James White vs. Nadir Ahmed, March 21, 2008 Part 10

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James White vs. Nadir Ahmed, March 21, 2008 Part 11, Finale

00:07

Now, in my last minute here, I've got to bring up another issue here. And, you know, people want to talk about me, they can go and talk about me,

00:14

I don't care, but some of the comments I can't really ignore. You know, because I guess someone was saying that I do something called mutah, which is kind of, can be used as a form of prostitution.

00:25

Okay, and I believe Nabil Qureshi, Nabil, are you there?

00:30

Yeah. You know, from what I heard from your parents, and from a couple of witnesses here, that you made some comments about me doing these things, and I believe

00:38

I called you up and I asked you if you said that, and you said no, you didn't, but I didn't even know what mutah was. But your parents are saying yes.

00:44

Why did your parents say yes and you're saying no? I think these kinds of things got to stay in my mind.

00:52

Okay, but I guess what I'm wondering is, why are your parents saying you said this about me, and I've got to know about this, but Well, I mean, if people are going to say these things,

01:01

I'm just kind of wondering, you know, what's going on here? Are they wrong? Show some respect to the audience.

01:06

Alright. Look, I'm just trying to get down to the bottom of this, because a lot of nasty rumors are getting around, and this comes back and it hurts me, right?

01:14

So, you know, I want to find out what's going on here. So, okay. Alright, well that was the conclusion to the debate.

01:26

Heavily trust what the New Testament tells us about Jesus and the Gospel. And since you were tossing out the challenges,

01:34

Nadir, well, I think it's interesting that you're saying that Christians are running from you when you're on stage with a

01:39

Christian debating. But apart from that, Sam Shimon has agreed to debate you on the Prophethood of Muhammad, and if you'd like to focus on archaeological and prophetic and scientific evidence,

01:48

I would accept too. We can do it right here. So, at this point we'll have question and answer from the audience.

01:57

So, if anyone would like to form a line. You don't all have to jump in line at once. There'll be time. If anyone does have to leave, this would be a good time.

02:07

If you have to go to sleep at a certain hour or something like that, this would be a good time to step out. Those of you who want to continue the discussion and have a question and answer, now's the time to do that.

02:21

Alright, remember, no speeches.

02:26

You can have a few seconds to set up your question and so on, but ask the question. Also, point out to which debater your question's for, or if it's for both of them.

02:36

And if it is directed towards one debater, I'll give that debater two minutes to answer and 30 seconds to a minute if the opponent would like to respond.

02:47

Alright, so? Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity, but I would request you, humbly, please do not interrupt me.

02:56

I'm not going to make a long speech. You were my professor once, a long time ago, so you are the only exception.

03:03

You're the one exception. Thank you very much. But you're getting, I have to limit you to two minutes, though.

03:08

Can you do two minutes? Certainly, I will take two minutes. First of all, my overall impression of the debate,

03:14

I listened to both speakers very carefully, and I probably will leave you with the impression that your name is

03:25

Mr. Dr. Wright? Can everyone hear this microphone? Is it turned on? No?

03:31

Okay. Is that turned on? Yeah, it is. Okay, yeah. I think

03:36

Dr. Wright was very articulate. He was very polite. He was very respectful.

03:43

On the other hand, my fellow Muslim brother, Mr. Nazir Ahmed, was very rhetorical, very impertinent at some times, and not very respectful, both to the audience as well as to the speaker.

03:57

My compliment to Dr. Wright. I think most of the time,

04:03

Mr. Ahmed was asking, give me a single evidence for the prophethood of God.

04:09

I think Dr. Wright would have turned back and asked him the same question. Give me an empirical, scientifically verifiable evidence for the prophethood of Prophet Muhammad, and both claims stand and fall on the same theological assumptions.

04:29

My feeling is, recently I read a piece by Chris Hedges, who had a debate with Sam Harris on so far the

04:37

God problem. And he wrote, Chris Hedges wrote, after the debate, that those who came to the debate liking

04:45

Sam Harris left the debate liking Sam Harris. I think this probably would happen tonight.

04:55

As a Muslim, I believe in the New Testament, in the Old Testament, in the authenticity of these, and I consider my

05:03

Christian brothers as fellow believers. I think that no one can ever present any scientific evidence, ever, for topics such as these.

05:15

If you were debating about the rationality of one health care plan against the other,

05:23

I would have said, he won, he lost. But both of you have won the debate because you presented your case.

