Monday, September 28, 2020
The Necessity of Scripture in the Christian Life: Online Course with Dr. Tony Costa
Sunday, August 2, 2020
Unsheathed - The Story of Muhammad is now on YouTube
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Four Views on Christian Apologetics: Roundtable Discussion Tomorrow, July 17th
Don't miss this exciting round table discussion tomorrow, Friday July 17th at 9pm Eastern, on apologetic systems. Participants in the dialogue will be Dr. James White (representing presuppositionalism), Dr. Richard Howe (representing Thomistic classical apologetics), Dr. Randal Rauser (representing reformed epistemology) and myself (representing evidentialism). The discussion will be moderated by Samuel Nesan of "Explain Apologetics". Hope to see you there!
Monday, July 13, 2020
Are You a Christian Who is Struggling with Doubts?

Are you a Christian who is seriously struggling with doubts? A non-Christian seeker who has sincere questions about the Christian faith? Or have you recently lost your faith and want to explore whether your reasons for loss-of-faith were really rational?
If that describes you, please fill out this form on my website, and I and my small team of volunteers will see what we can do to help.
Sunday, July 12, 2020
Debate: "The Satanic Verses" a historical or fictional incident?
Yusuf Ismail and Samuel Green. 11-07-2020
Friday, July 10, 2020
Is the New Testament or Qur'an a Better Successor to the Hebrew Bible? Dr. Jonathan McLatchie vs. Bashir Vania
Here is my latest debate, with Islamic scholar Bashir Vania, on whether the New Testament or Qur'an is a better successor to the Old Testament. This debate was recorded at South African Theological Seminary in January. Enjoy!
Sunday, July 5, 2020
Monday, June 29, 2020
New Website Launch
I have just launched my new official website which, going forward, will host many of my articles on the Bible, theology, apologetics and science. There are already many articles published to the site, and there will be many more forthcoming. You can also sign up for my monthly newsletter on the site for email updates on my article publications and new videos.
Click here to access the site.
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Are the Gospels Eyewitness Testimony? Debate
Here is my latest debate. Thank you Yusuf for the debate.
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Why I Am No Longer a Muslim: Catch the Live-Stream with Al Fadi This Evening at 6pm Eastern
Today, Saturday, at 6pm Eastern time, I am going to be talking to Al Fadi about his journey out of Islam and how he came to be a follower of Christ. You can catch the YouTube livestream at the link above. There will be opportunity to put your own questions to Al Fadi by interaction in the live chat. All are welcome. I hope to see you there!
Friday, June 5, 2020
Understanding the Assumptions of Bart Ehrman
There is also this site The Ehrman Project
Monday, May 25, 2020
A New Translation of the Qur'an with Variants Listed
A common argument from Muslims is that the Bible is corrupt and there is one perfect Qur'an, and therefore Muslims can dismiss the Bible, or pick and chose which verses they want to accept. This new translation of the Qur’an helps to show Muslims that this is not the case. It is a translation with the variants from the 10 accepted versions of the Qur'an indicated in red and translated in the footnotes. It is the first translation of its kind. This is a very powerful tool, both for your own reading of the Qur'an, and because you can quickly show a Muslim, in English, that the Qur'an has variants, and therefore they should stop exaggerating. The PDF of this book only costs a few dollars and is well worth it.
https://bridges-foundation.org/product/bridges-translation-of-quran/Muslim attitudes to the variants vary. Some say all the variants are inspired and are to be harmonized, others, that the variants come from the early Readers and are to be judged. Either way, this translation gives you the resources to have this conversation.
And here are two short videos from Shabir Ally discussing the variants. He really takes the conversation to a new helpful level, for which I am thankful.
https://youtu.be/c0Z7_MAZX5ghttps://youtu.be/ED7Z4qOQquQ
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Responding to Kermit Zarley on John 20:28
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Rounding Off My Response to Richard Carrier On Undesigned Coincidences (Part 6)
I have been reviewing a recent article by Dr. Richard Carrier where he provided a critique of the argument from undesigned coincidences in the gospel accounts put forward in Dr. Lydia McGrew's book Hidden in Plain View (please see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5). In this sixth and final installment, I round off my series by reviewing Carrier's analysis of what he calls "leading examples" of undesigned coincidences.The Temple Not Made With Hands
Carrier turns his attention to a selection of what he calls "leading examples" of undesigned coincidences. The first one pertains to Jesus' resurrection prediction in John 2:18-22. He writes,
Mark 14:55-59 and 15:27-30 repeatedly depicts the Jews accusing Jesus of claiming to destroy the temple; John 2:18-22 “explains” that when Jesus said that, he was talking metaphorically about his body. This is obviously just John explaining his source, Mark. There is no undesigned coincidence here.John, however, does not mention the later misrepresentation of Jesus' statement and its use as an accusation against Jesus. Furthermore, the false witnesses in Mark and Matthew don't accurately represent Jesus' words (since he said nothing about destroying a man made temple and rebuilding it but not by human hands). But nothing in either of those gospels gives even a hint of what Jesus actually said. Only John gives us the backstory. In fact, in Mark and Matthew the false witness statements are actually unexplained allusions. The reader is left hanging, wondering when Jesus made this statement. It is also alluded to by those mocking Jesus on the cross in Mark 15:29 and Matthew 27:40. This suggests that it was a widely known statement of Jesus (not something the false witnesses came up with out of whole cloth), even though Mark and Matthew do not supply the pretext, and even though Mark and Matthew make it clear that the witnesses at Jesus' interrogation were giving false testimony against Jesus by this accusation. We therefore have two interlocking accounts that point to their being independently grounded in truth.
