Sven

Nice summary for this (and the previous Tyre) thread! :thumbs:

Sauron

Red herring. No one said that they aren't trying to disprove the bible. The specific question was about the Babylon prophecy, and whether muslims would want to try and discredit the bible using that specific prophecy. Pointing out that they might try to discredit the bible using *other* means is irrelevant to the question.

More in the next post.

You claimed this would be evidence against the skeptic and muslim position, remember? You claimed the opposite for skeptics and muslims - that if an attempt to rebuild Babylon failed, it could be used as proof of the truth of the bible. So this yardstick of yours ought to work both ways.

If Christians won't give up their religion upon seeing a rebuilt Babylon - a clear violation of the prophecy of their own bible -- then why in the world do you think that muslims would give up their religion if the rebuild attempt were to fail?

Ignoring, of course, the fact that the Babylon prophecy apparently isn't a topic that muslims disgree with christians about in the first place?

You're so busy trying to get out of doing any work here that you missed the point. Johnny is trying to show you why your silly idea of rebuilding Babylon is broken. If christians can't be convinced to give up their religion with a contradicted prophecy, you can't expect anyone else to give up their religion with a fulfilled prophecy.


He asked for proof. Telling us that you mentioned a claim before is not proof.

It is NOT self-evident; it's just another one of lee_merrill's standard claims-in-lieu-of-research. I see that cajela has already shown you that sheep grazing and swamps are not mutually exclusive. Allow me to go one step further:

1. Masai grazing animals in a swamp:
http://envstudies.brown.edu/thesis/2...ng/society.htm

The Maasai in Shompole follow a seasonal migration pattern in order to survive in their harsh environment. In anthropological terms, the Maasai practice transhumance as apposed to true nomadism, that is they have a set migratory pattern that is based on seasonality [13]. In the dry season, they move to the swamp, as the swamp retains green pastures and water throughout the year (see Grazing Areas).

2. Sheep grazing in marshes, Christchurch NZ:

http://www.ccc.govt.nz/parks/publica..._travis_11.asp
Grazing Marsh

Grazing Marsh is an extensive area of cattle grazed short grassland (around 0.15 m), with scattered tussock and rushes. It will provide habitat for pukeko, waterfowl, waders, harrier hawk and gulls particularly the endemic black-billed gull (Larus bulleri). Ephemeral flooding will extend feeding habitat and maximise the breeding potential of local populations.

3. An entire study conducted on the effects of grazing livestock in wetlands:
http://www.wetlandtrust.org.nz/documents/grazing.pdf

None of which you knew, nor did you event suspect it. Which is just one more reason why things that lee_merrill considers to be "self-evident" cannot be trusted at all. Lee assumes way too much and is far too enthusiastic about filling in the missing blanks with his own religious assumptions.

So lee: given the facts above, you'll need to show that no grazing ever occurred there. Keeping in mind, of course, the nomadic nature of such grazing: just beccaus there are no shepherds/sheep there now, does not mean that they aren't there in some other season of the year. And just because they aren't there this year, doesn't mean that in drier (or wetter) years, the area would not be used.

:rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling:

Sauron

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Lee using McDowell again. Lee, didn't you learn your lesson already, about the perils of using Josh McDowell's book? If not, let me beat it into you some more. From my document on Babylon:

1. Kubie wrote a book about Nineveh. The subject of this debate is Babylon. In case you're confused, they are not the same city. You'll need to show the relevance here.

2. The various photos show already offered show that things do grow around Babylon.

So it's a swamp when you *need* it to be, and then other times it becomes something else -- when you need it to be.

More challenging venues - "you do expect" is just another indicator that you are merely guessing again, and have no evidence. You might want to think about what other venues are available to someone in the area; it's not like they can hunt in the mountains. And if nobody ever hunts in pasture areas, then why do safaris take place in Kenya in the same areas where Masai graze their cattle?

