How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

[otseng]

From the On the Bible being inerrant thread:

How can you trust something that's written about god that contradictory, contains errors and just plain wrong at times? Is there a logical way to do so, or do you just want it to be god's word so much that you overlook these things like happens so often through the history of christianity?

The Bible can still be God's word, inspired, authoritative, and trustworthy without the need to believe in inerrancy.

For debate:
How can the Bible be considered authoritative and inspired without the need to believe in the doctrine of inerrancy?

While debating, do not simply state verses to say the Bible is inspired or trustworthy.

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Thread Milestones

• Case study of Hezekiah
• Start discussing global flood / Flood Model summary
• Recap arguments of authority of the Bible
• Start discussing Tower of Babel / Tower of Babel summary
• Start discussing archaeology / Philosophy of science / Origin of alphabet / End of discussion on archaeology
• Start discussing cosmology / Concluding cosmology
• Start discussing Shroud of Turin / Summary top TS imaging theories / Created DefendingChristianity.com and TS subforums / Shroud of Turin summary
• Start discussing Bible and resurrection
• Start discussing the Messiahship of Jesus / Messiahship of Jesus wrap up
• Start discussing Old Testament ethics
• Summary argument of atheism and morality / God basis for objective morality
• Start discussing genocide / Genocide summary argument
• Start discussing slavery / Slavery summary argument
• Start discussing homosexuality / Homosexuality summary argument
• Old Testament ethics summary argument

[brunumb]

Also, what does it mean in regards to inerrancy? Should God's inspiration always lead to inerrancy?

When errancy leads to dispute and people bickering over the word of God, isn't that damaging and counterproductive? If God truly wants everyone to join the club and the bible is the only draw-card, then you would expect it to be the best advocate possible. As it is now, the Bible gives too much cause to doubt its legitimacy. Surely that's not a good thing.

[TRANSPONDER]

If they did indeed want it to be 100% accurate, and why wouldn't they, they had the best means possible to achieve it. God's inspiration.

Precisely explaining how this can occur is the problem. This is why I would not claim this in a debate that I would have to back up. Also, what does it mean in regards to inerrancy? Should God's inspiration always lead to inerrancy?

At the risk of being repetitive (not that it ever bothered me up to now), yes, it is a valid expectation that God, if He had the power to find car -keys, score goals and win elections, why wouldn't he ensure that the writers of his Book got their story convincingly straight? Slips of copying and little erroneous details isn't the point (though Bible apologists like to maintain that it is) but really serious divergencies must (reasonably) raise the question - is this God's Book or just another tome of fairy -tales?

This is a false dichotomy of either the Bible must be 100% factually correct or either just a tome of fairy tales. And this mentality of only having two possible extreme positions is not just limited to viewing the authority of the Bible. In Christianity, it's not either someone is a fundamentalist Christian or is not a Christian. In Islam, it's not either everyone is a radical terrorist or not a Muslim. In fact, in both of these cases, I would say the vast majority is in a moderate camp whether a Christian or Muslim. This viewpoint is not limited to religion either. This stereotyping that everyone in a particular group must have a certain quality is pervasive. And operating under this perspective of polarizing an issue is not realistic or productive.

Of course it isn't. But Your post is a fine example of strawmanning. You persist in the false argument that I'm trying to make a case out of little errors that don't in themselves mean that God didn't care whether the Book He relied on to tell us about Him and His Plan for us was convincingly coherent or not, but are just slips of memory or copying that don't matter.

That's not my case and I've explained it often enough so you can't have missed it and so are Without Excuse as the ironically -called 'Good Book' put it. I see it as any other evidential study, whether in archaeology, Science, or a court of Law. Compelling cracks in the evidential case means that the case fails. And you appear to confuse possible alternative hypothetical explanations with the actuality of a claim. It is either factually true or it isn't. Factually true meaning apart from human preferences.

