Debate with Muslims: Proof, not mere evidence

Recently I've been dialoguing with some Muslim aquaintances of mine about all manner of issue. One of those debates can be found here: The great challenge to produce one chapter like the chapters of the Holy Quran

We've run into a problem here, one which may shed some light on what our debate is really about to anyone else who may be reading this.

Mohammed wrote a number of things about Jesus and the Bible that conflict with what the Bible itself. As a basic tenent of your faith, you must necessarily argue that the Bible is in error. If you are to hold to your faith, it is paramount that you discredit the Bible and assert that the authors of its book misquote Jesus, and so on. If not, Mohammed is wrong and your whole religion crumbles. Would you agree?

Christianity does not need to prove that there has been errors in transmision of the Quran. It can be exactly reproduced from what Mohammed wrote for all we care. All we need to do is show the proof or necessity of Jesus Christ being fully divine and fully human, and that by default makes Mohammed in error. Not that the text was copied inaccurately, but that when he wrote it he was himself wrong.

Thus, Muslims mount evidence, and loads of it, against the Bible. Christians then supply answers for why this evidence is inconclusive, distorted, or plain wrong. And on we go, endlessly. But there is a difference between evidence and proof. Your arguments rely upon a weight of evidence with which you hope to smother the opposition. Christians do the same against evolution, showing by weight of evidence how it is wrong. Proof is different. Proof requires rational arguments that necessarily lead to a conclusion if the premises are correct. In the case of evolution, we can rationally prove that pure chance can't creat anything, and that the world cannot be eternally old and self-existent, otherwise the laws of thermodynamics prove that the universe would have died a cold death. Such arguments don't rely upon a weight of evidence, but upon proof. Proof doesn't need evidence that can be debated back and forth. Proof only needs basic presuppositions we can agree upon, and a line of reasoning that conforms to the rules of logic. The conclusion is then a necessity, whether we like that conclusion or not.

Christianity has survived 2000 years against endless attempt to smother with evidence. The Liberals who hate God, yet want to keep the morality of the Bible, also mount such attacks on the Bible. So do Atheists and Agnostics. It is likely where many of your evidences comes from, such as the late dates of the Gospels, or the JDEP source theory for the Pentateuch. I can show that the Gospels must have had an early date, and Mosaic authorship, but what is the point? A basic tenent on your faith requires you to deny the inerrancy of Scripture, and no weight of evidence will change that, no matter how convincing. You can just say we are wrong.

So what I'm saying is, we are at a dead lock when it comes to "mounting evidence" against each other. I know that no weight of evidence, however true it may be, can convince you that the Quran is wrong. Nor can your weight of evidence convince me the Bible is wrong, because it is only evidence, not proof. I've studied the evidence agaisnt the Bible. I find it faulty, historically ill-supported, and very conjectural.

You need to give me proof that God cannot be Trinity. I need to provide you with proof (logical necessity) that God must be Trinity, and that for God to let anyone into Heaven their sins must be paid for by a worthy sacrifice, Jesus Christ. Everything hinges on that, and everything falls into place if that is true.

Here is the question I pose for us to debate: How can God be both just, and the justifier of men?

Will you grant that God is just? Second, will you grant that all men have a conscience given them by God? Third, will you grant that God gave Moses the Ten Commandments? I think those three would be a good starting place.