Can the Bible's divine authorship be demonstrated by logic?

[McCulloch]

I believe that the following facets of my faith can be demonstrated by logical deduction

2. The Bible is God's Word*

Can the Bible's divine authorship be demonstrated by logical deduction?

[Moses Yoder]

I believe that the following facets of my faith can be demonstrated by logical deduction

2. The Bible is God's Word*

Can the Bible's divine authorship be demonstrated by logical deduction?

Since we cannot see the spirit world...

A more correct statement would be: "Since I cannot see the spirit world...." as I'm sure you know there are those of us who claim not only this ability, but other abilities as well.

Yes, thanks for pointing out my erroneous assumption.

[Dantalion]

Bit confused here.
Surely the if A, thn B
A
therefore B thing does not fly indiscriminately of actor A and B.
Don't you have to prove that B naturally follows from A first ?
Surely saying something like 'if I jump in the sea, I get wet' is an already established example of B naturally following from A, therefore the logic is valid, but when you have something like 'if Jesus is the son of God thn the bible is divinely inspired' you cant just fill in the formula like what you say has already been established or demonstrted to be true. We use the logic in the 'if water thn wet' example because we can demonstrate it to be true.
if you try to apply the 'if jesus is son of god' thing the whole thing falls flat on his face. Surely this is no logic ?

[Furrowed Brow]

Bit confused here.
Surely the if A, thn B
A
therefore B thing does not fly indiscriminately of actor A and B.
Don't you have to prove that B naturally follows from A first ?

That is a pressing common sense intuition, But the answer by the lights of classic logic is "no". There does not have to be any connection between A and B. But this leads to some paradoxial results like the Napolean is French and the moon is made of cheese example which in turn lead logicians likle C.I Lewis to develop 'strict implication' within the context of modal logic to try and rid logic of this kind of proplem. So Lewis like you might feel there should be some kind of 'natural connection' between terms.

Surely saying something like 'if I jump in the sea, I get wet' is an already established example of B naturally following from A, therefore the logic is valid,

Yes that is the kind of thing I think Lewis wanted to preserve as a valid inference and he wanted to distinguish this kind of argument from the '.....therefore the moon is made of cheese' kind of argument.

but when you have something like 'if Jesus is the son of God thn the bible is divinely inspired' you cant just fill in the formula like what you say has already been established or demonstrted to be true. We use the logic in the 'if water thn wet' example because we can demonstrate it to be true.

The problem with classic logic is that it allows the following as a valid argument

1) I jump in the sea therefore the bible is divinely inspired
2) I jump in the sea
3) thefore the bible is divinely inspired.

This argument is valid and AquinasD's argument is valid at this level. Jesus being the son of God has no more bearing on the inspiration fo the bible than me jumping in the sea has. But AquinasD's argument also looks like it suggest there is such a connection between Jesus' divinity and and how the bible was inspired. Superfically it looks to be trying to work as "I jump in the sea therefore I get wet' kind of argument. On this level it fails. I think putting the argument the other way as I did regains that natural connection you might be looking for.

[Dantalion]

Bit confused here.
Surely the if A, thn B
A
therefore B thing does not fly indiscriminately of actor A and B.
Don't you have to prove that B naturally follows from A first ?

That is a pressing common sense intuition, But the answer by the lights of classic logic is "no". There does not have to be any connection between A and B. But this leads to some paradoxial results like the Napolean is French and the moon is made of cheese example which in turn lead logicians likle C.I Lewis to develop 'strict implication' within the context of modal logic to try and rid logic of this kind of proplem. So Lewis like you might feel there should be some kind of 'natural connection' between terms.

Surely saying something like 'if I jump in the sea, I get wet' is an already established example of B naturally following from A, therefore the logic is valid,

Yes that is the kind of thing I think Lewis wanted to preserve as a valid inference and he wanted to distinguish this kind of argument from the '.....therefore the moon is made of cheese' kind of argument.

but when you have something like 'if Jesus is the son of God thn the bible is divinely inspired' you cant just fill in the formula like what you say has already been established or demonstrted to be true. We use the logic in the 'if water thn wet' example because we can demonstrate it to be true.