Sheesh. Your argument is propped up with so many guesses and assumptions that it practically rattles with fragility.

It is not a diferent point. Once more, from the top:

1. You said that muslims ought to want to try and rebuild Babylon, because it would disprove the bible and prove the quran.
2. You were told several times that your understanding of islam was childish, and that that was not how things worked.
3. I also point-blank told you that islam does not disagree with all points of christianity, so you would need to verify that on this particular point, there was any sort of disagreement.
4. Instead of listening, you posted your proposal to the bibleandquran group on Yahoo.
5. The muslim who responded said that he did NOT disagree with the OT on this point.

The reason has already been provided to you. But in your usual fashion, you ignore the answer and keep asking the question -- because you apparently can't handle the answer you were given, so you pretend it doesn't exist. But it does:

the Babylon prophecy failed for 8 or 9 other reasons. The facts show that the Isaiah prophecy has ALREADY been invalidated by PAST events. That is why nobody should spend a dime to rebuild Babylon: the disproof happened in 539 BCE, when the city peacefully changed hands to the Persians, contrary to prophecy. Multiple other disproofs happened over the following centuries.

I wouldn't spend any time or money proving that Paris was the capital of France, either.

1. You are not defending the claims in the opening post -- unless ducking and weaving somehow counts as a defense of claims.

2. You made no claims about banners on a hilltop, so I don't expect you to answer that one.

3. However, you DID make claims about sheep, grazing, swamps, and all these other items. Once you introduce those items into the discussion and start making claims about them, then you are obligated to defend those new claims IN ADDITION TO any claims made in the original post.

It does more than address your point; it refutes it. The city was never anywhere close to desolation, so the prophecy (and your position) are both broken.

1. You are a liar, lee_merrill. Here is the definition I gave you:

The word used was "desolation". The dictionary puts that word in terms of human habitation and suitability for living beings not an assessment of the state of buildings.

In your typical dishonesty, you ended my quotation and chopped off the part in red, because including it would have deprived your of your ability to quibble some more. What? Did you not think I remembered my own words?

As for your response, I've already addressed it:

No, it was not. The definition was about the lack of presence of human beings. A tent city of 10,000 people would not be "desolate", even though the tents were barely acceptable for habitability. Many refugee camps right now are in that situation - no running water, 10 people to a tent, squalor, etc. But the refugee camp is not desolate.

On the other hand, a brand new city would be considered desolate, if it had zero inhabitants in it. Even though the buildings might be in tip-top shape, without people it would be a ghost town. In fact, there were several such cities in WW2 for scientists and engineering workers, such as the atomic bomb research work at Los Alamos. They were housed in excellent buildings with all the latest finery. But when the project was over and those workers all went home, the city was desolate -- even though the buildings were in perfectly habitable shape.

Desolation is ALWAYS about the lack of human beings. Your attempt at derailing the discussion with another one of your semantic quibbles has only made the situation for your claims worse - and further exposed the basic intellectual dishonesty that runs through all your postings.

Wrong. Your original statement was about desolation:

Well, the Lord says he will stretch out his hand, which could quite well involve the Greek army, and "you will be desolate" tells us nothing about the interval over which the city was to become desolate...

It was that statement that prompted my response on the Jeremiah verses. Try to remember your own positions, lee, so that I don't have to keep track of them? Hmmm? :rolling:


I'm sure you would claim victory no matter what the evidence or the sources showed. That means nothing.

I invite anyone to review this thread and tell me if I am the one making multiple assertions and/or pointless repetitions. The reality is the opposite, lee, as even several christian lurkers have testified to.

Shall I tell you the real reason you are quitting? You logged on yesterday and saw 5 or 6 responses to your latest posts full of assertions. Apparently you realized that you truly had painted yourself into a corner and there was no way out. You had screwed yourself over by making claims, and nobody was buying them. But you're too lazy to support them with actual research -- too lazy, by far.