I'm not sure whether I ...yes, I'll retype what I cancelled I utterly refuse your attempt to make my case look like the Bible having to be perfect without even small error. I don't even know that Fundamentalists argue that one. It is that the Bible is so seriously wrong and in so many cases, that that it cannot be trusted as a reliable record of what happened (truer than true or metaphorically true being something else and a claim I don't care tuppence about). It may well be that I require really bad contradictions whereas other skeptics can list 'Matthew said two blind men and Luke only says one' or similar quibbles, and think that is damaging 'errancy'. It was lists of contradictions, many of which the Bible apologists dismissed as 'understandable slips', that made me concentrate on the really bad ones. The nativities (as I've said before) being the touchstone case.

You may recall the posting about Two Jerichoes. That is actually a middling bad one. One or two angels at the tomb is fairly easily dismissed. Sinking Simon not related by any others (at least not in connection with walking on water), takes more adroit expkanation. The tomb - guard, the walking dead, the lack of an anointing in Luke , are all more or less serious discrepancies or contradictions. The thing about the 'touchstone' cases are that they prove (to any reasonable person) conflicting stories that are mutually destructive. That has a knock - on effect to the others almost as bad, those bring down to seriously dodgy ones, those discredit the arguable ones and they pretty much take the rest of the book down with it.

[Diagoras]

Over the course of this thread, I thought we'd come to an agreement that God communicating directly with more than one person at a time was well within his power, and could be considered 'optimal' in the sense of clarity, and trustworthiness of the message imparted. Some may choose to ignore or disobey the message, but then that's also true of a written record.

I however never agreed that God should always communicate directly with people. Yes, God has communicated with some people directly, in the past and and even now. And the only time God will communicate directly with everyone will be in heaven.

I don't think my argument was that God should always communicate directly - only that such communication was optimal. We still haven't heard a reasonable argument for why God communicating directly with multiple people (not 'everyone') today is not a better method than trusting to an old collection of writings.

Though the Bible is primarily in story form, one thing special about it is much of it is claimed to be rooted in actual history. It gives names of people, places, cities, mountains, rivers, dating of events relative to other events, etc. And it's at least theoretically possible to cross check through extra Biblical sources (perhaps much more difficult now, but when written it certainly was open to that).

<bolding mine>

When a claim about the world or an event is made in the Bible that can be easily falsified, how trustworthy does that make the Bible?

When an apologist then claims that this apparent error is in fact simply a literacy device, and that the Bible is a 'complex book that can't be read from a single perspective', can they be trusted?

Shifting the burden of trust from the book itself to supposed experts on the book doesn't in any way lessen the problem. It only increases it.

[TRANSPONDER]

That's a good point to bring up. That the Bible contains real people and places is presented as reason believe that the events described as more or less reliable, too. And they can point to books of supposed reliable history being equally as open to question and even with stuff in that we mind find as dubious as any Bible miracle. What are we to make of Alexander's Gordian Knot or a Roman legion praying to the Numidian god BoBo for rain and getting it?

Biblical archaeology (sorry if I'm going over old ground) in the 19th and 20th century became very influential. The Bible mentioned Assyria and Babylon, and there they were. They even found the Hittites the Bible mentioned but had been lost. There was Jericho with its' fallen walls. There was Ur of the Chaldees from whence Abraham came.

But then the cracks started to appear. The fallen walls of Jericho were not of 'conquest' date. Babylon was not destroyed and Tyre was quickly rebuilt and is still there. God did not (arguably) smite the Assyrian army outside Jerusalem. The Merneptah stele seems to show that Israel existed enough to be smitten before the defeat of the Sea -peoples by a later Ramessid (I think Ramesses 5th) who settled them in Gaza, thus becoming the Philistines that Moses sidetracked into the Sinai to avoid the trouble there. But we just saw that they were already there in Merneptah's time, never mind Ramesses II, supposed to be the Pharaoah of Exodus, who lived long before. Something wrong there.

