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.

[American Deist]

An aloof God that hardly ever intervenes won't do. What's the purpose of having a God if that God does absolutely nothing, simply has his or her back turned to the world?

It is my personal belief that God is not aloof, but rather stands by Its convictions with regard to free will. Miracles, divine intervention and divine revelation would upset the free will concept. Besides, who is to say that God has a purpose that is known to us? Only those who want a "Big Sky Daddy" believe in such notions.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 51 by American Deist]


[center]

It's so great to have a personal belief[/center]

It is my personal belief that God is not aloof, but rather stands by Its convictions with regard to free will.

I thought you were a deist?
And an American one, at that?

It never ceases to amaze me that people have beliefs that they don't have a reason for. I have beliefs like that too.. but I don't pretend that they are REAL... I have all kinds of beliefs that just stick even though my RATIONAL mind says "No, of course that's not real".

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Question:

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  How did you figure out what God wants free will, cares, thinks, or that it actually exists?
  
  

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[American Deist]

I thought you were a deist?

I am.

It never ceases to amaze me that people have beliefs that they don't have a reason for. I have beliefs like that too.. but I don't pretend that they are REAL... I have all kinds of beliefs that just stick even though my RATIONAL mind says "No, of course that's not real".

My belief in free will answers the question as to why bad things happen to good people. God does not intervene because of free will. We are responsible for our actions and the consequences thereof.

Deists try to think logically. We are not atheists, so our thought processes and beliefs are not about denying or rejecting the existence of God. Instead, we look at how God might exist and fit in with all that happens on Earth as well as the rest of the universe.

How did you figure out what God wants free will, cares, thinks, or that it actually exists?

1. Free will - just an explanation as to the why question from previous answer.

2. Cares - God may or may not care. Doesn't really matter if God does not get involved because of free will. The outcome is the same. I don't agree with the theistic concept of a Big Sky Daddy.

3. Thinks - I don't claim to know the mind of God.

4. Exists - based on my personal observations and experiences in life, being in nature and studying the cosmos.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 53 by American Deist]



[center]
Learning about deism[/center]

I thought you were a deist?

I am.

Thank you.
As strange as it might seem, I had to ask.

It never ceases to amaze me that people have beliefs that they don't have a reason for. I have beliefs like that too.. but I don't pretend that they are REAL... I have all kinds of beliefs that just stick even though my RATIONAL mind says "No, of course that's not real".

My belief in free will answers the question as to why bad things happen to good people. God does not intervene because of free will. We are responsible for our actions and the consequences thereof.

Again you say that as if you knew it were true.

I think you mean you believe that "God does not intervene because of free will "... but what are you "knowing"?

What reason do you have to believe it?
What "knowledge" do you have of this god?

Deists try to think logically.

I have plenty of evidence that you do, anyway.
That doesn't mean you don't make logic mistakes.

I'm very interested in the reasoning behind religious beliefs of all kinds.
I acknowledge that you have your beliefs, it's just that I don't know how you got them. It doesn't seem to me because of evidence, but due to some other beliefs.

We are not atheists, so our thought processes and beliefs are not about denying or rejecting the existence of God.

Not about rejecting...

And I am an atheist but really, I'm not rejecting the idea out of hand. It's just that I don't have a good reason to believe in any gods right now.

If ever you were skeptical of your beliefs, you seem to be saying that you aren't any more.

Are you leaving any room for any doubt about the truth of your beliefs?
Is God to you a "fait accompli"?

You have arrived at the conclusion that a god of some kind exists. I have no idea on what evidence your belief is based on.

Instead, we look at how God might exist and fit in with all that happens on Earth as well as the rest of the universe.

Well, at least you say "MIGHT".

A lot of people come in here with 100% conviction that what they happen to believe has to be true.

To me, saying that what you believe MIGHT be true is a good start.
It leaves the possibility that it might not.

