The Bible

[Mighty AC]

Sorry AC...but I can go where the evidence(s) lead. I'm not talking about "some Christians." I can't speak for them. There are no errors in the Bible.

Evidence didn't lead your to Christianity. At one point you were told that it is the truth, believed it and are now bound by the ultimate presupposition: There are no errors in the Bible. This unbending belief does not allow you to go where the evidence(s) lead. It forces you to make irrational defenses claiming mistranslation, transcription error, allegory, etc.

Moving with the evidence would lead one to believe the Genesis flood story is a fictional tale. Being bound by the ultimate presupposition, the religious are forced to dance through hoops of mistranslation and exaggeration to spin a dumbed down, local flood tale that is still impossible.

Christians like William Lane Craig state that it is not necessary to believe in Biblical innerancy; so, why do you have to believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God? Is it a personal choice, a requirement of your church, just the way you grew up?

[GostHacked]

The bible has blatant contradictions. Which of the contradictions is right if there are no errors in the bible?

[bleeding heart]

Christians like William Lane Craig state that it is not necessary to believe in Biblical innerancy;

Hell, yes, absolutely.

My father's a Christian...and he doesn't even believe in the (literal) Divinity of Christ!

For him, it's about metaphor, philosophy, and sharing worship with a community. Christ as the symbol of humanity's striving for moral perfection.

I don't share his religious faith, but I certainly have no issues with it.

Edited November 20, 2012 by bleeding heart

[betsy]

But the problem is anyone can use that argument because the description in those books can be so vague that could mean anything. Even the Torah, Koran, Scientology book and the Prose Edda could be supported with that argument

The Jews' Old Testament is the same as the Christians', I think. I don't know the Koran - there might be some similarities with our Old Testament as well.

Aside from those two....cite an ancient book similar to the Bible - and I mean, ancient - that made some claims which have been supported by modern science.

Most of the facts given in this topic are not so vague after all, after modern science made the discoveries. Two or three could be said to be "flukes"....but this many, plus counting? You are disregarding some irrefutable points - or you fail to recognize them.

Unbiased thinking minds will at least take pause to consider the possibilities.

[betsy]

Evidence didn't lead your to Christianity. At one point you were told that it is the truth, believed it and are now bound by the ultimate presupposition: There are no errors in the Bible. This unbending belief does not allow you to go where the evidence(s) lead. It forces you to make irrational defenses claiming mistranslation, transcription error, allegory, etc.

Moving with the evidence would lead one to believe the Genesis flood story is a fictional tale. Being bound by the ultimate presupposition, the religious are forced to dance through hoops of mistranslation and exaggeration to spin a dumbed down, local flood tale that is still impossible.

We've done the Genesis Flood already. Scroll back. I've said it could be an allegory. There's a dispute about it. It could also be a local flood.

Do you notice how it's not listed as a fact in this thread? Who knows....perhaps 20 years from now we'll finally know for sure.

Christians like William Lane Craig state that it is not necessary to believe in Biblical innerancy; so, why do you have to believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God? Is it a personal choice, a requirement of your church, just the way you grew up?

I don't think you actually understand most of what you're saying, AC - sorry to say that, but it's true.

CITE where you pulled that claim about William Lane Craig. I bet you didn't understand what he's actually saying.

[betsy]

Just for the record about William Lane Craig's position on Bible innerancy.

Taken from his own website, the Question and Answer section, here is an excerpt of his explanation to the question.

Your question is one that every Bible-believing Christian familiar with modern biblical criticism has had to wrestle with. There’s much to be said here, so let me hit a few main points.

To begin with, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, as I learned it and, I think, as most of its adherents today would defend it, is not arrived at inductively, but deductively.

When confronted with biblical difficulties, the inerrantist will attempt to show that alleged mistakes are not really mistakes after all and to provide plausible harmonizations of apparent inconsistencies. Where this cannot be done, he will honestly admit that he doesn’t know the solution to the difficulty but nonetheless insist that he has overriding reasons to think that the text is accurate and that were all the facts to be known the alleged difficulty would disappear. Such an approach has served the inerrantist well: example after example could be given of supposed biblical errors identified by previous generations which have now been resolved in light of more recent discoveries. One of my favorite examples is Sargon II, an Assyrian king mentioned in Isaiah 20.1. Earlier critics claimed that the reference to Sargon was an error because there was absolutely no evidence that an Assyrian king named Sargon II ever even existed—until, that is, archaeologists digging in the region of Khorsabad unearthed the palace of one Sargon II! We now have more information about Sargon than about any other ancient Assyrian king.