05:31

But I appreciate what people like you are doing. Thank you very much. All right, we'll have a one -minute response if you have anything to say about that.

05:39

Yes, I do. Hopefully we're on here. I attempted to raise that issue by saying, what is the standard?

05:48

A call to apostleship is a theological issue. It's not something you put under a microscope.

05:54

And yet, for both Muslims and Christians, we believe that God has spoken, that he speaks in the form of scripture.

06:00

And therefore, to go to those scriptures and to demonstrate that within those scriptures we have historical evidence that Paul is accepted as an apostle by the other apostles,

06:09

I think is quite relevant. I didn't have time this evening to go into the fact that there are early interpretations,

06:15

I believe Surah 36, if I recall correctly, where early Muslims saw in the

06:22

Quran a reference to the apostle Paul. That could not have developed, that's found in Ibn Kathir, that could not have developed had there been this rapacious rejection of him as some sort of innovator and creator of Shirk.

06:33

And so I did try to raise that issue that you cannot provide a computer evidence for the apostleship of Paul because it's a different area.

06:43

Nadir, one minute. I'm not here to win a popularity contest. I already told you, for a lot of people, challenging people for the evidence for their religion, a lot of people will take that as offensive, very offensive.

06:58

I'm not here to make friends over here, but we have to get to the truth. It's like what David Wood was saying.

07:03

Let's get to the truth of the matter. As far as Christians being fellow believers as a person who claims to be a

07:09

Muslim, even James White will agree with me. No, they're not. And not according to the Quran. According to the

07:15

Quran, there's no salvation for them. They're not fellow believers. But anyways,

07:22

I've been, I think, very courteous with James over here. I gave him an additional 13 minutes because I know this is going to be tough for him as well as for the

07:30

Baha 'is and other people who claim to have followed Prophet. Now, he's saying that we can't prove Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

07:36

The problem is you've never been to my website. We have several debates proving Prophet Muhammad. And as for his challenge,

07:42

Sam Shalom ran away as well. Okay, so... Alright, I hear that you've all been...

07:51

Everyone who wanted to ask a question has been given a number. So we'll start with number one. Absolutely no more speeches unless one of you is my professor.

08:02

Okay, good evening. My question is, since the topic is how can we trust the

08:07

New Testament? My question is, how can we trust the New Testament if, for example, in many modern

08:13

Bibles, the bystander versions, etc. For example, they tell us that verses, for example, like in Mark chapter 16, there are verses that were added in later.

08:24

Where did they come from? If the earliest manuscript, they tell us, did not contain those verses, is that not proof of tampering?

08:30

John chapter 7, verse 53 to John 8, 11, they say earliest manuscripts did not have it.

08:36

Obviously, if the earliest manuscript did not contain that, then where did those come from?

08:41

Isn't that proof, therefore, that people have been tampering with the Scriptures over time? And who knows what new evidence may come out later to show that other things have been tampered.

08:50

Therefore, how can we trust the New Testament? Alright, that's a great question. So two minutes for James and one minute for me.

08:57

I had hoped that this would be what we were debating this evening because I would love to give a 20 -minute presentation.

09:02

I'd love to give much more than a 20 -minute presentation. If I may recommend a book that I've written that has nothing to do with Islam, so it might be useful to you, at least, and you might be able to say, well, it's certainly not directed in my direction.

09:14

I wrote a book in 1994 called The King James Only Controversy, and it deals with where we got the

09:19

New Testament manuscripts and what the differences in them are. I'm holding a critical edition of the Bible here, Greek New Testament, Hebrew Old Testament.

09:25

Bottom of the page, you have all the references to the various manuscripts and where they have varied readings.

09:31

You mentioned the two largest varied readings in the New Testament, Mark 16, 9 -20, and John 7 -53, 3 -8 -11.

09:37

When we examine that wealth of information that we have, we are able to detect scribal errors.

09:45

I was going to show you, for example, a manuscript, actually Codex Sinaiticus, which you may have heard of before around 325

09:52

A .D., where in John 14, you can see parakletos in John chapter 14, verse 26.

09:58

And there's a textual variant right underneath it. You can see the handwritten correction made in it.

10:04

Now, if that was the only manuscript we had of that text, then that would be a problem. But it isn't.

10:09

We have manuscripts from all over the world. The Christians distributed their manuscripts rapidly everywhere.

10:15

And when we can compare them with one another, we can see where someone has made a scribal error here or in the situation with the longer ending of Mark, the earliest manuscripts do not contain that.