{"id":22316,"date":"2026-06-12T14:59:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T12:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/?page_id=22316"},"modified":"2026-06-11T10:52:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T08:52:25","slug":"verliezen-christenen-hun-bijbel","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/faq\/verliezen-christenen-hun-bijbel\/","title":{"rendered":"Has This Muslim Proven That Christians Must Abandon the Bible?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"iframe-container\"><iframe style=\"background: url('https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/images\/faq\/Has-This-Muslim-Proven-That-Christians-Must-Abandon-the-Bible.jpg') no-repeat center center \/ cover;\" id=\"lbry-iframe\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/rumble.com\/embed\/v78xtx4\/?pub=2102lq\" allowfullscreen frameBorder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n<p class=\"\"><\/p>\n\n<style> .fallback-yt { cursor: pointer; } <\/style>\n\n<button class=\"fallback-yt tooltip\" title=\"Click here to watch through a different stream\" onclick=\"document.getElementById('lbry-iframe').src='https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ORx34DBehFg'\">YouTube<\/button>\n<button class=\"fallback-yt tooltip\" title=\"Click here to watch through a different stream\" onclick=\"document.getElementById('lbry-iframe').src='https:\/\/odysee.com\/$\/embed\/@apologeet:3\/This-Muslim-Says-Christians-Lose-Either-Way...-But-Do-they-:6?r=3TTANsYXZKAPzbHVRo6ymuw5ABY957YH'\">Odysee<\/button>\n\n<p class=\"\">I believe that Genesis 1\u201311 is history, and I believe that the Earth is young. According to Dutch YouTube Muslim, Deniz, this means I have a huge problem.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">Because, according to him, I have only two options.<\/p>\n\n<ul class=\"a\">\n\n<li>Either the earth is about 6,000 years old, in which case science has long since disproved the Bible.<\/li>\n\n<li>Or the earth is billions of years old, in which case I have to adapt Genesis to science.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<p class=\"\">In other words: whichever option I choose, I lose my Bible.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">That sounds devastating.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">But in this video I\u2019m going to show that Deniz not only jumps to conclusions far too quickly, but that his argument ultimately poses a problem for Islam itself. But then, that\u2019s what you get when you rely on atheistic arguments in a debate.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Has the young Earth theory been disproved?<\/h3>\n\n<p class=\"\">Firstly, Deniz mentions fossils, geology, starlight, dinosaurs, and radiometric dating as if these subjects have definitively refuted the young Earth.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">But that is precisely what the debate is about.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">Creationists have proposed alternative explanations on all these points.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">You may or may not find those explanations convincing.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">But the existence of such explanations means that Deniz cannot simply pretend the discussion is already over.<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><b>For those interested: at the end of this video, I give a brief example of how young-earth creationists view each of these topics. You\u2019ll find the chapters in the description of this video.<\/b><\/blockquote>\n\n<h3>Is the text being adapted to science?<\/h3>\n\n<p class=\"\">Secondly, Deniz says that if you do not read Genesis literally, you are adapting the text to science. But old-earth ideas existed long before modern geology or Darwin came into being. The idea that any non-literal reading only arose to save science is historically inaccurate.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">Thirdly, his argument poses a problem for Islam itself. For Muslims, too, do not always interpret certain passages of the Quran in the most literal way. As soon as context, language and the text\u2019s intended meaning are taken into account, you are doing exactly what Deniz accuses Christians of doing.<\/p>\n\n<h3>What does Genesis seek to teach us?<\/h3>\n\n<p class=\"\">Setting aside the debate about the age of the earth, what does Genesis actually seek to teach?<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">Genesis was not written primarily to be a geology textbook. Genesis teaches that God is the Creator. That man was made in God\u2019s image. That the world was originally good. That sin entered the world through human disobedience. And that God\u2019s plan of salvation is beginning to unfold.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">Those are the main themes of the book.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Does Deniz have a point?<\/h3>\n\n<p class=\"\">No, he doesn\u2019t! Christians are not caught in the dilemma that Deniz outlines.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">He basically says:<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"cite\">If you defend a young Earth, you have to show why, in your view, the scientific arguments are not conclusive.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"cite\">If you defend an old earth, you must explain why Genesis should be read in that way.