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.

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 51 by American Deist]

I disagree. I can put faith only in an anthropomorphic Deity. I can put no faith in an undefined It. People seek a Big Sky Daddy because they seek a Deity they can interact with, a Deity that reinforces there humanity, not a Deity who is the complete and total negation of creation and therefore simply depersonalizes and dehumanizes us. "Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" certainly dos not mean "Be ye immutable, aloof, and stop being a human." There is no purpose in having a God with whom you cannot interact and who has not revealed anything of himself.

I believe God has revealed her purpose and it is to maximize beauty.

[American Deist]

I disagree.

Your right to do so.

I can put faith only in an anthropomorphic Deity. I can put no faith in an undefined It. People seek a Big Sky Daddy because they seek a Deity they can interact with, a Deity that reinforces there humanity, not a Deity who is the complete and total negation of creation and therefore simply depersonalizes and dehumanizes us. "Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" certainly dos not mean "Be ye immutable, aloof, and stop being a human." There is no purpose in having a God with whom you cannot interact and who has not revealed anything of himself.

I don't need a Big Sky Daddy that is involved, in order to believe and be thankful for life. Nor do I need a purpose for God to exist. God just is. I don't make up a religion full of mysticism and mythology in order to explain what can't be explained any other way. God is beyond my capacity to understand.

Pause: this is where atheists ask, "then why DO you believe in God?" as they sit around scratching their heads. The answer is, "because I choose to." That answer drives them crazy!

I have no fear of death or what type of afterlife might (or might not) be in store for me. I live for the here and now, and if there is an afterlife, hopefully my actions as a moral being will grant me passage.

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 62 by American Deist]

I'm not talking about being thankful for life, I'm talking about faith in a God with whom you can interact.

To me, it makes no sense to talk about God or believe in God if your concept of God is one that cannot be defined and one by which the Deity does absolutely nothing for you, simply sits with its back turned on the world.

I also don't believe all mysticism is just made-up stuff.

[American Deist]

To me, it makes no sense to talk about God or believe in God if your concept of God is one that cannot be defined and one by which the Deity does absolutely nothing for you, simply sits with its back turned on the world.

Deists don't think like that. We don't see it as, "God does nothing for us; turned Its back on us" but rather that God created the universe and the means for life, and it is for that creation that we give thanks. We attribute free will as the cause for God to not intervene and to explain why bad things happen.

That is far more believable than some fallen, supernatural boogeyman, his horde of fallen angels, and a bunch of fictitious stories that confound modern people that are far more knowledgeable than our ancestors from thousands of years ago.

The real question is, why do you need a deity to do something for you? Everything in this life that you need in order to survive, you can accomplish on your own.

[historia]

...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.

I'll happily agree this is true in many cases -- particularly among non-denominational churches. But my assertion was not that all ministers have this education, but rather most. I have in mind here both conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics.

I'm not sure if accurate statistics exist that could decide the point one way or the other. But as it is not crucial to our discussion, allow me simply to withdraw it.

[historia]

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.

To be sure. My comments above were intended simply to call out the deficiencies in the "telephone game" analogy, rather than to offer a comprehensive description of the transmission process.

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.

It seems to me you are conflating two different issues here. The transmission history of a text is separate from any issues concerning its translation into English.

Therefore, it seems to me the objections you have raised here concerning translation "across" multiple languages, cultural idioms, or even punctuation, have little to no bearing on the question of whether the critical Greek text we possess today is substantially the same as the original Greek text of the New Testament.

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.

What I may or may not "want" is irrelevant to our discussion -- which, like all historical questions posed on this forum, should be decided based on the historical evidence. And I don't think anyone is arguing the text we have today is an "exact" copy.

Again, I have to ask: When you say the text we posses today does not "resemble" the original, what exactly do you mean? That the text we have today is completely different from the originals, as if the originals are about some other topic altogether?