So now in an effort to save face, you are trying to shift the blame to me for your failure to support your own arguments. Not original. Not dramatic. But oh so predictable.

Your arguments are comparable to rotten styrofoam - barely holding together, without any internal structure or support.

Sven

Sauron: After reading the Tyre thread, I could not imagine how the case against the Babylon prophecy could be even more airtight, as you claimed. Now I see you were right. :notworthy

Johnny Skeptic

Now this is really cute. Muslims in their own opinion ALREADY have at least 101 reasons why they have discredited the Bible, and Lee is telling us that they need one more. I guess if Muslims had 500 reasons Lee’s argument would be the same.

Aside from Muslims, skeptics have in their own opinion already discredited the Bible on numerous occasions. Hence, even if they had permission from the Iraqis to rebuild Babylon, they would never go to the time and expense, which would be billions of dollars (ancient Babylon comprised four square miles), of killing a goose that was already dead. Just like Muslims, they know that if Babylon were to be rebuilt, for all practical purposes the Christian Church would still be just as large as it is today, of course less Lee Merrill and possibly Josh McDowell.

One need not spend even one penny in order to find plenty of good reasons not to believe the Bible. The Secular Web has thousands of articles that people can read for free.

As Sauron said:

Now Lee, the Muslim said that he AGREES with you that the prophecy is valid. Are you calling him a liar, and about one billion other Muslims to boot? Even if Muslims did not believe that the prophecy was valid, you still lose because unlike you and Josh McDowell (my gracious, even James Holding and a number of other Christians sometimes criticize McDowell), they are well aware that if they were to rebuild Babylon, for all practical purposes the Christian Church would be just as large as it is today. The United States would still fighting Muslim “terrorists� in various parts of the world.

At a web site at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...tz/critic.html Bernard Katz aptly deals with Josh McDowell’s mention of Daniel’s 70 weeks in McDowell’s book titled ‘Prophecy: Fact or Fiction.’ Ironically, Katz discredits McDowell on a number of occasions with some of McDowell’s own sources. Quite comically, on one occasion where McDowell quotes one of his sources, his source says exactly the opposite a page or so away from the quote.

Regarding McDowell’s ‘Evidence that demands a verdict,’ Jeff Lowder wrote an article (I think it is available at the Secular Web) that is aptly titled ‘Evidence that demands a refund.’

To prove what point? When you said that you would give up Christianity if Babylon were to be rebuilt, were you speaking only for yourself, or were you speaking for the majority of Christians as well? If the former, then that is an absurd argument. If the latter, then you need to produce evidence that supports your claim. So far, you haven’t produced the name of even one single person who agrees with you. I asked you to speak with the pastor of your church and some other members about this, and to send James Holding a private message. Have you done so?

I never said that sheep would have grazed in a swamp.

What does Hamilton mean by “current�? If he means today, I am quite certain that I could find 100 Arabs and pay them to pitch their tents in Babylon, and I have adequate financial resources to do so. Lee, will you give up Christianity if I do so? If Hamilton means in ancient times, then he will have to provide several credible corroborative sources that back up his claim of what happened thousands of years ago.

If there was a wild game park, there was certainly a lot of grass or other forage. At any rate, I am quite certain that I could get permission from the Iraqi government to pay some people in Iraq to prepare several acres of soil for growing grass and pay some shepherds to graze their flocks of sheep there. If they don’t have any sheep I would buy some for them.

No it isn’t. The Muslim said that he AGREES with you that the prophecy is valid. Hence, why would he want to disprove it? As he said, siemplimente! Kapiche?

I did read what you said. You have said all along that Muslims would love to disprove the Babylon prophecy, but the Muslim claimed exactly the opposite, and so would the vast majority of Muslims. If you believe that a good percentage of Muslims disagree with the Muslim that you contacted, then produce some. Actually, for openers, just several will do quite nicely. Have you got any?