Such a conclusion is unnecessary for two reasons. First, we may need instead to revise our understanding of what constitutes an error. Nobody thinks that when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds (Mark 4.31) this is an error, even though there are smaller seeds than mustard seeds. Why? Because Jesus is not teaching botany; he is trying to teach a lesson about the Kingdom of God, and the illustration is incidental to this lesson. Defenders of inerrancy claim that the Bible is authoritative and inerrant in all that it teaches or all that it means to affirm. This raises the huge question as to what the authors of Scripture intend to affirm or teach. Questions of genre will have a significant bearing on our answer to that question. Poetry obviously is not intended to be taken literally, for example. But then what about the Gospels? What is their genre? Scholars have come to see that the genre to which the Gospels most closely conform is ancient biography. This is important for our question because ancient biography does not have the intention of providing a chronological account of the hero’s life from the cradle to the grave. Rather ancient biography relates anecdotes that serve to illustrate the hero’s character qualities. What one might consider an error in a modern biography need not at all count as an error in an ancient biography. To illustrate, at one time in my Christian life I believed that Jesus actually cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem twice, once near the beginning of his ministry as John relates, and once near the end of his life, as we read in the Synoptic Gospels. But an understanding of the Gospels as ancient biographies relieves us of such a supposition, for an ancient biographer can relate incidents in a non-chronological way. Only an unsympathetic (and uncomprehending) reader would take John’s moving the Temple cleansing to earlier in Jesus’ life as an error on John’s part.

Probably the closest example to this in our non-oral, Western culture is the telling of a joke. It’s important that you get the structure and punch line right, but the rest is incidental. For example, many years ago I heard the following joke:

“What did the Calvinist say when he fell down the elevator shaft?”

“I don’t know.”

“He got up, dusted himself off, and said, ‘Whew! I’m glad that’s over!’”

Now just recently someone else told me what was clearly the same joke. Only she told it as follows:

“Do you know what the Calvinist said when he fell down the stairs?”

“No.”

“‘Whew! I’m glad that’s over!’”

Notice the differences in the telling of this joke; but observe how the central idea and especially the punch line are the same. Well, when you compare many of the stories told about Jesus in the Gospels and identify the words they have in common, you find a pattern like this. There is variation in the secondary details, but very often the central saying is almost verbatim the same.

So if we are confronted with what appears to be an error in Scripture, we should first ask whether we’re not imposing on Scripture a standard of inerrancy which is foreign to the genre of the writing and the intent of its author. I remember Dr. Kantzer once remarking that many of his constituents would be shocked if they knew what he was willing to allow in Scripture and not call it an error. He understood that we must put ourselves within the horizon of the original authors before we ask if they have erred.

More...

http://www.reasonabl...iblical-errancy

I believe the Bible has no errors.

Edited November 21, 2012 by betsy

[betsy]

Let me just emphasize this example - one of many - how science is coming into agreement with the Bible!

One of my favorite examples is Sargon II, an Assyrian king mentioned in Isaiah 20.1. Earlier critics claimed that the reference to Sargon was an error because there was absolutely no evidence that an Assyrian king named Sargon II ever even existed—until, that is, archaeologists digging in the region of Khorsabad unearthed the palace of one Sargon II! We now have more information about Sargon than about any other ancient Assyrian king.

Read more: http://www.reasonabl...y#ixzz2CrHiFlsJ

Edited November 21, 2012 by betsy

[Sleipnir]

Just for the record about William Lane Craig's position on Bible innerancy.

Before I read that long quote, what is so special about William Craig? Sounds like some random dude from the internet.

[Mighty AC]

Also from the Craig passage:

Ehrman had, it seems to me, a flawed theological system of beliefs as a Christian. It seems that at the center of his web of theological beliefs was biblical inerrancy, and everything else, like the beliefs in the deity of Christ and in his resurrection, depended on that. Once the center was gone, the whole web soon collapsed. But when you think about it, such a structure is deeply flawed. At the center of our web of beliefs ought to be some core belief like the belief that God exists, with the deity and resurrection of Christ somewhere near the center. The doctrine of inspiration of Scripture will be somewhere further out and inerrancy even farther toward the periphery as a corollary of inspiration. If inerrancy goes, the web will feel the reverberations of that loss, as we adjust our doctrine of inspiration accordingly, but the web will not collapse because belief in God and Christ and his resurrection and so on don’t depend upon the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.[/Quote]

[Mighty AC]

We've done the Genesis Flood already. Scroll back. I've said it could be an allegory. There's a dispute about it. It could also be a local flood.