Pilate did not look much like the Pilate of History - a very tough and ruthless guy. And I hardly need labour that Genesis as a record of factual events ought to have been relegated to the Myth - shelf long ago, but an Industry exists for trying to prove it true. And now we find that there is serious doubt that Nazareth even existed as a town big enough to have its' own synagogue in Jesus' time.

There were excavations at Sepphoris, mentioned in Josephus. But never in the Gospels. Well, you know, if the gospels (as we now have them) were written after the Jewish war, it wouldn't be, as the Romans had destroyed it. And I have to mention that, despite the very best efforts of the Arkeologists, neither the Durupinar or NAMI Ark - claims have turned up anything convincing, other than the NAMI Ark turning out to be a scam.

There are debates about whether Jesus went to Gadara or Gerasa. Variants in some cases look like copyists second guesses but it looks like Luke is referring to Jerash, which is miles inland and can't possibly be the scene of the Gadarene swine -story. Even Gergesa was across the river Yarmulk, so that can't be it. It must be Gadara. But if that was destroyed in the Jewish war, that would explain the confusion. But then, this is a debatable discrepancy and not in itself unexplainable.

I might mention that the two supposed sepulchres in Jerusalem are likely old Hasmonean tombs and were vacated in Jesus' time, because all burials were being located to the mount of Olives. Arimathea can't have constructed a new tomb in Jerusalem. If that story has a basis, it all has to be set on the mount of Olives and no doubt not far from Bethany. Jesus' donkey ride would go into Jerusalem at all. Sorry Holy -Land pilgrims. You are wasting your time trudging the Via Dolorosa and rubbernecking about one or both of the Sepulchres - you are looking in the wrong place.

Yes, IF there is a historical basis to the Jesus -story, the places and characters may well fit into it, but they do not in themselves prove the story or its' details true. In fact they may call its' veracity into question.

[TRANSPONDER]

Erratum...my memory is going. I just checked. It's Gadara that can't be the site of the Gadarene swine as it's across the R Yarmulk (ancient river Hippos, I recall) and it's Gergesa that was the more workable site, northerly of Gadara on the eastern coast of Lake Galilee. That tilts the debate because it isn't a correct location getting mixed up with other wrong places, but a basic Gospel location (Gadara) that doesn't work in that story. Well does anyone really take the Gadarene swine seriously? And if that's a legend, can't others be, even if they mention real persons and places?

[otseng]

When errancy leads to dispute and people bickering over the word of God, isn't that damaging and counterproductive? If God truly wants everyone to join the club and the bible is the only draw-card, then you would expect it to be the best advocate possible. As it is now, the Bible gives too much cause to doubt its legitimacy. Surely that's not a good thing.

Given human limitations of writing any book, it's probably the best that could be hoped for. But what is the source of the bickering? I would submit the majority is not the Bible per se, but all the baggage that surrounds it. I lead a children's Bible memorization program that has around 40 kids in it. And even they can grasp the basic message of the Bible. It does not require any advanced education to understand the fundamental points of it. Yes, as you explore it more, it gets quite complex. But, it's not necessary to grasp it or understand it all to have a relationship with God.

Yes, God desires for none to perish, but it's a two way street. People have to also seek him with a humble heart and honor and study the word.

Isa 66:2 But to this man I will look, even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word.

I would say the Bible is not the only draw card. According to Jesus, the main draw card to Christianity should be the love expressed by Christians. Unfortunately, I acknowledge Christians as a whole has fallen short in this area.

But Your post is a fine example of strawmanning. You persist in the false argument that I'm trying to make a case out of little errors that don't in themselves mean that God didn't care whether the Book He relied on to tell us about Him and His Plan for us was convincingly coherent or not, but are just slips of memory or copying that don't matter.

The examples you've presented has lead me to believe that all information needs to be factually correct. But I'll retract my statement.

The nativities (as I've said before) being the touchstone case.