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
External Coincidences and Acts of the Apostles: Responding to Richard Carrier (Part 5)
I have been reviewing a recent article by Dr. Richard Carrier where he provided a critique of the argument from undesigned coincidences in the gospel accounts put forward in Dr. Lydia McGrew's book Hidden in Plain View (please see part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4). In this fifth installment, I discuss Carrier's dismissal of coincidences involving the gospels and external secular sources, and his dismissal of undesigned coincidences in the book of Acts.External Coincidences
Carrier begins this section by stating,
I won’t bother, however, with what the McGrews call “external” coincidences, which are merely authors knowing things about their own history (like who ruled where and when, what titles they held, and what they were like). Authors knew those things about their history the same way we know those things about ours: they read books and inscriptions, listened to lectures and speeches, and absorbed longstanding cultural knowledge from their parents and peers. The only “coincidences” that have any chance of being “undesigned” are what the McGrews call “internal” coincidences, meaning from Gospel to Gospel, not from Gospel to pop history.That is not a very accurate definition of what the McGrews mean when they talk about external coincidences. Rather, external coincidences function in a similar way to internal coincidences except they involve external secular sources rather than other New Testament accounts. In a similar way, the accounts interlock in a way that points to truth. For example, consider John 2:18-20, which recounts a dialogue between Jesus and some Jews following the cleansing of the temple:
18 So the Jews said to [Jesus], “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?”Take note of the date given by the Jews -- "it has taken forty-six years to build this temple..." We can thus discern the approximate date at which this dialogue must have taken place, since Flavius Josephus helpfully tells us when Herod the Great began to rebuild the temple. It was in the 18th year of his reign, which landed in approximately 19 B.C (Antiquities of the Jews 15.380). Forty-six years on from 19 B.C. (bearing in mind there was no 0 A.D.) lands us in 28 A.D. Now, according to Luke 3:1, when did Jesus commence His public ministry? It was in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. Augustus Caesar died in 14 A.D., but two years prior to that (the fall of 12 A.D.), according to the historian Suetonius, Augustus appointed Tiberius as co-emperor, in order to ensure a smooth transition of power. The 15th year of Tiberius, then, lands us in 27 A.D., corresponding to Jesus' baptism and ministry commencement. The cleansing of the temple would have taken place the following Passover (John 2:13), placing it in the spring of 28 A.D. Thus, by two independent methods, and using information drawn from John, Luke, Josephus, and Suetonius, we have been able to confirm the date on which Jesus cleansed the temple. This sort of coincidence is best explained by the sources being rooted in truth.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
New York Times Blames Christians for U.S. Coronavirus Outbreak
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Is Redaction Usually the Better Hypothesis? Responding to Richard Carrier (Part 4)
I have been responding to Dr. Richard Carrier's interaction with the argument from undesigned coincidences in the gospels (please see part 1, part 2, and part 3). In part 4, I review Carrier's claim that "redaction is usually the better hypothesis." He writes,Case in point. The McGrews are amazed that the early Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) don’t really explain why Pilate declares Jesus innocent, and lo and behold, John comes along and explains it by presenting a whole conversation between Pilate and Jesus no one had ever heard of before. McGrew calls this an undesigned coincidence. But there are two problems with this.
Friday, March 20, 2020
Who Has Fabricated Data -- Lydia McGrew or Richard Carrier? (Part 3)
I have been responding to Dr. Richard Carrier's critique of undesigned coincidences in the gospels and Acts (please see part 1 and part 2). In part 3, I continue my response by reviewing Carrier's allegation that McGrew has fabricated some of her examples. He writes,Yet another cause of things McGrew lists as evidence is simply: there is nothing to explain. Some of McGrew’s “examples” are simply fabricated. For instance, she tries to argue that when Mark’s account of the “feeding of five thousand” speaks of the people “coming and going” he “must” mean this was the Preparation for the Passover, and they were “coming and going” because of that, so when John relates the same incident (in fact he is redacting Mark’s account) and adds in passing that “Passover was at hand,” this proves Mark and John must have been there—and Mark merely forgot to mention the Passover was near.I do not know why Carrier puts quotation marks around the word "must" (since this isn't McGrew's word at all). Given that this section of his review is about fabrication, this is quite ironic. Carrier implies (falsely) that McGrew is saying that we "must" take the crowds in Mark to be caused by the Passover. McGrew's discussion of this is much more modestly worded. Furthermore, Carrier also makes no mention of Mark's casual allusion to the green grass (Mark 6:39), which further supports this coincidence, since the grass in Palestine is brown throughout the majority of the year save for a narrow window of time (because of elevated levels of rainfall) during the spring, around the time of Passover. Mark doesn't explicitly tell us that the event took place at Passover, but John 6:4 does. However, John doesn't mention the people coming and going or the green grass, alluded to in Mark. Therefore, we have an undesigned coincidence.
