Appeal: false claim

From Plagues, Popes & Pandemonium! OPEN DEBATE! Geopolitics, Conspiracy, Theology, Film! 2026-10-05 17:50.

• #22672:33:41upheld S5 claim: false claim (+1)
  The council upheld the finding, but nothing on this stream goes on anyone’s record.
  The claim, as Thucydides noted it: The Quran contains sections, sentences, and entire chapters copied and pasted from the Bible text that we possess today.
  Diogenes: Thucydides (verifier): unsupported; the source does not bear what is drawn from it. The Quran retells biblical figures and stories in its own wording, and it has a few close echoes: Q 21:105 resembles Ps 37:29, and Q 7:40 resembles the camel and the needle's eye. No scholar I know of finds "entire chapters" copied from the Bible text we have, and "copy and paste" overstates even the closest parallels. Quranic dependence on earlier scriptural tradition is a live scholarly view, but it is not wholesale verbatim copying. The inference that the Quran therefore "cannot declare them corrupted" does not follow from the claim, and it ignores that the Quran itself charges earlier communities with altering scripture (e.g., Q 2:75, 4:46).
  • Aristotle uphold: On the record: Jay Dyer (S5 is his voice in the transcript) opened as host of an open forum with a presuppositionalist Orthodox stance against rival systems, and has held it; the called line is a flat factual claim about the Quran that fits that stance and does not depart from it. The claim that the Quran has "entire chapters" copied and pasted from the Bible is an overstatement. The Quran retells biblical material in its own wording and has only a few close echoes. Nothing was offered for the claim, and no one corrected it, so Thucydides' finding holds.
  • Socrates overturn: Read blind, found "bare assertion". Jay (S5 continues his turn) answers the caller's Muslim-position challenge by saying the Quran has "entire chapters copied and pasted" from our Bible text. He offers no passage or source, and the claim is false as stated. The Quran does not reproduce whole chapters of the Bible. He then relies on it to dismiss the caller's question about Arabian texts. The caller is a present opponent, so the exchange is on the floor, and the claim is contested because the caller is steelmanning the Muslim view.
  • Plato uphold: On the record: Jay Dyer opened as host of an open forum and declared Eastern Orthodoxy with a presuppositionalist method. He has held a running polemic against rival religions and a habit of offhand factual claims. The called line, on Quranic copying of the Bible, is more of that polemic and was never retracted. The claim that the Quran has entire chapters copied and pasted from the Bible text we have is an overstatement. The Quran retells biblical material in its own wording and has only a few close echoes. Nobody on the floor objected, and the speaker did not correct it, so the verifier's finding holds.

  The bench voted on this, and its verdict is kept as it was given. It does not vote on the calls of a call-in show now, and nothing there counts on anybody’s record.

  Judged on 2026-10-05 under rules 3fcdc91a53f9, since revisedAppeal this callout

Appeal this callout

Appeals come only from the debaters themselves. Sign in with Google to start; you'll then prove which debater you are, once.