Well, I just crossed the following off of my bucket list of things to do before I depart this mortal coil:

Run a half marathon every single week for a full year!!!!

Yes, you heard that right – There was not a single weekend that went by the last 365 days where I did not run at least a half marathon. I ran a total of 53 half marathons in exactly 365 days (inclusive)!

Have you ever wondered how your communications, and general data transfer over the internet, stays secure and confidential? It is actually quite an intricate process, and involves complex mathematics, cryptographic algorithms and identity-verification infrastructure that is constantly operating in the background.

In this series of blog posts, I would like to give a high-level overview of how internet security works. I emphasize that this is only a high-level and general overview, as an in-depth dive into this is a multidisciplinary endeavor that would require hundreds of pages, at the very least (and be, in truth, outside of my competence). Given that this is a mere introduction into internet security, for the sake of readability and accessibility I have simplified some concepts and omitted others.

In the contemporary West, there is separation of church and state, a clear demarcation between the religious sphere and the secular sphere.

However, this separation of the two spheres was not always present. The Catholic Church, for example, exercised a considerable influence in matters of state for centuries in the past. The Enlightenment period in Europe—culminating in the French revolution—ultimately led to laïcité, the unfettering of religion and state in the West.

“What a mighty difference between the Prophet of Islam and his followers of the present time! He professed to make the Sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments the foundation of his claims, and his pillar of support when attacked; they spend their days in the impious attempt to subvert the authority of those very Scriptures.”¹

— William Muir, 19th century scholar of Islam

Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor of Islamic Theology at the University of Notre Dame, has a 2010 paper called “On the Qur’ānic Accusation of Scriptural Falsification (taḥrīf) and Christian Anti-Jewish Polemic.”
In this paper he argues that the Qur’an does not claim that the Christian and Jewish scriptures have been textually altered, but only misinterpreted, in a manner analogous to how the Church Fathers—particularly the Syriac Fathers—argued that the Jews misinterpreted the Old Testament.

Arthur Jeffery, professor of Semitic languages at Columbia University, was one of the most prominent Orientalists of the early 20th century. His 1926 article, “The Quest of the Historical Mohammed,”¹ highlights the problems facing scholars who wish to construct a biography of Muhammad, and traces the endeavors of previous scholars up to his time. I recommend reading it. The following are some interesting excerpts from his article.

The earliest Life of Muhammad of which we have any trace was written by Muhammad Ibn Ishāq , who died in 768 C.E. i.e., one hundred and thirty years after the death of the Prophet.² The book of Ibn Ishāq , however, has perished, and all we know of it is what is quoted from it (and these quotations are fortunately considerable) in the works of later writers, particularly Ibn Hisham and al-Tabari. This work of Ibn Ishāq , in addition to being the earliest known attempt at biography, has a further importance in that, whether because the writer was somewhat of a free thinker, or because he had not come under the influence of later idealizing tendencies, his work contains very much infor­ma­tion of a character that is distinctly unfavorable to the Prophet. To quote Dr. Margoliouth:³

Secularists generally don’t take religion seriously; and secularists just don’t think that people take religion seriously. That is one of the fundamental reasons why the secular West has been so incompetent in its fight against Islamism. Secularists, disproportionately represented in the elite sectors of Western societies, are a small minority of the world’s population who project their own feelings and sensibilities upon the rest of the world’s population.¹ This projection has resulted in wave after wave of so-called experts on Islamism who refuse to acknowledge the obvious—viz., that a primary, not to mention the primary, motivation of Islamists is their strong religious beliefs.

A new thirty-one minute-and-a-half audio recording of Abu Bakr al-Baghdādī, the self-declared Caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Shām (ISIS), was released on November 2, 2016. This is the first time that al-Baghdādī has issued an audio or video recording since May 2015, when ISIS released an audio recording of al-Baghdādī after the ISIS offensive on the city of Ramādī, Iraq. Before that, the last recording that the world witnessed of al-Baghdādī was the one that made him known to the whole world — his video-recorded sermon at the Grand Mosque of al-Nūrī in Mosul, Iraq, in early July of 2014, when he declared himself Caliph. The recent November 2 audio recording was released by Muʿassāsat al-Furqān, the media arm of ISIS. The title of the recording is as follows:

Muslim apologists, since the early days of Islam, have tried to find mention of Muhammad in the Gospels and the Torah. The motivation for this search is grounded in the following two Quranic texts:

And [remember] Jesus, son of Mary, who said: “O Children of Israel; I am the messenger of Allah to you, confirming that which was before me in the Torah and bringing good news of a messenger who will come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad.” Yet when he came to them with clear proofs, they said: “This is manifest magic.” ¹ (Q 61:6)

One frequently hears the suggestion that jihadists, like Al-Qa’ida and ISIS members, are not Muslims because they kill other Muslims. People who advance this reasoning would have us believe that killing other Muslims is sufficient for being a non-Muslim.Those who argue for this position are clearly not familiar with Islamic history, which is filled with Muslim groups killing other Muslim groups. Indeed, intra-Muslim conflict goes all the way back to what is called The First Fitna (656-661 A.D), which was precipitated by the assassination of Uthman Ibn Affan, the third “rightly guided” caliph. The First Fitna saw the likes of A’isha, the then widowed wife of Muhammad, pitted against Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin of Muhammad and, according to Ibn Ishaq, the first male convert to Islam. If anyone was a Muslim, it was surely A’isha and Ali. But it seems clear that the fact that they fought each other, e.g., in the Battle of the Camel (656 A.D), is not sufficient to render them non-Muslims.