The problem with classic logic is that it allows the following as a valid argument

1) I jump in the sea therefore the bible is divinely inspired
2) I jump in the sea
3) thefore the bible is divinely inspired.

This argument is valid and AquinasD's argument is valid at this level. Jesus being the son of God has no more bearing on the inspiration fo the bible than me jumping in the sea has. But AquinasD's argument also looks like it suggest there is such a connection between Jesus' divinity and and how the bible was inspired. Superfically it looks to be trying to work as "I jump in the sea therefore I get wet' kind of argument. On this level it fails. I think putting the argument the other way as I did regains that natural connection you might be looking for.

Yes I see, thank you for that sir.

[jimvansage]

I'm new to the forum and honestly haven't been aware that anyone had responded to the original post.

If an argument is valid, and it can be demonstrated that one can "validly infer" the propositions and the conclusion, then the argument is "sound".

Napolean loving his mother does not necessitate a desire to marry her, as one has put it.

What evidence is there that a spiritual world does not exist? If it can be demonstrated that there is no such thing as a spirit, the conversation is useless.

[jimvansage]

I have 100 boxes. You open fifty of them and find that the other fifty are locked.
How can you determine if the fifty locked boxes are empty or contain something?

[1213]

I believe that the following facets of my faith can be demonstrated by logical deduction

2. The Bible is God's Word*

Can the Bible's divine authorship be demonstrated by logical deduction?

If something is from human, that has price (According to my observations). Bible’s message has been free always, so it is not from human, else there would be heavy copyright fights all over the world

I think one way to think this is to first ask, can human make Bible without God’s influence? And after that comes all difficulties

My answer is no, because I think human couldn’t make it only by himself, because in all other cases that I know humans make teachings that serves at least one of these, creed, pride, vanity and lust for power. In my opinion all that comes from human, has at least one of those. And I think, Bible is against those and therefore it is not from human. But was this enough demonstration? I doubt it and probably it is not possible to me demonstrate well enough it.

[Furrowed Brow]

I have 100 boxes. You open fifty of them and find that the other fifty are locked.
How can you determine if the fifty locked boxes are empty or contain something?

Weigh them?

[Nickman]

I believe that the following facets of my faith can be demonstrated by logical deduction

2. The Bible is God's Word*

Can the Bible's divine authorship be demonstrated by logical deduction?

If something is from human, that has price (According to my observations). Bible’s message has been free always, so it is not from human, else there would be heavy copyright fights all over the world

I think one way to think this is to first ask, can human make Bible without God’s influence? And after that comes all difficulties

My answer is no, because I think human couldn’t make it only by himself, because in all other cases that I know humans make teachings that serves at least one of these, creed, pride, vanity and lust for power. In my opinion all that comes from human, has at least one of those. And I think, Bible is against those and therefore it is not from human. But was this enough demonstration? I doubt it and probably it is not possible to me demonstrate well enough it.

If we look at the bible from your POV then it is most certainly not inspired by god and CAN be said to be written by man. The bible speaks of a flat earth, it has a jealous sky god who sits above the earth on the firmament, it has rules that need no explaination from a deity of any kind and can be made by man. It has no intelligence in it above that of man. It doesn't provide anything that can be attributed to a supernatural being in terms of aforeknowledge.

[jimvansage]

Weigh them? - what if one box contained a deed to a large stretch of land in the Bahamas?

Or suppose the "boxes" are like storage lockers or PO Boxes which cannot be measured. They are lead boxes, so no known method of science thus far can examine what is inside.

Is it safe to assume they are empty, that they contain contents, or it is impossible to know one way or the other?

~Where does the Bible say the Earth is flat?