And.. you REALLY don't concern yourself with the idea that the God Hypothesis.. might not be real at all? Because.. I can't imagine believing something if I didn't know if it was real.

I don't get it.

And I'm not singling you out for my bemusement... I think all theists ( and deists ) are believing something they don't know about.

As a skeptic, one who demands evidence, I have to be an agnostic, and as an agnostic, I can't say that I KNOW anything about the existence, or characteristics of, any gods or goddesses. I can't BELIEVE what I don't know about.. so I have to be an atheist, too.

You answer that you don't know a few times.. I think your natural skepticism is leading you towards agnosticism.. but not quite. I would say that you aren't skeptical ENOUGH.

How did you figure out what God wants free will, cares, thinks, or that it actually exists?

1. Free will - just an explanation as to the why question from previous answer.

I don't see how that's evidence for anything else than your preference that free will is real. People disagree if it is.. But that doesn't matter..It seems that you jump from "Hey I have a problem about evil... so... Free will and God exists". I don't follow the reasoning.

2. Cares - God may or may not care.

Right.
That's an honest statement in my opinion.
How would we KNOW if God cares or not?

People believe one way or the other.. but without evidence, these are unfounded beliefs. From what I read about your beliefs.. I don't see any foundation other than a desire to believe in something that hasn't yet been demonstrated to be real.

Doesn't really matter if God does not get involved because of free will. The outcome is the same. I don't agree with the theistic concept of a Big Sky Daddy.

I wonder what your concept of God is... A god that cares.. but... doesn't get involved. He might not exist as far as I'm concerned. He's just watching, or maybe no. A passive god might not care AT ALL about our free will or about anything it "created" at all. Maybe this God is happy to be a voyeur?

3. Thinks - I don't claim to know the mind of God.

Then you contradict yourself.. you said that God cares about free will:

"It is my personal belief that God is not aloof, but rather stands by Its convictions with regard to free will. "

4. Exists - based on my personal observations and experiences in life, being in nature and studying the cosmos.

I look out into the night sky.. I see lights.
I don't observe any god or goddess.

I don't think that your God Hypothesis is an observation but a conclusion to some kind of reasoning. So far, I don't follow how you get "God" from studying nature and the cosmos.

When someone tell me that they KNOW that God exists ?
I want to see some evidence. If they point to the sky.. i look up.

I see stars, planets, moons, comets, and stuff like that.
Of course, we all know there is no "GOD" to be seen.

Apparently, it's invisible maybe.
So why look up for it? Why look down?

Why.. LOOK at all?

I don't know how you get from data about nature to ... knowing that any gods or goddesses exist.

I don't see the link, I think it's a magnificent leap of faith, instead.
Can you explain?

[historia]

"Inerrancy," as that term is generally understood by conservative Protestants -- in, for example, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy -- refers to inerrancy of the original writings.

Yet those same churches/denominations don't state that. They have their SoF and then preach from their preferred translation. That is a deceptive practice.

It might be helpful if you could point to a particular denomination that you feel is being deceptive in this regard to help us better appreciate your point here.

Statements of faith are, of course, very brief summaries of what a denomination believes. We shouldn't expect them to include the level of detail you are seeking here. And you can usually find more detailed explanations of any denomination's beliefs in other writings. So I wouldn't call that deceptive.

Likewise, if an English translation accurately conveys the meaning of the Greek or Hebrew text, I don't see why it would be problematic to use that in a sermon, especially when most ministers have been educated in the original languages and have ready access to expert language tools and commentaries to be able to better understand any nuances in the original language that the translation cannot fully capture. I wouldn't call that deceptive either.

The simple fact that humans make mistakes all the time is enough reason to believe that the Bible is no where near what the Autographs said.

What do you mean by "no where near"? Like, the text today is on a completely different topic from what the originals said?

