Do Fabulous Bible Stories Prove Errancy?

[JoeMama]

Do stories like the one in Numbers, about a donkey scolding his master, show that the Bible cannot be believed in its entirety?

Here is the donkey story:

Numbers 22:21-30

21 Balaam was riding on his donkey…23 When the donkey…turned off the road into a field Balaam beat it to get it back on the road. 25 When the donkey…pressed close to the wall, crushing Balaam’s foot against it…he beat the donkey again. When the donkey lay down under Balaam, he was angry and beat it with his staff. 28 Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and it said to Balaam,

“What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?” 29 Balaam answered the donkey, “You have made a fool of me! If only I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now.” 30 The donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?”

[TRANSPONDER]

The incredulity is justified; snakes and donkeys do not talk.

It is justified. That doesn't mean it didn't happen but we all have a baseline of things we know to be at least possible, and we tend to classify anything not in that library as fantastical. It's perfectly reasonable; it's the way we all do things. And people doing this are wrong all the time but they're still 100% justified in their doubt.

That said, I get in trouble for doing this in my daily life, because there are exceptions we're expected to trust with little to no evidence, and I don't. It's to the point where I have to lie and say I do trust, just to get along. One example is that which foods are healthy and which foods are bad for you changes every day and yet I'm expected to trust "the experts" on it. You know who I think the experts are? People who are doing, where I can bloody see it. Bodybuilders ignored the slander cast upon eggs and ate them anyway. Now the experts don't say those bad things about eggs anymore, not with the certainty they once did. I always ignored the "experts" and trusted the bodybuilders.

This is called the fallacy of an argument from incredulity. It is a form of circular reasoning. That is, it saying, “I don’t believe X because X is not true, and I know that X is not true because I don’t believe in X.” In this specific case X is “miraculous events.”

So this argument essentially says, “I don’t believe in miraculous events because miraculous events don’t happen, and I know any claims of miraculous events are false because I don’t believe in miraculous events.

If I tell you I have a unicorn in my back yard, you will not believe me, because a unicorn is not in the library of things you know can exist. If I tell you there's a dog in my back yard, there's not the same reason to doubt.

Yes it is a fallacy, in that you're correct, Argument from Incredulity is a fallacy, but it probably shouldn't be. It's something logicians don't really want to touch with a ten-foot pole because we're all doing it, all the time, as we can see with the unicorn, but they'd have us believe it's never justified.

This is the extraordinary evidence - thing. I know that people sniff at science as it changes its'mind about whether tomatoes cure cancer or poison us. These debates go on all the time (and i suspect can be overdone in the reporting) but if someone said their tomatoes talked to them, we would require some convincing proof that this was so. Therefore Biblical claims of talking tomatoes (or snakes or donkeys) require more than just an old book because we know how the world works.

[TRANSPONDER]

Do stories like the one in Numbers, about a donkey scolding his master, show that the Bible cannot be believed in its entirety?

Here is the donkey story:

Numbers 22:21-30

21 Balaam was riding on his donkey…23 When the donkey…turned off the road into a field Balaam beat it to get it back on the road. 25 When the donkey…pressed close to the wall, crushing Balaam’s foot against it…he beat the donkey again. When the donkey lay down under Balaam, he was angry and beat it with his staff. 28 Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and it said to Balaam,

“What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?” 29 Balaam answered the donkey, “You have made a fool of me! If only I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now.” 30 The donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?”

The bible is meant to be read with spiritual understanding not human wisdom ( 1 Corinthians 2:14 ) . Animals have better instincts than humans and are able to see and feel when their is danger . In this story the donkey could sense and see the Angel of the Lord . This was to show that God grants visions to those who are interested in him ( Daniel 10:7 ) (Acts 9:7 ) . Balaam was so concerned about him stature and promotion that he was unable to see yet being a prophet that has been given spiritual gifts . The donkey was symbolic of being a servant of God in which it was sensitive to God direction by not being disobedient and was a victim of the wrath of the ungodly which was Balaam . The donkey being given the ability to speak because it was facing repeated abuse without a reason from someone that was a prophet . This was to show Balaam that the treatment of the donkey was unholy and ungodly . The other instances in which animals have spoken in the bible was the serpent in Genesis and the Eagle in Revelations .