I consider this is such a trivial example that even if we throw out those accounts, I fail to see how it impacts any significant (or even insignificant) doctrine. Would this not be an example of your requirement that all accounts be factually correct?

You may recall the posting about Two Jerichoes. That is actually a middling bad one. One or two angels at the tomb is fairly easily dismissed. Sinking Simon not related by any others (at least not in connection with walking on water), takes more adroit expkanation. The tomb - guard, the walking dead, the lack of an anointing in Luke , are all more or less serious discrepancies or contradictions. The thing about the 'touchstone' cases are that they prove (to any reasonable person) conflicting stories that are mutually destructive.

I would disagree that they are serious in that they do not affect any core doctrine.

We still haven't heard a reasonable argument for why God communicating directly with multiple people (not 'everyone') today is not a better method than trusting to an old collection of writings.

A written record is accessible by everyone, whereas direct communication is limited to a few. So, it's a better method since it can reach more people.

When a claim about the world or an event is made in the Bible that can be easily falsified, how trustworthy does that make the Bible?

At a minimum, it takes the first step in making claims that are falsifiable, unlike other religious texts that makes unfalsifiable claims. The authors of the Bible are sticking their neck out with claims that could be verified. If I were to write anything to try to fool others, I would not take such a risk.

As for testing these claims whether they are true or not would require more investigation. For me, a global flood is an example where it needed testing in its validity. This is one whopper of a claim and something that is objectively testable.

And I hardly need labour that Genesis as a record of factual events ought to have been relegated to the Myth

Depends on what you mean by myth. Do you mean a story that is 0% true, 100% true, or somewhere in between? I believe most myths are rooted in some historical event, person, thing. Yes, embellishments are added to it over time and could then take on an outlandish tale. A trivial example is Santa Claus. Is there some fat person in a red suit flying around in a sleigh on Christmas eve and jumping down chimneys? But, there was a St Nicholas which is at the root of the Santa myth. People joke about a imaginary unicorn, but there could have even been an actual unicorn like animal that existed before.

Pilate did not look much like the Pilate of History - a very tough and ruthless guy.

History is not very objective, no matter what the source. One sides hero is another sides enemy. Neither will paint an objective picture.

I might mention that the two supposed sepulchres in Jerusalem are likely old Hasmonean tombs and were vacated in Jesus' time,

I highly doubt many of the tourist sites are authentic.

[Eloi]

Given human limitations of writing any book (...)

Humans have "limitations of writing any book" BUT God has NOT limitation in controlling what he wants written in his name.

[TRANSPONDER]

When errancy leads to dispute and people bickering over the word of God, isn't that damaging and counterproductive? If God truly wants everyone to join the club and the bible is the only draw-card, then you would expect it to be the best advocate possible. As it is now, the Bible gives too much cause to doubt its legitimacy. Surely that's not a good thing.

Given human limitations of writing any book, it's probably the best that could be hoped for. But what is the source of the bickering? I would submit the majority is not the Bible per se, but all the baggage that surrounds it. I lead a children's Bible memorization program that has around 40 kids in it. And even they can grasp the basic message of the Bible. It does not require any advanced education to understand the fundamental points of it. Yes, as you explore it more, it gets quite complex. But, it's not necessary to grasp it or understand it all to have a relationship with God.

Yes, God desires for none to perish, but it's a two way street. People have to also seek him with a humble heart and honor and study the word.

Isa 66:2 But to this man I will look, even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word.

I would say the Bible is not the only draw card. According to Jesus, the main draw card to Christianity should be the love expressed by Christians. Unfortunately, I acknowledge Christians as a whole has fallen short in this area.

But Your post is a fine example of strawmanning. You persist in the false argument that I'm trying to make a case out of little errors that don't in themselves mean that God didn't care whether the Book He relied on to tell us about Him and His Plan for us was convincingly coherent or not, but are just slips of memory or copying that don't matter.

The examples you've presented has lead me to believe that all information needs to be factually correct. But I'll retract my statement.