In your opinion, Muslims and skeptics are trying to disprove the Bible, but in the opinions of Muslims and skeptics they have no need of rebuilding Babylon since they have already disproved the Bible on hundreds of occasions.

Johnny Skeptic

Yes, Lee, please do read my post and reply to it. Regarding assertions, the Babylon prophecy is a group of assertions is it not?

Sauron

Oh, Sven - I *barely* got started. You only saw a small piece of the ETDAV refutation on the Babylon prophecy; the entire document is 93 pages long. Here's another section, related to the sheep question:


I was kind of hoping that lee was going to argue the Edom/Petra prophecy some more. The refutation for that is pretty good; not as good as the Babylon case, but still pretty good. But what really makes my rebuttal to the Edom/Petra claim interesting is how well it showcases the gross errors and procedural mistakes that Josh McDowell makes when he puts forth such claims. It's a playbook for all the reasons why no one should ever trust McDowell again.

Of course, given that McDowell and lee_merrill both got off badly by misidentifying Petra with Bozrah, it's easy to see how their position rapidly went downhill from there....:rolling:

Johnny Skeptic

Lee Merrill claims to know what the Muslim agenda are, and when Muslims disagree with him regarding what THEIR OWN agenda are, it seems that he doesn't believe them.

I can most certainly reliably state as a skeptic what the skeptic agenda are, and I state that if the Iraqis gave me permission to have Babylon rebuilt, which was an ancient city comprising four square miles, a project that would be quite expensive, I would not do so. That is because 1) skeptics have in their own opinion already discredited the Bible hundreds of times, because 2) for all practical purposes if I did have Babylon rebuilt, Christianity would still be the same size as it is today, and because 3) the money would be much better spent discrediting Christianity by more efficient means.

If I did want to discredit the prophecy, I wouldn't rebuild Babylon. I would pay some nomadic Bedouins to pitch their tents there at a fraction of the cost, or I would have grass planted and pay some shepherds to graze their sheep there. If Lee asserts that Bedouins would be afraid to pitch their tents in Babylon, I will ask him to prove it.

When considering Josh McDowell, one need only consider the source. Some of his many blunders can be found at a web site at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...tz/critic.html, where Bernard Katz aptly deals with Josh McDowell’s mention of Daniel’s 70 weeks in McDowell’s book titled ‘Prophecy: Fact or Fiction.’ Ironically, Katz discredits McDowell with some of McDowell’s own sources. Following are some excerpts from the article:

“Christian fundamentalist Josh McDowell has become quite rash in one of his latest books Prophecy: Fact or Fiction. For he is pinning his whole faith in Christianity on the ‘historical evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Daniel.’

“Here's his argument: ‘Such amazing accurate predictions (in the Book of Daniel) defy the possibility of merely human origin. If these prophecies were composed in the lifetime of the sixth century Daniel, they would compel our acceptance of special revelation from a transcendent, personal God. No anti-supernatural position can reasonably be defended if Daniel is a genuine book of prophecy composed in 530 B.C. or the preceding years’ (p. 5).

“Sounds like Burrows definitely agrees with McDowell as to the historicity of Daniel - right? Wrong! For this ‘friendly witness’ then goes on to say: ‘Naturally readers of the Bible have supposed that in these passages the hero of our book of Daniel was meant... Now, however, we have from Ras Shamrah (tablets which are giving us ‘an enormous mass of new knowledge regarding the religion and mythology of northern Syria in the age of the Hebrew patriarchs’) a poem concerning a divine hero who name is exactly what we find in Ezekiel. He sits at the gate, judges the cause of the widow, and establishes the right of the orphan... In any case one can hardly doubt that the Dan'el referred to in Ezekiel is the same as the Dan'el of the text from Ras Shamrah. Here is a group of biblical passages which have been put in an entirely new light by a recent archaeological discovery’ (p. 263). And this refutation is from a ‘friendly witness.’