Do you notice how it's not listed as a fact in this thread? Who knows....perhaps 20 years from now we'll finally know for sure.

Who decides what is allegorical and what is real? If the impossible flood story is a fictional tale designed to convey a message, why must you adhere to the inerrancy of other passages?

For instance, why must you believe that a creator seeded the earth with all of the "kinds" of animals? Creationists already accept evolution, but with the added notion of shifting invisible god barriers that place limits on the extent an organism can evolve.

Support for this notion hinges on the vaguery of the Hebrew term "miyn" which means kind. Creationists like to pretend that the term refers to broad classes of organisms similar to the modern taxonomic terms Family or Genus. However, the Bible also uses the term to refer to very specific species. In one instance every animal with a name is a "kind". In another any animals that cannot interbreed are "kinds".

This exploration of the Biblical use of the term "kind":

The Hebrew word for "kind" in the Bible can be very specific. Although "miyn" (Strong's Concordance H4327) may sometimes refer to a broad class of animals, it certainly also refers to animals at nearly the species level of classification. There is no Biblical support for the assertion that genetic information cannot be gained, nor for any "change barrier" that restricts how far a "kind" may evolve.[/Quote]

Since we have actually observed populations of organisms evolve to the point that they can no longer interbreed it seems that it is time for creationists to drop the invisible barrier caveat from their version of evolution. This is a good thing for your thread though, as then the Bible and science will have even more in common.

[betsy]

Also from the Craig passage:

And? Explain what you're trying to point out, please.

[betsy]

Who decides what is allegorical and what is real? If the impossible flood story is a fictional tale designed to convey a message, why must you adhere to the inerrancy of other passages?

EH????

Who decides what's allegorical or real????

Are you serious????

You don't know????

arrrrggghhhhh!!!!!

[Sleipnir]

I believe the Bible has no errors.

Are you talking about accuracy or the spelling content?

[betsy]

Who decides what is allegorical and what is real? If the impossible flood story is a fictional tale designed to convey a message, why must you adhere to the inerrancy of other passages?

Let me illustrate it this way:

Here are two verses from the Bible:

Amos 9:6

6 he builds his lofty palace[a] in the heavens

and sets its foundation on the earth;

he calls for the waters of the sea

and pours them out over the face of the land—

the LORD is his name.

Job 36:27-28

27 “He draws up the drops of water,

which distill as rain to the streams[c];

28 the clouds pour down their moisture

and abundant showers fall on mankind.

--------------------------

Without understanding what they mean - those two could just be allegories or simply just some poetry of praise.

Who or what do you think, finally, revealed what those verses described????

Do you know what those verses are describing??? What's the answer?

Edited November 21, 2012 by betsy

[Sleipnir]

Aside from those two....cite an ancient book similar to the Bible - and I mean, ancient - that made some claims which have been supported by modern science.

Prose Edda is an ancient book...about 90,000 pages so give me some time to go through it.

[Mighty AC]

EH????

Who decides what's allegorical or real????

Are you serious????

You don't know????

arrrrggghhhhh!!!!!

No I don't know how one decides that one passage is fiction and another is non-fiction. Is it a personal choice? Do specific sects have rules about what must be taken seriously? Please explain.

[Sleipnir]

No I don't know how one decides that one passage is fiction and another is non-fiction. Is it a personal choice? Do specific sects have rules about what must be taken seriously? Please explain.

Easy there Mighty, you're frustrating betsy

[betsy]

Before I read that long quote, what is so special about William Craig? Sounds like some random dude from the internet.

William Lane Craig is a former atheist Philosopher who converted to Christianity and is now one of the best Christian Apologists.

He debated with famous atheists that include harris and the late Hitchens. Last year, the big news was Dawkin's repeated refusal to face off with Craig, on-on-one, in a debate. Despite pressures from a lot of people - including some fellow-atheists - Dawkins refused to debate with Craig. Hitchens quipped that Craig had put the fear of God into his colleagues. Dawkins was called a coward.