The nativities (as I've said before) being the touchstone case.

I consider this is such a trivial example that even if we throw out those accounts, I fail to see how it impacts any significant (or even insignificant) doctrine. Would this not be an example of your requirement that all accounts be factually correct?

You may recall the posting about Two Jerichoes. That is actually a middling bad one. One or two angels at the tomb is fairly easily dismissed. Sinking Simon not related by any others (at least not in connection with walking on water), takes more adroit expkanation. The tomb - guard, the walking dead, the lack of an anointing in Luke , are all more or less serious discrepancies or contradictions. The thing about the 'touchstone' cases are that they prove (to any reasonable person) conflicting stories that are mutually destructive.

I would disagree that they are serious in that they do not affect any core doctrine.

We still haven't heard a reasonable argument for why God communicating directly with multiple people (not 'everyone') today is not a better method than trusting to an old collection of writings.

A written record is accessible by everyone, whereas direct communication is limited to a few. So, it's a better method since it can reach more people.

When a claim about the world or an event is made in the Bible that can be easily falsified, how trustworthy does that make the Bible?

At a minimum, it takes the first step in making claims that are falsifiable, unlike other religious texts that makes unfalsifiable claims. The authors of the Bible are sticking their neck out with claims that could be verified. If I were to write anything to try to fool others, I would not take such a risk.

As for testing these claims whether they are true or not would require more investigation. For me, a global flood is an example where it needed testing in its validity. This is one whopper of a claim and something that is objectively testable.

And I hardly need labour that Genesis as a record of factual events ought to have been relegated to the Myth

Depends on what you mean by myth. Do you mean a story that is 0% true, 100% true, or somewhere in between? I believe most myths are rooted in some historical event, person, thing. Yes, embellishments are added to it over time and could then take on an outlandish tale. A trivial example is Santa Claus. Is there some fat person in a red suit flying around in a sleigh on Christmas eve and jumping down chimneys? But, there was a St Nicholas which is at the root of the Santa myth. People joke about a imaginary unicorn, but there could have even been an actual unicorn like animal that existed before.

Pilate did not look much like the Pilate of History - a very tough and ruthless guy.

History is not very objective, no matter what the source. One sides hero is another sides enemy. Neither will paint an objective picture.

I might mention that the two supposed sepulchres in Jerusalem are likely old Hasmonean tombs and were vacated in Jesus' time,

I highly doubt many of the tourist sites are authentic.

I must say I'm impressed by the way you field several opponents at once. I'll just do mine, of course. First, I believe I have always made it clear that the errancy case (for me, at least) doesn't rely on minor errors. Not even on easily explainable ones. They have to be serious contradictions. Secondly, the rather vague 'all information' needs tightening up. No. Minor errors in the Bible could be put down to copying errors. Even less minor ones could at least be argued with the well known 'eyewitness errors'. Though it raises a question (which I've mentioned before) of just how could the eyewitnesses, or at least those like mark and Luke who supposedly heard it from eyewitnesses, not have heard about the tomb - guard, for instance? And the worst contradictions are those describing the same event, but tell quite different stories. That can't be waved away as eyewitness error.

The point about the two Jerichos is that the 'two Jerichos' claim, if it doesn't explain the contradiction, leaves the contradiction in place, and (in fact reinforces the suspicion - in fact evidence - that Luke plays fast and loose with his material; and we can tell why: it makes it look less 'set up' if it happens when Jesus arrives. Clearly 'core doctrine' is nothing to the point and is at best irrelevant and ,at worst, an attempt at misdirection, with ignoring it so long as it doesn't undermine Christian doctrine somewhere in the middle and you are welcome to it..

As to Genesis, you can define a myth however you like. The only point that matters at all is the case that it didn't really happen.

