizes the inconsistency in the verses, but he doesn't just stop there he allegorize it as a result of that problematization. So he says, Now what man of intelligent will believe that the first second and the third day existed the evening in the morning because it said without the sun, the moon and the stars. And the first day, if we may so call it was even without Heaven, I do not think anyone will doubt that these things are made by scripture in a figurative manner in order that through them certain mystical truths may be indicated. Of course, now the problem is, you've got two options, option one go literal. And then this is completely

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against science as William Lane Craig himself knows, because you'd have to say that the universe was created in 624 hour days and that is 6000 years old. Or you go allegorical, and if you go allegorical, you've still got the problem of contradictory metaphors, the lack of which wire was described by me beforehand,

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namely that you have the fact that the plants were created, for example, in the in the third day and in Genesis

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Just chapter two, verse five, no plant has sprung up yet so you still have these contradictory metaphors. Now the thing is if you continue and you ask another question,

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if you do go allegory on this and become an allegorize of this, what would stop you from using this allegorize approach in things which would be named or understood to be the main tenants of Christianity. So look at what origin of Alexandria replied or how he replied, when he was asked about

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the crucifixion by celsus, an apologist who was a non Christian at the time, he said, the events recorded to have happened to Jesus do not possess the full view of the truth, in the mere letter and history for each recorded event is shown to be a symbol of something else, by those who read the Scripture more intelligently. So because celsus was interrogating him on how could it be the case that a God can die on a cross, if he's so powerful, Origen of Alexandria, use an allegorize ation approach to at least do away with some aspects of the crucifixion, which may be anti logic. And this shows you that you can use this hermeneutical principle to wipe away the basic tenets of

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Christianity.

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So he mentions William Lane, Craig mentions that augustan Okay, he allegorize is the Bible. And he mentions the church fathers. And this is actually deceptive type of academics. Because it's not the case that the Church Fathers by and large, that they did this for your door and Daya door, they saw that the

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that the interpretations of the Bible in Genesis should be read literally, for example,

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you CBS, john chrysostom, Jerome, and others who have, we still have the kind of writings on their attitudes towards origin, especially in his oligomerization, they didn't take the view of oligomerization. So if you wanted to have a general, and you wanted to have a rule, the general be the literal interpretation, not just for the rabbis who executed the Bible, but also the bulk of the church fathers who, who executed the Bible, the role would be origin of Alexandria, who was not even canonized in the church of the Catholics. But having said that, of course, you have a problem. If you go with this allegation approach, or valid origin of Alexandria, then you could be wiping away

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the central tenants of Christianity.

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Why did August and the question is because he mentioned a Gustin, why did augustan?

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Why did he decide if he did because there's different readings of it. But let's assume that he allegorize parts of the Genesis narrative, though, of course, we must note that he named his book a literal interpretation of Genesis. And he had to such exegesis. Why did he allegorize it. So if we look here, there's something about the earth, the heavens and other elements of the world about the motion of the orbits and stars, and even their size and relative positions about the predictable eclipses of the sun and the moon. Now, it's disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian present, presumably giving a meaning of the Holy Scripture talking nonsense on these

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topics, we should all take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation in which people show up vast ignorance in Christians and laugh to it to scorn. So he's doing it for apologetic reasons, reasons he was very aware of and this is mentioning David Lindbergh's book on these issues. He was very aware that the biblical discourse was against the cosmologies, which were most respected. And of course, he was aware of Aristotelian cosmologies and holistic cosmologies. And he's speaking about executing the Bible in a way, which is anti cosmology of whatever the most of escape cosmologies were at that time. And so the reason why he took the impetus, if he did would be a

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similar reason the origin did in other words, because of the inconsistency is that he found the biblical discourse and the external world.

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And you can see this again,

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in other places, so really, and truly here. I think one can conclude it's a catch 22 situation or you can even call it hermeneutical dilemma. If you want to take the view of William Lane Craig that the Genesis narrative is allegory, then you must allow for at least the possibility that this allegorize ation. hermeneutical approach can be applied to other more central tenants of Christianity including the crucifixion and resurrection. This was the approach of at least origin of Alexandria who

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allegorize large parts of central doctrines in order to meet the apologetic criterion. If one wants to say no in fact, is lived

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Then one will have to maintain not only the contradictions, the internal ones, but they'd have to say that the universe is 6000 years old, as per Genesis chapter five, and the account of that, and obviously the 624 hour days understanding in Genesis chapter one.

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But in both cases, you'd have to maintain that there are contradictions in the Bible. And the Muslim would say this, why would you believe a book with contradictions is as simple as that? And why would you, William Lane Craig, who is a premier Christian apologist, and scholar of the Christian world, candidly admit that your book is erroneous, thereby admitting that it's not inerrant, which is one of the core doctrines of the evangelicals and Christians, more Christians than just the evangelicals. Why would you do this? And continue believing in this book as if it is free from error? Why don't you seek as the truth, as your Bible says? And why would God be the author of

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confusion? Since the Bible tells us that God shall not be the author of confusion? How could God punish me for this believing a book that is fraught with contradictions in whatever way you decide to interpret it? allegorical literal or otherwise? I say this is unfair, I say this is unjust. And I say that instead of this one should be looking elsewhere for the Word of God. And if you want more information, go to k by H dot code at UK and download for free my article for the proof of Islam, and you will see some of the references referred to in this video in the description box was Salam wailuku Rahmatullahi wa barakato