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">But in both cases, Deniz\u2019s conclusion is far too hasty.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">He presents a debate as if it has already been decided. And that is quite different from actually winning that debate.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">Deniz acts as if Christians must choose between:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote> \u201cBelieving the Bible literally\u201d or \u201cfollowing science.\u201d<\/blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"\">But many Muslims nowadays also accept an old Earth dating back billions of years.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">The question you might then ask is:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote> &quot;Where does the Qur\u2019an explicitly teach that the Earth is billions of years old?&quot;<\/blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"\">If Deniz were to say that science teaches him this, he would be using exactly the same external source that he accuses Christians of using.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Another interesting question for Deniz<\/h3>\n\n<p class=\"\">If Deniz claims that a holy book is wrong when the most obvious interpretation does not correspond with modern science, then he must apply the same standard to Islam as well.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">For within Islam there are also discussions about:<\/p>\n\n<ul class=\"a\">\n\n<li>the six days of creation,  <\/li>\n\n<li>Adam as the first historical human,  <\/li>\n\n<li>evolution,\n\n<\/li>\n\n<li>the age of the Earth,  <\/li>\n\n<li>cosmological texts in the Qur\u2019an.  <\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<p class=\"\">This makes his dilemma less compelling than it appears at first glance.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Conclusion<\/h3>\n\n<p class=\"\">Deniz says that Christians must choose.<\/p>\n\n<ul class=\"a\">\n\n<li>Either you believe the Bible and reject science.<\/li>\n\n<li>Or you accept science and have to adapt Genesis.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<p class=\"\">But that is a false dilemma.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">For he has not proven that fossils, geology, starlight or radiometric dating make a young Earth impossible. He has merely shown that he finds a particular interpretation of that data convincing.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">And more importantly: the same standard he applies to the Bible, he must also apply to Islam.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">For where does the Qur\u2019an explicitly teach that the Earth is billions of years old? And if a Muslim says that science has conclusively proven that the Earth is old, how then should Adam be interpreted according to Islam?<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">So, dear Deniz. Do you believe that Adam was the first human being created directly by Allah from dust? If so, how does that relate to the accepted evolutionary history of humankind? And if not, on what basis do you determine that the text of the Quran must be read differently?<\/p>\n\n<h3>What is being put to the test here?<\/h3>\n\n<p class=\"\">Ultimately, it is not the Bible that is being put to the test.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">No, ultimately it is Deniz\u2019s argument that is being put to the test.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">Because a dilemma only works if there really are only two options.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">And Deniz has not demonstrated that at all.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">He has not proven that Christians are losing their Bible.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">He has merely <i>claimed<\/i> that they are losing him.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"\">And there\u2019s a world of difference between claiming and proving.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Bonus<\/h3>\n\n<p class=\"\">For those still watching: how do young-earth creationists actually view fossils, geology, starlight and radiometric dating?<\/p>\n\n<ol class=\"a\">\n\n<li style=\"font-weight: bold;font-size: 110%;\">Fossils prove that organisms have been buried and turned to stone. The debate is about how that happened.<\/li>\n\n<ul>\n\n<li>A fossil is not usually formed because an animal simply lies quietly on the ground. Normally, a dead animal is eaten, rots away or disappears. Fossilisation often requires rapid burial.<\/li>\n\n<li>From a young-earth perspective, it is therefore argued that the vast fossil beds, mass graves of animals and fossils that cut across multiple geological strata are better explained by large-scale catastrophic processes than by exclusively slow processes over millions of years.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<li style=\"font-weight: bold;font-size: 110%;\">Geological strata prove that layers have been formed. The debate centres on the speed and cause of that formation.<\/li>\n\n<ul>\n\n<li>Deniz assumes that many layers can only form slowly. But we see today that volcanic eruptions, landslides, tsunamis and floods can deposit thick layers of sediment in a very short time.<\/li>\n\n<li>The young-earth argument is therefore not that geological layers do not exist, but that large parts of the geological record may be the result of catastrophic events, including the global Flood described in Genesis.