“In his From Stone Age to Christianity, 1957, paperback edition, Albright tells us: ‘And yet, the book of Daniel, the book of Enoch, and other works of the same general age show that a positive doctrine of the after-life had already gained the upper hand as early as 165 B.C....’ (p. 351).

“Farther along, on page 362, this archaeologist states: ‘It is highly probable that the idea of seven archangels was taken from Iranian sources. In the earlier books of the Old Testament and the earliest apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature there is nowhere any suggestion that certain angels formed a specially privileged group in the celestial hierarchy, nor do the angels receive person names identical with those of human beings. In Daniel (cir. 165 B.C.) Michael and Gabriel appear...’ (p. 362)

“Notice that Albright uses the date of 165 B.C. in the above two quotes. This late date of 165 B.C., not 530 B.C. as McDowell would have us swallow, is repeated by a great many other scholars. All of which flies in the face of the extreme claim of McDowell, who quotes from one of his sources: ‘Therefore, since the critics are almost unanimous in their admission that the Book of Daniel is the product of one author" (c.f. R.H. Pfeiffer, op. cit., pp. 761, 762), we may safely assert that the book could not possibly have been written as late as the Maccabean age’ (p. 14).

“Now if we turn to the very same book by Pfeiffer (Introduction to the Old Testament, 1948 - and cited by McDowell in his own bibliography on page 132), we find that if we look back just one more page - to 760 - we will see that Pfeiffer himself lists twenty major scholars who deny that the book was written by one author, Daniel, and that they mostly agree that the book is much later than 530 B.C.!

“To disprove a long chapter by McDowell (‘Attacks on Daniel as a Historian,’ pages 33-79, which amounts to 35 percent of the whole of McDowell's book), and in which McDowell says: ‘The alleged external discrepancies between the historical assertions of the Book of Daniel and secular historical sources will not hold up under close scrutiny’ (p. 129), I'm going to use Pfeiffer again. He's a top scholar and McDowell favors him with a thumb-nail biography on page 139 besides quoting him on pages 14 and 65.

“The historical background of Daniel is presented by Pfeiffer on pages 754 through 760, which is much too long for extensive quoting, so I'll choose just the highlights.

“He denies the correctness of McDowell's assertion that the Daniel mentioned in Ezekiel is the same Daniel who wrote the book of Daniel. This is what Pfeiffer says: ‘The Daniel of Ezekiel could conceivably be identified with that of Ras Shamra, but hardly with the hero of our book who, being at least ten years younger than Ezekiel, could hardly be classed with Noah; moreover, in 591 and 586 when Ezekiel was writing those passages, our Daniel had barely begun his career....’ (p. 754).

“Pfeiffer continues: (page 754) ‘The historicity of the Book of Daniel is an article of faith, not an objective scientific truth... In a historical study of the Bible, convictions based on faith must be deemed irrelevant, as belonging to subjective rather than objective knowledge. The historical background of Daniel, as was discovered immediately after its publication, is not that of the sixth but of the second century B.C. In the Sbylline Oracles (3:3831-400, a passage written about 140 B.C.) the ‘ten horns’ of Dn. 7:7, 20, 24 are already recognized to be ten kings preceding Antiochus Ephiphanes (175-164 B.C.) on the throne. In the first century of our era Josephus correctly identified the little horn in 7:20-27 with Antiochus Ephiphanes... (Antiquities 10:11, 7)... But the real discoverer of the historical allusions in Daniel was the neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry (d. ca. 304 A.D.), who devoted the twelfth volume of his Arguments against the Christians to the subject. The extant portions of this work which have been preserved by Jerome (d. 420) in his commentary, which is the most important of all the studies on Daniel. Porphyry assailed the historicity of Daniel by proving in detail that ch. 11 presents a history (not a prophecy) of the Seleucids and Ptolemies culminating in the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Ephiphanes. Jerome honestly accepted the views of this foe of Christianity, although in 11:21-45, he identified the tyrant Antichrist ... and not with Antiochus Ephiphanes’ (pp. 755-56).

