Biblical Inerrancy

[American Deist]

Many Christian denominations will have in their statements of faith something to the effect of "We believe the Bible to be the divinely inspired, inerrant Word of God." However, that statement raises some issues. I'd like to cover them one at a time.

1. Which translation of the Bible are they referring to? Some Bibles are not translated as well as others, especially when you move down to dynamic or paraphrased versions. Are they referring to the Hebrew and Greek, or are they referring to English? If they are referring to English translations, then they are missing the cultural and time period idioms.

2. The Autographs, which were the original works of both the OT and the NT, have long been lost or destroyed. The OT Autographs went up in flames when Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed the temples in Jerusalem in 587 BCE. The point is, how can anyone claim that the modern Bible is inerrant when you don't have the original writings to compare to? You can't!

3. Why are there so many different translations? The answer is: copyright laws. Publishing houses have copyrights on their translations, and it is often cheaper for another company to do their own translation instead of paying royalties. Since plagiarism has to be avoided, that means words and formatting have to be different.

4. There are some Christian sects that wrote their own version of the Bible. The problem with many of those sects is that the authors (I refuse to say translators) were NOT fluent with Hebrew or Greek, and couldn't read those languages if they tried. Instead, they use the "Holy Spirit-as-guide" excuse in order to avoid being questioned about their scholarship. That does not stop theologians from pointing out the obvious errors of those translations.

The point is that biblical inerrancy is not something that can be proven. It is a belief without merit, and gets hammered into the masses so hard that many accept it as truth. Unfortunately, those people have been brainwashed by repetition.

[polonius]

JW posted:

How can anyone claim that the modern Bible is inerrant when you don't have the original writings to compare to?

We can be confident about what the contents of the originals because of the thousands of copies we have from different sources.

RESPONSE: That might be merely repeating the same errors. For example, most are familiar with the story of the woman taken in adultery. Very many bibles from many sources contain this story.

However, no bible or source written before the 4th century do Check the two oldest extant bibles versions we have, the Codex Sinaiticus (c. 325 AD) and the Codex Vaticanus (c. 375 AD).

Neither have this story. It was added later but can be found in virtually all bibles today, thousands of copies and from different sources.

But, obviously, that doesn't make the story true.

Shall I cite other examples?

[American Deist]

[Replying to post 29 by Tired of the Nonsense]

Ok.

I think you have me confused with a theist. I am not. I am a deist.

I already stated in post #26 that I agreed with evolution, so not sure what that little tirade was about. Albeit, my belief in evolution is of deistic evolution.

God created the laws of nature, set off the Big Bang, put everything in motion and the universe follows a natural path based off those laws. Science can't disprove this position. It's why atheists like Richard Dawkins refuse to debate against deists...there's nothing to attack.

The difference between a deist and an atheist is the simple belief that God was the Creator by way of the Big Bang, vs. a non-deity, scientific explanation for the Big Bang. It is entirely a personal opinion that has nothing to do with holy books, divine revelation, or prophets. When asked why we believe in such a God, our response is "because we choose to." That choice is based on observations and life experiences.

Speaking of Dawkins, he was doing an internet symposium and another atheist brought up deism. The question was something to the effect of "deists are believers that agree with science and make sense. Now what do we do?" Dawkins' response was awesome! "Work with them to disprove theism, and save the final battle between atheism and deism for a later date!"

I'll try and find that link. It was some years ago...

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 23 by American Deist]

I'm afraid I don't agree here. If we don't know what God is, can't give God an affirmative content, then the concept of God is meaningless and should be dropped. In this respect, it seems Deism is really a version of classical theism. The latter argued we cannot apply creaturely attributes to God. Hence, we can know only what God is not, not what God is. In that case, you couldn't even say God is a creator, as creator also applies to us humans as well.

At the risk of repeating a previous post you might have seen, I think all knowing is analogous knowing. To know something, we must generalize from the familiar to the unfamiliar. What we know best is human existence. So unless there is some analogy, some genuine uniformity, between ourselves and the rest of reality, we haven't got an inkling what is going on. Anthropomorphizing and projection are not the problems, they are the solutions.

[American Deist]

[Replying to post 33 by hoghead1]

That is why deism is a personal philosophy and not a religion or unified position. Each deist may be different, based on what they observe in the world around them. Other deists do not agree with everything that I believe, and that is fine.

[bluethread]

[Replying to post 33 by hoghead1]

That is why deism is a personal philosophy and not a religion or unified position.

Good luck with that one. It appears that, around here, anything related to a deity is "religion" by definition and is not afforded the privileges that are given to "philosophy".

[American Deist]

Good luck with that one. It appears that, around here, anything related to a deity is "religion" by definition and is not afforded the privileges that are given to "philosophy".

Thanks, but luck is not needed.

1. Deism does not have a church.
2. Deism does not have a priestly hierarchy.
3. Deism does not have a divinely inspired holy book.
4. Deism does not have an afterlife concept other than IF there is one, then surely living a moral life will grant passage.
5. Deism does not claim to know anything about God other than attributing the existence of the universe to God as the Creator (not according to Genesis).
6. Deism agrees with science to include evolution and the Big Bang (God made it go bang).

Religion, by definition, is a set of rules, morals, ethics, tenets, dogma, etc. and often has miraculous stories about divine intervention, divine revelation, mythology, how to be "saved," the afterlife, churches/temples, priests/teachers, so on and so forth.

Philosophy, by definition, is not so much spiritual but rather the study of metaphysics, the search for knowledge or truth, trying to understand nature, the cosmos and life itself. It is more academic in nature.

Deism is a philosophy.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to American Deist]

Deism is a philosophy.

This is the point I was trying to make about atheism. Atheism is NOT in and of itself a philosophy. It's simply a lack of a belief in "theos." In my case that includes a lack of belief in all things supernatural.

[American Deist]

[Replying to post 37 by Tired of the Nonsense]

Ok.

[JehovahsWitness]

JW posted:

How can anyone claim that the modern Bible is inerrant when you don't have the original writings to compare to?

We can be confident about what the contents of the originals because of the thousands of copies we have from different sources.

RESPONSE: That might be merely repeating the same errors. For example, most are familiar with the story of the woman taken in adultery. Very many bibles from many sources contain this story.

However, no bible or source written before the 4th century do Check the two oldest extant bibles versions we have, the Codex Sinaiticus (c. 325 AD) and the Codex Vaticanus (c. 375 AD).

Thank you, you have illustrated my point.

made here
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 803#851803

Thanks to the copies of the bible we have we can identify (and remove) any errors or interpolations that could have crept into the bible.



JW

[American Deist]

Thanks to the copies of the bible we have we can identify (and remove) any errors or interpolations that could have crept into the bible.



JW

Uhm, no you can't. That would require the Autographs. Without the originals to compare to, all you have are assumptions.