Monday, October 6, 2014

Fly your flags high


Proposed (but never officially adopted) logo for the now defunct Atheist Discussion Group, a Boston-area enterprise active from 1998 on. The Latin above means "Christians for the flavor's sake."

A charming limerick from the young Saki (H.H. Munro, 1870-1916):
There was a young lady O'Brien,
Who sang Sunday hymns to a lion.
Of that lady there's some
In the lion's tum-tum,
And the rest is an angel in Zion.

Friday, October 3, 2014

Skeptical of the Bible? Have I got a book for you.

If I told you of a book that included the following topics, would you be interested?

  • "Contradictions and Errors in the Biblical Text"
  • "Distortion and Abrogation in the Bible:
  • "Refutation of Misleading Protestant Statements Regarding the Authenticity of the Bible"

You are interested, aren't you, you skeptics and revelation-scoffers. Well, let me not tantalize you cruelly. The book exists! In fact, it's a foundational text in the world of Muslim apologetics.

The six-volume Izhar ul-Haqq, Rahmatullah Kairanawi's magnum opus, was written (in Arabic, naturally) in 1864. Christine Schirrmacher describes the work thusly:
'The Demonstration of the Truth' (izhâr al-haqq) served as a summary of all possible charges against Christianity and was therefore used after al-Kairânawî's death as a sort of encyclopaedia since al-Kairânawî extended the material of former polemicists like 'Ali Tabarî, Ibn Hazm or Ibn Taymiyya to a great extent.
Check it out in English translation here. Don't be surprised if you have to pick around some bits that defend the existence of the Islamic god, even as you enjoy the take-down of the Christian one.