“In view of the great importance which Pfeiffer attaches to Jerome's commentary on Daniel, I find it incredible that the only mention in McDowell of Jerome is that this great scholar places Daniel among the prophets (McDowell, p. 38).

“Pfeiffer continues: ‘It will be noticed at once that the amount of historical information gradually improves as we move from the days of Nebuchadnezzar to those of Antiochus Ephiphanes’ (p. 756). The reason for this is that since the book was written during the reign of Antiochus then those events pertaining to this Greek king would certainly match those in Daniel, but as history receded the events became more confused an in error.

“But McDowell takes the opposite tack. He says that the events of the sixth century B.C. are accurate because that is when the book was written and that the subsequent events (which are historically correct) substantiate the infallible prophetic revelations given by God to Daniel (p. 13). But the whole point of all the critical analyses by scholars shows that McDowell has turned the evidence upside-down and actually inverted the truth!

Pfeiffer: It seems clear that our author's misconceptions about the Persian period are derived to a great extent from late sources of the Old Testament and possibly from other sources of questionable trustworthiness (p. 757).

Pfeiffer: Our author confused Nebuchadnezzar with Nabonidus not only by making him the father of Belshazzar, but probably also in the story of Nebuchadnezzar's madness (p. 758; cf. McDowell pp. 123-4).

Pfeiffer: The chronology of Daniel is sufficiently elastic to allow the author to superimpose on the course of history a mechanical scheme based on the interpretation of Jeremiah's seventy years as seventy weeks of years, or 490 years. He divides the seventy weeks into three periods; seven weeks from 586 to 538 (with close approximation, 48 instead of 49 years), sixty-two weeks from 538 to 171 (actually 367 instead of 434 years), and, correctly, one week from 171 to 164 (p. 758; Pfeiffer cf. McDowell pp. 15-22).

Katz: This one paragraph destroys McDowell's reconstruction of Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks. To authenticate this prophecy, since it's crucial to the dates of the coming and death of Christ, as well as to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, McDowell devotes, as noted above, seven pages (15-22). The arithmetic of the weeks consumes three pages alone. McDowell would have been more productive if he had used the space to prove ‘pyramid power!’

“To resume listening to our ‘friendly witness’… ‘In conclusion,’ states Pfeiffer, ‘the author's information on the period preceding Alexander is extremely vague, being partly drawn from his imagination and partly from unreliable sources (p. 758). While the author knows very little about the history of his first three world empires, his information about the fourth, particularly in its later phases, is exact and clarified’ (p. 759). This corroborates what was said earlier in this article about McDowell inverting the truth.

“‘What lies beyond December 165,’ says Pfeiffer, ‘is not historical reality but apocalyptic dream... our author gives an imaginary picture of his (Antiochus') end. After a successful conquest of Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia, Antiochus shall meet his end in his camp between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean, 'broken without hand' by a supernatural agency. This unfulfilled prediction follows the pattern set by earlier apocalypses...’ (pp. 759-760).

“Thus the ‘friendly witnesses,’ Burrows, Albright, and Pfeiffer break the back of McDowell's thesis. By his own words, McDowell has hoisted himself on his own petard. The implications for a Christian fundamentalist's faith in his religion and his Saviour are in great doubt - this according to McDowell's own words: ‘Of course it must follow that if the critics can prove their case, then they have seriously undermined the credibility of Christ, the Bible, and the Christian faith’" (p. 9).

More of McDowell's blunders can be found in an article by Jeff Lowder titled 'Evidence that demands a refund.'

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

Well, let's not get sidetracked here, this is another topic...

So they are out to discredit the Bible? Yes, I agree, that is why they post these reasons, and that is why skeptics post here in this forum. Apparently they are trying to convince someone, and would an undeniable contradiction not be better than 101 disputable reasons? The Muslim I am talking with said my answers to the posted contradictions, he would accept them.