His mocks of Christianity and God doesn't have the sting it used to - coming from a coward, who cannot even argue about his position. He's now like a caricature when he opens his mouth about God.

Here's one. There's hundreds of them from different sources (media/atheists/blogs) - just google them.

Critics call Richard Dawkins "a coward."

Edited November 21, 2012 by betsy

[betsy]

No I don't know how one decides that one passage is fiction and another is non-fiction. Is it a personal choice? Do specific sects have rules about what must be taken seriously? Please explain.

Check out the illustration. Maybe you'll know who/what decides. If you can't answer, just tell me and I'll give it.

[betsy]

Prose Edda is an ancient book...about 90,000 pages so give me some time to go through it.

Just trying to save you the effort. Is that the one from the 13th century????

If so, sorry....that's not ancient enough. We're talking waaaaay before the 1st century.

Edited November 21, 2012 by betsy

[eyeball]

Evidence didn't lead your to Christianity. At one point you were told that it is the truth, believed it and are now bound by the ultimate presupposition: There are no errors in the Bible. This unbending belief does not allow you to go where the evidence(s) lead. It forces you to make irrational defenses claiming mistranslation, transcription error, allegory, etc.

When someone is in this deep it's more accurate to say their belief has them instead of the other way around.

[Mighty AC]

You already accept evolution. You just add the caveat of invisible god barriers that limit the extent to which an organism can change. That caveat is not supported by the Bible and thus you may be free to embrace another scientific fact. Bringing your belief system even more in line with current scientific knowledge.

Your need for the invisible barrier caveat seems to stem from the idea that your god seeded the planet with adults of the precursors to all of the species we have now. However, since other passages in Genesis, like the flood story, can be classed as allegories or exaggerations, why can't you do the same for the adult animal tale? Why not just claim that when your god said stuff like this:

Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

...

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.[/Quote]

What he really did was ensure that volcanic eruptions and other natural processes created the necessary chemical compounds which combined under the right conditions to form all of the life forms described in Genesis?

[betsy]

Mighty AC,

I'd like us to concentrate on your question as to who decides what's allegorical or fiction or non-fiction. Do you know the answer now?

[betsy]

You already accept evolution. You just add the caveat of invisible god barriers that limit the extent to which an organism can change. That caveat is not supported by the Bible and thus you may be free to embrace another scientific fact. Bringing your belief system even more in line with current scientific knowledge.

Your need for the invisible barrier caveat seems to stem from the idea that your god seeded the planet with adults of the precursors to all of the species we have now. However, since other passages in Genesis, like the flood story, can be classed as allegories or exaggerations, why can't you do the same for the adult animal tale? Why not just claim that when your god said stuff like this:

I don't want to make claims based on assumptions. That's what you evolutionists do - make claims based on mere assumptions! W

All I know and believe is that God created everything. You claim belief in macro-evolution. What makes you different from me who make claims based on faith? None.

Never mind the Flood. I already gave you my response to that. You're rambling and not paying attention.

I see you still don't know who decides what's allegorical or not. Okay, listen up:

The two verses I gave you turned out not to be allegorical after all. The two verses were actually giving descriptions of the HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE.

The authors of those verses most probably didn't understand what they were actually describing at the time - thousands of years before it's been discovered by SCIENCE!

SCIENCE. It is science that's handing out these decisions on what's allegorical or not.

And as the latest listed fact says:

The Bible and Science Are Coming Into Agreement. Read that article.

What he really did was ensure that volcanic eruptions and other natural processes created the necessary chemical compounds which combined under the right conditions to form all of the life forms described in Genesis?

Maybe. Or maybe not. We'll have to wait and see, don't we? Hopefully the conclusive fact will be discovered in our lifetime.

Edited November 21, 2012 by betsy

[Mighty AC]

SCIENCE. It is science that's handing out these decisions on what's allegorical or not.[/Quote] Great. So if science has proven the flood story, literal 6 days of creation and the young earth to be "allegories", why are you clinging to the concept of god barriers to evolution?

All I know and believe is that God created everything. You claim belief in macro-evolution. What makes you different from me who make claims based on faith? None.[/Quote]

I guess the difference would be evidence. We have observed actual speciation events, in living animals (not fossils), that would qualify as new "kinds" according to the Bible. It seems that there is no reason for you to partially deny evolution any longer.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Mighty AC