Your point about Pilate is a good point - though I suspect not one that you will care for. Yes, the greedy and ruthless Pilate of Josephus and Philo has been rewritten by the Gospels to be a rather weak appeaser who wants to free Jesus but is blackmailed into executing him by the Sanhedrin threatening to report him to the Emperor. Though the probability is that Sejanus was running Rome at the time with the Emperor holidaying on Capri and Pilate had nothing to fear from his pal in Rome. No. It was just the way the character had to be rewritten so that Jesus' death could be blamed on the Jews while getting Rome (who actually did it) off the hook. This, in case you missed the point, being more evidence of Whom it was wrote, or at least adapted, the Jesus - story in the first place.

Your St. Nick example is excellent. King Arthur is another and Troy a third. These are reliably based on true persons, but there are huge mythical elements that bury the original real historical thing. Jesus is a fourth example.

I doubt the Holy land sites myself. I had an idea to visit Israel myself (mainly to get an El Al drinks - stirrer to add to my collection) But you wouldn't find me buying postcards along the Via Dolorosa or taking selfies at the Sepulchre, as they about as real as Disneyland or Hamm's Ark. Mount of Olives and Capernaum for me. I believe those. And forget about Bethlehem.

[Diagoras]

We still haven't heard a reasonable argument for why God communicating directly with multiple people (not 'everyone') today is not a better method than trusting to an old collection of writings.

A written record is accessible by everyone, whereas direct communication is limited to a few. So, it's a better method since it can reach more people.

For this to be a sound and logical argument, you would have to show:

a) an indirect form of communication is no less clear than a direct one;
b) the clarity and truthfulness of any communication has no bearing on its utility;
c) God is limited in his ability to communicate with only a 'few' people - despite being 'omnipresent'.
d) everyone takes the same message from this written record.

When a claim about the world or an event is made in the Bible that can be easily falsified, how trustworthy does that make the Bible?

At a minimum, it takes the first step in making claims that are falsifiable, unlike other religious texts that makes unfalsifiable claims. The authors of the Bible are sticking their neck out with claims that could be verified. If I were to write anything to try to fool others, I would not take such a risk.

As for testing these claims whether they are true or not would require more investigation. For me, a global flood is an example where it needed testing in its validity. This is one whopper of a claim and something that is objectively testable.

<bolding mine>

More than has already been done, do you mean?

You've already agreed in this thread that attempting to falsify a claim is the best way to test it, yet I don't see you rushing out to find any counter-argument to the 'whopper of a claim'. Here's one for a start.

I don't think the writers of the Old Testament set out to fool anyone (although I have doubts about the Gospels), but were merely trying to make sense of the natural world using the primitive means at their disposal.

If the Bible 'makes claims that are falsifiable', and you have the means to investigate those claims, why not do so - and do so repeatedly? Stating that you listened to someone give a lecture at college a few years ago and that you became convinced on the strength of that is wilfully avoiding the exercise of falsifying the (Global Flood) claim.

[TRANSPONDER]

Very good. There is, of course, a difficulty in pinning down a case to be unarguable. The Flood for instance requires an expert in Geology to do that, and I'm not one. I've just picked up some wiggles in apologetics. The Creationist side are ingenious in finding counter -arguments like the 'cloud- cover' apologetic, the Ice - shell apologetic, and any number of hypotheses about the Ark being seaworthy, getting all the species onto it, where the water came from and where it went (though the 'sea under China' is easily dealt with), and the apologetic seems to move towards the actual evolutionary explanation, but all crammed into a thousand year period from the Flood to the first civilisations, when the biosphere sees to be roughly what we'd recognize.

It seems that the name of the game is to sideline what is more probable and poise the case on what is unarguably provable. That's why I like the atheist apologetic that there was nothing to eat. Everything and everyone would have been dead of starvation in a month and even grass growing on mud and Carnivores scavenging corpses will only go so far. And the Unwritten Rule seems to be that you can't have God magic a biosphere, and we can guess why No, the best ploy there is simply not talk about it. Though I have had one impudent denial in the past - 'it is in the Bible, so it must have happened somehow'.