Well, I am not calling him a liar, I don't mind if Muslims believe the Bible! Or skeptics. But the reason Muslims post those 101 objections (which are parts where the Qur'an does not conflict with the Bible, let us note), is to ... discredit the Bible, which means to show that it is invalid, even where the Qur'an has no word on the subject. So I expect other Muslims might be eager for a quite clear opportunity to overturn Scripture, as would some skeptics:

Which would be fine...

Muslims want clear proof that the Bible is really God's word?

Well, no, I was speaking for myself, since the question was addressed specifically to me.

They must have been lying? But not every green plant is suitable for sheep food, I would expect.

Not all wetlands are swamps, though, and swamps are indeed places where sheep should not be: "The loss of animals due to disease by the swamp is so great that some Maasai would prefer to tough out the dry season rather than move to the swamp." (from one of Sauron's links). Really this point is quite clear, sheep don't belong in swamps.

Thank you.

Yes, I agree, I would however say that pursuing a quarry over an open field does not require much skill.

But the point is that you and they are trying to convince people that do believe the Bible, who have seen these other arguments, and have not been persuaded by them. Thus a quite clear overturning of a Biblical prophecy would convince many such people, meaning those who are reasonable.

Regards,
Lee

Johnny Skeptic

It is a matter of perspective. In your opinion Muslims are out to discredit the Bible, but in their opinions they already have discredited the Bible on numerous occasions.

In Muslims’ opinions, no opportunity to overturn Scripture is necessary since they have already done so on numerous occasions.

The Muslim said that if the Old Testament said that Babylon would not be rebuilt, he holds that to be true, so why would he want to disprove something that he holds to be true? Logically, he would want to disprove the Bible regarding the parts that he does not accept, not the parts that he accepts. The Muslim will agree with you that Abraham was the father of Ishmael. Do you suggest that he try to prove that Abraham was not the father of Ishmael in order to discredit the Bible even though he believes otherwise?

Most of all, what would be in it for Muslims if they rebuilt Babylon? If they did so, for all practical purposes the Christian Church would still be just as large as it is today. I will bet that 99 out of every 100 Christians who you ask about this will agree with me, possibly 999 out of 1,000. How about starting by asking the pastor of your church and contacting another Muslim?

Please produce the names and e-mail addresses of a good number of Christians who will give up Christianity if Babylon were to be rebuilt. I have asked you repeatedly to produce these people and you continue to refuse to do so.

Following is a summary of my past and present arguments:

1 - You have not reasonably proven that nomadic Arabs have never pitched their tents in Babylon.

2 - You have not reasonably proven that shepherds have never grazed their flocks in Babylon.

3 - Your suggestion that Muslims should try to disprove something that they believe (the Babylon prophecy) is patently absurd.

4 - Most importantly, you have not reasonably proven that a large percentage of Christians (just a few would be a nice start) would give up Christianity if Babylon were to be rebuilt. Otherwise stated, you have not reasonably proven that it would be of any benefit to Muslims if Babylon were to be rebuilt.

I’ll tell you what Lee, you get sworn statements from George Bush, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell that they will give up Christianity if Babylon were to be rebuilt and I will send you a check for $10,000.

6 - Unless Jesus returns to earth, all Bible prophecies and the Resurrection are irrelevant even if they are valid claims. Paul basically said that if Jesus did not rise from the dead nothing else matters. Paul was wrong. The Resurrection without the return of Jesus is of no consequence whatsoever. Here we are two millennia after the supposed Resurrection, and the Devil is still loose on earth and there is disease, war etc.

When Jesus died, many people predicted that he would never return to earth. They have been right for two millennia. Their prediction can be tested. Jesus can return to earth anytime he wants to in order to disprove skeptics and provide Christians with the comfortable eternal life that the New Testament promises them.