The following is my Youtube video I recorded some seven years ago, wherein I respond, in Modern Standard Arabic, to an Egyptian Muslim da’wa guy’s video found here.

Basically, this guy, one Wisam ‘Abdallah, calls the now-reposed Chaldean Catholic Bishop, Mar Sarhad Jammo, may he rest in peace, non-consensually records him, and then proceeds to offer some terrible arguments against Christianity in a passive-aggressive manner.

I proceed to dismantle his arguments one by one. The subject matter and arguments I discuss in the video revolve around issues of New Testament Textual Criticism (e.g., the so-called Johannine Comma).

Here is postmodernist “Christian” scholar Marcus Borg being irrational in the concluding remarks of his debate with William Lane Craig. He suggests that what happened to the body of Jesus is irrelevant to Christian faith. Indeed, he claims that “to argue that the Christian faith depends on the historicity of the empty tomb is an enormous distraction.”¹ He suggests that Jesus really did bodily rise from the dead, but not literally,² and what really matters is a personal relationship with Jesus in the present. To Borg, the “past-happendness” of the “spectacular event” of the resurrection should be of passing importance for the Christian.³

I am rereading portions of Bart Ehrman’s “How Jesus became God” before Easter Sunday. Ehrman is an apostate and the most prominent contemporary scholarly critic of Christianity. In particular, I am reading the portions where he tries to undercut the resurrection. Why? I always try to read the best arguments from both sides; and I don’t exempt matters of religion; I don’t buy the idea that religion is simply a matter of faith. It is a matter of evidence plain and simple. If the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is sufficiently strong, then you should believe it; if it is not sufficiently strong, then you shouldn’t believe it. It’s really as simple as that. Many people on both sides of the debate keep being obfuscatory and keep denying this simple point–but they are wrong.

I enjoy reading Bart Ehrman’s books, as I think that they are generally well written, thought provoking, and informative. His books attacking Christianity stand in stark contrast to the garbage heap of sensationalist nonsense found in books by, e.g., Richard Carrier, Robert Price, and Reza Aslan (none of the works of these three are taken seriously by well-informed people). Bart Ehrman has, after all, spent decades studying and teaching the New Testament at research universities; and he is a world-class textual critic of the New Testament. There is no question that he knows what he is talking about. However, I believe that many of his arguments and methodologies are flawed. Take the following example.

I listened to Sam Harris’ recent interview with Bart Ehrman, which was just released today. I thought the interview was curious insofar what he was telling Harris here conflicts with what he has said in other venues.

In the section of the interview around the twenty-minute mark, Harris and Ehrman juxtapose the “modern academic dating” of the Gospels against the “fundamentalist” dating. Ehrman says that when he was a fundamentalist Christian he accepted the earlier dating of the Gospels, but that now he accepts the dating of “critical scholarship.” In particular, he says the following (around 21:45):

The following is some information that I collected on the chronology of the Qur’ān. Hopefully some of my readers will find the overview and references useful.

The version of the Qur’ān that we have now is an ʻUthmānic recension of the Qur’ān—it is the version of the Qur’ān that was standardized by the third “rightly guided” Caliph ʻUthmān ibn ʻAffān (r. 644 - 656). This ʻUthmānic recension contains 114 chapters that are generally ordered from lengthiest to shortest. They are not ordered in a chronological fashion.

On 8 June 2016, ISIS released two or three videos, rather versions of a video,¹ of its latest abominable act, the blowing up in Mosul, Iraq of the remains of the Assyrian temple of Nabu at Nimrud and of its bulldozing of the Nergal Gate at Nineveh. Here is a link to the first version. In the second version of the video a black-clad ISIS member, a certain Abu Naseer al-Ansari, is shown pointing with one hand to the huge explosions shattering the Nabu temple behind him. He does so while inveighing against those Muslims who hold these ruins of antiquity, which were built by the infidels, in high esteem and who feel so proud of these ruins as to consider them part of their history. As al-Ansari utters these denunciations, a picture of an Egyptian pyramid side by side the Sphinx is superimposed on the scene. The message is obvious: the pyramids and Sphinx would suffer the same fate and be reduced to rubble at the first opportunity.

I just thought of a simple argument against the Christian dogma of the incarnation. Here it is:

1.If it is possible that there is something that has two natures, then it is possible that there is something that has a potentially infinite number of natures.

2.But it is not possible that there is something that has a potentially infinite number of natures.

3.Therefore, it is impossible that there is something that has two natures.

It is interesting to note that traditional theism is incompatible with the Simplest Quantified Modal Logic. Personally, I do not think that this is a problem for the theist since SQML has unacceptable implications —like the idea that everything that exists must exist. In any case, here is one proof that traditional theism, which entails that (i) possibly, only God exists, is incompatible with SQML.