There is an experiment that is done in psychology classes where a group has to repeat a sentence. The instructor will write it down and show it to the first person. That person then has to whisper it verbatim to the next. This continues until it goes all the way around the room. The last person writes down what they heard and then the two writings are compared. They are ALWAYS different. Now, take that phenomenon and spread it out over thousands of years, and translate the message across languages.

So, this "telephone" or "Chinese whispers" example is often invoked when this topic comes up. But it seems to me to be a rather poor analogy. Our topic concerns the written transmission of a text, not oral transmission.

A version of this experiment that would more closely match the transmission history of the Bible would be this: Divide the class into three groups. The instructor writes a sentence down on a piece of paper and gives it to the first student in each group. Each of those students writes down the sentence and hands his or her written copy to the next person in the group, who, in turn, makes their own copy and passes that onto the next person.

The last person takes the final copy from each of the three groups, plus one or two copies from earlier people in each group, and compares all those copies to each other to reach an informed conclusion about what the original sentence said.

As you might imagine, the odds of that last person being able to accurately arrive at the original sentence (or at least something very close to it) is quite high, since most of the conditions inherent in the "telephone" game that produce a garbled outcome are not present in this scenario. And this scenario is, as I said, much closer to what we have with the Bible.

Most of the beliefs we hold cannot be "proven" in some absolute sense...

Then religion should stop preaching like it is absolute.

"Religion" is an abstract concept we use to describe a diverse set of cultural practices, beliefs, and customs. Abstract concepts don't "preach" anything. Perhaps you can be more precise here?

[American Deist]

[Replying to post 54 by Blastcat]

At this point, we are WAY off topic, so I'll answer that in another thread that is appropriate to the discussion of why I embrace deism.

In the meantime, let's steer the thread back to the OP of biblical inerrancy.

[American Deist]

...most ministers have been educated in the original languages

Uhm, no they haven't. Many Protestant ministers do not have any formal training in theology or divinity, and certainly not ancient languages. They can't comprehend Hebrew or Greek, just like they can't comprehend Egyptian hieroglyphs. If anything, they serve some small church where they grew up, and were selected to be the next pastor when the previous one got too old and retired/died.

[American Deist]

So, this "telephone" or "Chinese whispers" example is often invoked when this topic comes up. But it seems to me to be a rather poor analogy. Our topic concerns the written transmission of a text, not oral transmission.

It is far more complicated than just passing a written message around. For starters, the written languages of ancient Hebrew, Koine Greek and Aramaic are dead languages.

Koine Greek went out in the mid 15th century.
Aramaic went away before the start of the 8th century.
Ancient (biblical) Hebrew died off before the 2nd century.

So any scholar wanting to study those languages, would run into several problems along the way. They would rely on what the previous generation did. Often times there would be notes scribbled on the margins of various texts, and they would only serve to confuse the next generation of scholars. Sometimes those margin notes would be included, other times they would be omitted, and there were even times where they were included and later revised.

Another problem is punctuation. Koine Greek did not use any. Anywhere that you find any type of punctuation in an English translation, especially a comma, it is often best guess.

It is unrealistic to think that a written document has remained the same for thousands of years, after being translated across multiple languages, minus the cultural idioms of the time period, with the inclusion of punctuation. You may WANT it to be an exact copy of the Autographs, but the truth is that it most likely does NOT resemble the Autographs.

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 47 by historia]

If, as you claim, what we have today is close to the "originals," then the "originals" are nowhere near inerrant. There are at least 100 major, well-documented contradictions in Scripture. Plus, the geophysics of the Bible, with its flat earth, geocentered POV, and six-day creation is flatly wrong.

In addition, you have the problem as to what is and is not canon. Should teh Apocrypha be included or excluded?

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 57 by American Deist]

That is very true. It all depends on the denomination. PCUSA requires all ministers to have at least one year of Hebrew and Greek. But other denominations have no language requirements at all. When you get to nondenominational churches, the "minister" often has had no seminary education at all.