[American Deist]

I'll happily agree this is true in many cases -- particularly among non-denominational churches. But my assertion was not that all ministers have this education, but rather most. I have in mind here both conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Many churches across all denominations are reporting low attendance. Several of those churches struggle to keep the lights turned on, much less pay a full time pastor a decent salary. In the wake of such dismal membership, those churches turn to laymen to serve as part time or even unpaid volunteer pastors. People don't spend 10's of thousands of $$$ to get a Master or Doctor of Divinity and then get paid $0 for it.

Statistically, 4,000 churches shut down each year, and 3,500 people leave the Church each day (all denominations combined). Episcopalians are down from 3 million to 1.8 million since the 1960s. Presbyterians are down by 46%. Methodists have lost 4.5 million since 1964. Baptists bleed off 200k a year. Jehovah's Witnesses lost 1 million in the last 10 years. Catholics have lost 3 million since 2007!

Fewer and fewer people are taking ministry degrees into the graduate programs.

...allow me simply to withdraw it.

That would be best.

[American Deist]

And I don't think anyone is arguing the text we have today is an "exact" copy.

The thread OP is about biblical inerrancy, and how it is IMPOSSIBLE to prove inerrancy since the Autographs no longer exist. You just confirmed my OP with the above statement. The Bible contains human errors, and therefore would not be an exact copy of the Autographs.

Again, I have to ask: When you say the text we posses today does not "resemble" the original, what exactly do you mean? That the text we have today is completely different from the originals, as if the originals are about some other topic altogether?

"Resemble" is not the same as inerrant. You are now moving the goalposts.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 61 by hoghead1]



[center]
I don't see a purpose so there IS no purpose[/center]

I can put faith only in an anthropomorphic Deity. I can put no faith in an undefined It.

Some people deify an undefined IT and anthropomorphize it to make it more.. real seeming.

It's a FATHER you see, not an undefined IT.

There is no purpose in having a God with whom you cannot interact and who has not revealed anything of himself.

You seem to not be able to think of a purpose for a deistic god hypothesis. Deists, however don't seem to have that problem.

I think that deists might be able to come up with a purpose for their beliefs.

I believe God has revealed her purpose and it is to maximize beauty.

That's a lovely belief.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 33 by hoghead1]




[center]

God, the anthropomorphic analogy[/center]

I think all knowing is analogous knowing.

I think that I agree.
We compare something that we KNOW is real to a hypothesis.

So, if I know something, I am saying that it matches with the rest of my knowledge about reality.

If something doesn't match with the rest of the things I call "true" or "real", then, I can't say that I really "know" my hypothesis to be true or real.

Of course, I can "know" imaginary things.. such as characters in books, and my own personal fantasies. Some people say that characters in books and their own personal fantasies ARE real, and that therefore, they can "know" them the same way that they know what is commonly referred to as "real' or "true". Like mountains and baby's breath.

To know something, we must generalize from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

Yah, and it seems that some religious people are very familiar with gods, goddesses, and demons, too. Some people even have discussions with these on a daily basis.

Some of these fine folks post in here.

What we know best is human existence.

We know that humans exist.

That should be an uncontroversial bit of "knowledge".
And we can test for that.

And we can easily think up many tests.

I come up a bit short with the "God Hypothesis".

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.

Not even an INKLING you say?
What about all of that SCIENCE?

Are you really thinking that humanity has NO IDEA at all about "what's going on"?

Anthropomorphizing and projection are not the problems, they are the solutions.

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Questions:

• 
  
  1. Could you elaborate on what the PROBLEM that anthropomorphism is a solution for, and how anthropomorphism serves as a real solution?
  
  2. You say that "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. ", are you saying that science doesn't have an inkling of what's going on?
  
  3. Do you think that just because we can form a hypothesis, that it's automatically telling us what's really going on?
  
  4. Do you think that it's important at all to test our hypothesis?
  
  5. How do we test to see if a hypothesis is indeed "what's going on" or not?
  
  6. What kind of test for any God Hypothesis do you propose?
  
  7. Does it matter to you at all if your God Hypothesis ( for example, you say that God has something to do with beauty ) is true at all or tested at all with the rest of reality?
  
  

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