Can Scribal Errors Account for Undesigned Coincidences? Responding to Richard Carrier (Part 2)
In my previous article, I began a series of responses to Dr. Richard Carrier on the subject of undesigned coincidences in the gospels and Acts. In this article, I will consider Carrier's claim that undesigned coincidences can be adequately accounted for by scribal errors.And yet, another obvious cause of one text omitting what McGrew would call a “detail” but the rest of us would call “a few words” is simply: scribal error. We actually have ample evidence of accidental scribal omissions in the textual transmission of the Gospels (as well as deliberate ones), which McGrew simply ignores as a competing explanation for which we actually have evidence. The frequency of omissions in scribal transmission of the Gospels is discussed by fellow Christian apologist Edward Andrews. Many examples are catalogued by Bart Ehrman in The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture and by Taylor Barnes in his dissertation Scribal Habits in Selected New Testament Manuscripts, Including Those with Surviving Exmplars (University of Birmingham 2017).This time Carrier offers us particular examples where his theory might apply:
For example, in Mark’s account of the prophecy game played on Jesus, the soldiers spit on Jesus and cover his eyes and just say “Prophesy!” when they strike Jesus; but in Matthew’s account, the covering isn’t mentioned, instead they specifically “spit in his face,” and more fully say “Prophesy to us, Christ! Who struck you!” Those sentences begin identically. The loss of the rest of the sentence in Mark is exactly the kind of accidental omission we have many examples of in the manuscripts of the Bible. So we can’t be confident Mark actually omitted it himself. And indeed, the full line in Matthew exists in many manuscripts of Mark. Some also read identically to Matthew even in having the guards spit “in his face,” and a few even omit the face covering. So this whole thing could simply be a textual corruption, and the two texts originally identical. We have evidence for all of this in the parallel passage in Luke 22:64, which is similarly corrupted with various omissions across the manuscripts, but all to some extent combine the text of Mark and Matthew. Which means either Mark and Matthew originally contained the same text or there was no Q source and Luke chose to combine Mark’s text with Matthew’s. But even that would be consistent with Matthew and Mark originally saying the same things here, leaving nothing left to explain.Carrier further elaborates,
Of course, that Matthew deliberately changed Mark’s “spit on him” to “spit in his face” might instead indicate what really is going on here: Matthew doesn’t like Mark’s story precisely because it’s too colloquial (it assumes familiarity with a common children’s game of the time, possibly then even called Prophesy: Alan Dundes, Holy Writ as Oral Lit, pp. 112-13), so Matthew replaces the sack over “his face” with spitting in “his face” (identical words in both texts), thus efficiently collapsing two acts into one, signifying to blind him with spit, and then fills out the sentence, so everyone will get the point, even those who never played the Prophesy game as a child. This may even indicate the game was common among Gentiles, Mark’s audience, but not Jews, Matthew’s audience.The problem here is that McGrew does not use this example in her book, and in fact states in chapter 3 her reason for not doing so. She states,
I have been careful not to use a single undesigned coincidence that could be plausibly explained by mere incomplete copying or elaboration of Mark on the part of Matthew or Luke.In fact, in footnote 15 of chapter 3, McGrew specifically lists this very example as one she deliberately chose to omit because of its ability to be accounted for by incomplete copying. She writes,
There are three coincidences I have left out of my discussion for this very reason: The "who struck you" coincidence between Luke 22:63-64 and Matthew 26:67-68, since Matthew could have been merely including one piece of information from all the information contained in Mark; the "waiting until evening" coincidence between Matthew 8:16 and Mark 1:21, since Matthew may have merely included incomplete information from Mark; the coincidence concerning the command to the disciples to tell no one about the Transfiguration until after the resurrection, from Matthew 17:9 and Luke 9:36, since all of the information may be found in Mark 9:10, depending upon one's translation of the Greek in Mark. [emphasis added]The fact that Carrier covers this example in a review of McGrew's book causes me to be skeptical about whether Carrier has actually read the book.
In part 3, we will consider Carrier's claim that McGrew has fabricated some of her examples. We will discover that, in fact, it is not McGrew, but Carrier, who has fabricated his data.