Take a Quantificational Modal Logical System that includes Brouwer, and allows free variables. Call such a system SQML- (since it is slightly weaker than SQML). It is a theorem of such a system that <If possibly, only one thing exists, then only one thing actually exists.>

Every year on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter), thousands of Orthodox faithful (both Eastern and Oriental Orthodox) gather at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where they participate in a so-called miraculous ritual – the Miracle of the Holy Fire. To be concise, the ritual consists of many Orthodox faithful gathering with unlit candles outside of the alleged tomb of Jesus, which is itself housed inside the church of the Holy Sepulcher (and there is decent evidence that it is the authentic place of Jesus’ burial). They wait for the Greek Orthodox Patriarch to enter the tomb with his unlit candles and come out with a supernatural flame – the Holy Fire. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem enters the tomb and makes a short prayer; it appears that sometimes some other clerics accompany him. After the short prayer it is alleged by the faithful that his candle(s) lights up miraculously. He then walks out of the tomb and hands the fire off to other people, starting with clerics. It is also alleged that the fire doesn’t burn for the initial few minutes (many in the interwebs claim around 30 minutes, or even exactly 33 minutes for the age of Christ). So we have the two following extraordinary claims here:

The Perverted Faculty argument is the central argument used by proponents of what is called (Old) Natural Law Theory (ONLT) to justify conservative sexual ethics. Typically, proponents of ONLT are Catholics (David Oderberg and Edward Feser come to mind); but this is not always the case (cf., e.g., Timothy Hsiao). The basic idea behind PFA reasoning is that our faculties have certain discernible natural ends. The end of the eye is to see, for example. The end of the reproductive faculty is to reproduce, etc. Actively frustrating these ends, so the reasoning goes, is always and everywhere immoral. Proponents of ONLT use such reasoning to rule out many sexual acts, including, but not limited to, masturbation (without finishing in coitus), homosexual acts, and contraceptive acts (including “the pullout” method). While I believe there is much to commend in the idea that the universe is chalk full of teleology, ends, and purpose – a metaphysic presupposed by ONLT – I believe that PFA reasoning in service of justifying conservative sexual ethics is quite weak. I explain some of my reasons for thinking this below.

Here is a quick modal argument I came up with for the proposition that <something exists> is a necessary truth. Basically, the answer to why there is something rather than nothing is rather straight forward: something had to exist – it’s impossible for there to have been nothing. In any case, here is the argument. I came up with it myself, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were already independently developed by someone like Alexander Pruss or Joshua Rasmussen – or some medieval theologian who anticipated modern modal logic. In Philosophy, there is not much new under the sun.

So I have been debating a Christian philosopher-friend on the metaphysical possibility of the Trinity recently, and it has helped me clarify my thoughts here. I’m thinking that the only way to remotely parry the claim that it is metaphysically impossible is by appealing to something like trope theory. I tend to think such a solution doesn’t work, but I have to think about it more. In any case, it seems like the Trinitarian is forced to appeal to trope theory, or at least forced to reify the the deity of the persons into a particular. I don’t see how a Platonist, for example, can get out of the conundrum here. I’ll explain and then welcome your thoughts on this.

On “orthodox” Trinitarianism (OT), the Trinitarianism expounded by, e.g., the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church, the second person of the Trinity, the Son, is eternally begotten of the Father. That is, the Son stands in an asymmetric dyadic relation of being eternally begotten of the Father. However, OT also teaches that each of the three persons of the Trinity, including the Son, is absolutely perfect.

I believe that this is incoherent given the truth of certain extremely plausible metaphysical propositions. The following is my argument to this effect.

How to Recover the Password for an Encrypted VeraCrypt Container

Veracrypt, the successor of Truecrypt, is a free and open-source encryption software. Think of it like Microsoft’s Bitlocker – except it is free and completely open source.[1]

In this blog post, I will briefly show you how to recover the password for a (non-system) Veracrypt container if you still remember a substantial part of it. I’ve managed to recover my own partially forgotten passwords using the methods I detail below. Essentially, we will be conducting a hybrid attack on the PBKDF2-derived key for the Veracrypt container – i.e., a hybrid between a dictionary attack and a brute-force attack. The tools that we will make use of are any Linux distribution (Debian, Red Hat, etc.), Python, and Hashcat, a powerful and open-source password cracker.[2]

It seems plausible to me that any entity that is omnipotent and omniscient has to be omnibenevolent.

Here’s my reasoning: I think every person qua person is at least mildly inclined towards that which he believes is the morally best choice (where ‘best choice’ here is defined as a choice such that there is no better). To be sure, this inclination may be very small, and it is certainly overcome in many of us by overriding inclinations, but it is nonetheless there. So any omnipotent and omniscient agent OO, qua personal agent, has to have this inclination as well. Now what are things that can cause a person’s inclination to that which one thinks is best to be overridden? It seems to me that it is either (i) ignorance, (ii) passions, (iii) coercion, or (iv) desire for personal gain. (Help me out if you think there is something else).