Deen Responds Fails the Challenge

Guys, I’m living in Deen’s head. The rent is free, but the view is terrible. Here’s his video response to me on the question no Muslim can answer.

Here’s my original video for context:

And finally, here’s another similar version of the argument:

First, Deen Responds says I’ve “refuted myself” by using an argument from silence against Islam but not applying it consistently to the way I defend the New Testament. But let’s get this straight—not all arguments from silence are created equal. I’ve never claimed all arguments from silence are fallacious. See Dr. Tim McGrew’s 2013 peer-reviewed paper on the argument from silence. (Link) That’s what I reference when I discuss this topic.

A weak argument from silence assumes something didn’t happen just because there’s no evidence, even when there’s no reason to expect evidence. Take skeptics claiming the Massacre of the Innocents didn’t happen because only Matthew mentions it. Bethlehem was a tiny village, and the event involved a handful of kids. Of course, it didn’t make Roman headlines—it’s exactly the kind of thing we wouldn’t expect to see widely recorded.

Or the tired claim that Paul doesn’t mention the virgin birth, so he must not have believed it. But Paul’s letters are occasional, dealing with specific issues in specific churches. By that logic, Paul didn’t believe Jesus healed the sick or cast out demons either, since he didn’t mention those. Just because it’s not in his letters doesn’t mean he didn’t believe it—that’s not what the letters were for. These are examples I’ve addressed in my videos, but Deen quote-mined those videos to misrepresent me.

Yes, our intuitions about what we’d expect in historical records can be unreliable. Take Pliny the Younger: in two long letters to Tacitus, he describes the eruption of Mount Vesuvius but never mentions the destruction of Pompeii or Herculaneum. Should we assume those towns weren’t buried because he didn’t mention them? Of course not. Pliny might have thought it wasn’t relevant, written about it elsewhere in writings now lost, or had reasons we can’t guess. Silence doesn’t always equal absence—it depends on the context and expectations.

But here’s the deal: there’s also such a thing as a strong argument from silence, where the absence of evidence screams that something’s wrong. It’s like saying, “There’s no spider in this room because I don’t see one” versus “There’s no elephant in this room because I don’t see one.” You might miss the spider—it’s small and good at hiding. But if there’s no elephant, you know it’s not there.

And that’s the HUGE problem with the Quran’s claims about Jesus’ followers.

In Surah 3:55 and 61:14, the Quran promises that Jesus’ true followers would be dominant and superior until the Day of Resurrection. If that’s true, history should at least give us some evidence of this dominant group between 40 AD and 600 AD. Instead, we find the opposite: the dominant group was Christians who proclaimed Jesus’ divinity and crucifixion—beliefs Islam explicitly denies. The absence of these supposed “true followers” isn’t just silence—it’s an elephant-sized problem.

We have records of all kinds of groups—Gnostics like the Valentinians and Marcionites, Jewish sects like the Essenes and Zealots, Christian heresies like the Arians, Sabellians and Donatists, and even pagan cults like Mithraism and the Isis cult. But on the supposed true Islamic followers of Jesus? Crickets. That doesn’t add up.

I know math is hard, but to put this in Bayesian terms, the strength of the argument from silence is determined by the ratio P(~E|~H)/P(~E|H). We’d strongly expect evidence if the Quran’s claim were true (making P(~E|H) low) and wouldn’t expect evidence if the claim were false (making P(~E|~H) high). Since the ratio becomes large, the argument from silence here is very strong.

Now let’s talk about the Ebionites—Deen’s supposed answer to this. Are they the true followers of Allah? I say no, mostly because they rejected the virgin birth. Deen counters, “But wait, some did!” First off, I never said they were monolithic—I know they had diverse beliefs. I’m not hiding that. Claiming otherwise is a strawman. But here’s the problem: their diversity actually makes things worse, not better. Most Ebionites rejected the virgin birth, though yes, Eusebius notes that a few accepted it (Ecclesiastical History 3.27). That’s not some gotcha moment, and it doesn’t help the case for them being the Quran’s “true followers.”

Some believed Jesus was merely human, while “Christ” was a spiritual being who descended upon Him temporarily (Epiphanius (The Panarion Anacephaleosis 20.3.3.3). Others, according to Irenaeus (Against Heresies 1.26.1-2) even thought they could become “Christs” themselves.

So, we’re dealing with a scattered group that couldn’t agree on basic doctrines (other than “Jesus not God and Paul bad!”) and held some strange, very non-proto-Muslim-sounding beliefs. The idea that such a fragmented and theologically divergent sect could represent the Quran’s “true followers of Jesus” is a massive stretch.

And again, let’s not forget the Quran’s promise: Jesus’ true followers were supposed to be dominant and superior. Dominant? Superior? The Ebionites were anything but. They were a tiny, irrelevant sect with no historical influence, no lasting impact, and zero connection to the Quran’s claim of “dominance. Trying to use the Ebionites as the Quran’s “true followers” is like Mormons clinging to scraps of evidence that Israelites sailed to the Americas—except this is probably worse. The Ebionites are a theological Rorschach test: we know so little about them for certain that projecting them as your “answer” to the challenge comes off as pure desperation.

And it gets even more awkward. By what little accounts we do have, the Ebionites believed Jesus was crucified—a belief the Quran flatly denies. And here’s the wild part: you’re okay with Jesus’ followers being completely mistaken about the crucifixion because you can find some Muslim commentators claim that’s fine (apparently Allah is okay with His followers believing something He would later have to go out of His way to strongly correct—an event that became central to what Islam considers blasphemous worship). But suddenly, the virgin birth is seemingly treated as the non-negotiable line in the sand? Why? Because that’s the only way to force the Ebionites into a half-decent fit for the Quran’s “true followers.” It’s arbitrary and exposes just how weak this argument really is. What am I missing here?

Now flip the script. Imagine if I claimed the Orthodox Christian position was what Jesus really taught, but all I had to back it up was hundreds of years of silence and a fringe group described by outsiders that was divided and didn’t align with orthodoxy. You’d laugh at me—and rightly so. Yet when you do it, I’m the clown? That’s some serious projecting. On the contrary, we have the Gospels and Acts. We have the New Testament epistles. And we have all the writings of the early fathers. All the evidence is on our side, and none of it is on yours, Deen.

The truth is, the Ebionites fail on every level. They weren’t unified, they weren’t dominant, and their beliefs don’t align with the Quran’s claims. Trying to make them fit isn’t just grasping at straws—it’s clutching at air.

And then there’s the core problem: Deen fails to understand the difference between a weak argument from silence and a strong one. He acts as if I think all arguments from silence are created equal. But the Quran sets up clear expectations for a group of dominant Jesus followers who teach the “One True Message,” but there’s zero historical basis for such a group. The absence of evidence isn’t just silence—it’s an elephant-sized problem that completely undermines the Quran’s claim.