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<li style=\"font-weight: bold;font-size: 110%;\">Starlight proves that stars are far away. The debate centres on how light reaches us within a young universe.<\/li>\n\n<ul>\n\n<li>Young-Earth creationists have proposed various explanatory models for this. Jason Lisle points to the ASC model, which centres on our understanding of the one-way speed of light. Barry Setterfield has suggested that the speed of light may have been higher in the past. Russell Humphreys has developed models in which relativistic effects and the structure of the universe play a role. You may or may not find these models convincing, but the existence of distant stars does not in itself refute a young universe. The real debate is not about the observation, but about the explanation of that observation.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<li style=\"font-weight: bold;font-size: 110%;\">Radiometric dating yields old ages based on certain assumptions. The debate centres on those assumptions and how reliable they are.<\/li>\n\n<ul>\n\n<li>A simple example is a glass of water under a dripping tap.<\/li>\n\n<li>Suppose there is now 10 centimetres of water in the glass and the tap drips one drop per second. Then you can work out how long it took to fill that glass.<\/li>\n\n<li>But only if you know three things:<\/li>\n\n<ol class=\"a\"  style=\"font-weight: bold;\">\n\n<li>How much water was already in it when you started?  <\/li>\n\n<li>Has the drip rate always been the same?  <\/li>\n\n<li>Did any water disappear from the glass along the way?  <\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n<li>Radiometric dating works in a similar way. The method is based on assumptions about the initial quantity of certain isotopes, constant decay rates and closed systems.<\/li>\n\n<li>The debate between young-earth creationists and old-earth geologists is therefore not about whether radioactive decay exists, but about whether the assumptions used are always justified.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<li style=\"font-weight: bold;font-size: 110%;\">How do young-earth creationists view dinosaurs?<\/li>\n\n<ul>\n\n<li>Young-Earth creationists do not believe that dinosaurs lived millions of years before humans. They assume that dinosaurs and humans lived on Earth at the same time for a certain period.<\/li>\n\n<li>Three arguments are usually put forward to support this.<\/li>\n\n<ol class=\"a\">\n\n<li><b>Firstly: dragon stories.<\/b><\/li>\n\n<ul>\n\n<li>Virtually every ancient civilisation has stories about large reptilian monsters or dragons. Think of Europe, China, the Middle East and even America. Creationists wonder why such similar stories occur worldwide. According to them, these stories could contain memories of encounters between humans and large reptiles that we now call dinosaurs.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<li><b>Secondly: Behemoth and Leviathan in the Book of Job.<\/b><\/li>\n\n<ul>\n\n<li>In Job 40 and 41, two impressive animals are described. Behemoth, in particular, is described as an enormous land animal with a tail that moves like a cedar tree. Some creationists believe that this description fits a large reptilian animal better than a hippopotamus or elephant, as is often suggested.<\/p>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<li><b>Thirdly: soft tissue in dinosaur fossils.<\/b><\/li>\n\n<ul>\n\n<li>Remains of soft tissue, blood vessel structures and other organic materials have been found in various dinosaur bones. Creationists ask how such materials could have survived for tens of millions of years. In their view, this is more consistent with the fossils being much younger.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n<li>Does this mean that these arguments prove the earth is young?<\/li>\n\n<li>No. But they do show that the issue of dinosaurs is not as simple as is sometimes suggested. The question is not merely whether dinosaurs existed. The question is when they lived, how old their fossils really are, and how their history relates to that of humans.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n<h3>Finally<\/h3>\n\n<p class=\"\">I fully understand that Deniz is doing his best to discredit Christianity. And as we have seen, he even uses the well-known atheist arguments. He would do better to rely a little less on ChatGPT and read the Bible itself a little more, or at least look at what Christians have said over the centuries about all the arguments against Christianity.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A response to Deniz&#8217;s (muslim) argument about Genesis, the young earth, science, Adam, evolution, and the reliability of the Bible.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22327,"parent":1086,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[225,308],"tags":[264,314,270,234,229,250],"folder":[98],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22316"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22355,"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22316\/revisions\/22355"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22316"},{"taxonomy":"folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apologeet.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/folder?post=22316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}