What this comes down to, and the only real point, is your claim that a miracle was done. Reading the passage I cannot credit that a miracle would be done just so the abused donkey could threaten the owner if only he could hold a sword. After all, God doesn't change and his view is 'slaves,serve even unjust masters' because that is symbolic of our relations with God.

So even symbolically, the story may make sense in terms of human morals, but not in terms of telling us anything about God or miracles, because the Book has nothing authoritative to say about either. Not from where I'm standing.

[Adonai Yahweh]

In Genesis 3:14 " The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life " . So here the snake has been cursed to crawl for the rest of their life , scientists have found that snakes have the capacity to grow legs but they have mutation in their genes that is inhibiting them to do so check out this National Geographic article and watch the youtube video .

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie ... -evolution

[TRANSPONDER]

The fossil record shows how snakes lost their legs - through an evolutionary process, gradually. Not because Gof magicked one to have a chat with Eve and then punished it by taking its' legs away, because a snake would not have been able to do other than walk on its' belly even when it was losing its' legs.

[Purple Knight]

This is the extraordinary evidence - thing. I know that people sniff at science as it changes its'mind about whether tomatoes cure cancer or poison us. These debates go on all the time (and i suspect can be overdone in the reporting) but if someone said their tomatoes talked to them, we would require some convincing proof that this was so. Therefore Biblical claims of talking tomatoes (or snakes or donkeys) require more than just an old book because we know how the world works.

I agree with require as in, I don't know such a thing even can happen, so it is reasonable for me not to believe it. It could still have happened and thousands of things not in our libraries of possible happen every day.

I agree about ten billion percent with your point in your next post about how God said to serve even unjust masters. Either a donkey is set above a Christian in the scheme of things as a creature that ought not be mistreated, or this is just the type of semi-inconsistency you come up against when you don't universalize your morals and expect some people to make all the sacrifice. It's not genuinely inconsistent, but it's bound to seem so and to create confusion because these are stories to learn from, and if the reader is supposed to just take infinite abuse, I don't see how he's supposed to be cognizant of the fact that Balaam was wrong to abuse his donkey.

If the reader is just supposed to absorb all the abuse and say, "Thank you sir may I have another?!" then whatever moral the story had is going to be lost if I empathise with the wrong character. If I have to figure out whether I'm supposed to be Balaam or the donkey (It's obviously Balaam in this example) to get the moral right, then that's one more obstacle to divining the correct moral. And if it doesn't matter, then that's twice the lessons I can glean.

[Miles]

In Genesis 3:14 " The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life " .

But being a serpent (snake), which god recognized it was, it would have already been going on its belly. Now if god had said to some lizard “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life" that would make sense. But as it stands, Genesis 3:14 does not.


.

[Adonai Yahweh]

What this comes down to, and the only real point, is your claim that a miracle was done. Reading the passage I cannot credit that a miracle would be done just so the abused donkey could threaten the owner if only he could hold a sword. After all, God doesn't change and his view is 'slaves,serve even unjust masters' because that is symbolic of our relations with God.

So even symbolically, the story may make sense in terms of human morals, but not in terms of telling us anything about God or miracles, because the Book has nothing authoritative to say about either. Not from where I'm standing.

That's incorrect Numbers 22: 29 " Then Balaam said to the donkey , Because you have made a mockery of me ! If there had been a sword in my hand , I would have killed you by now !" . The donkey didn't threaten Balaam . Please provide the scriptural reference to which God said slaves serve unjust masters . Just as original author of the post gave scriptural reference , you can do the same . The story supports the scripture in (Genesis 1 : 21-25) in which God created land and sea creatures and said he found it to be good , in which he affirmed and sustained the creation of animals . The authority and dominion that he gave mankind was to look after the creation which was the animals and the environment ( Genesis 1:27-31) . In which we have spectacularly failed in

[brunumb]

In Genesis 3:14 " The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life " .

To which the serpent replied "What are you mad at me for? You made me, you gave me this nature. What more could you expect from an unintelligent lowly animal? Sheesh!"

[TRANSPONDER]

This is the extraordinary evidence - thing. I know that people sniff at science as it changes its'mind about whether tomatoes cure cancer or poison us. These debates go on all the time (and i suspect can be overdone in the reporting) but if someone said their tomatoes talked to them, we would require some convincing proof that this was so. Therefore Biblical claims of talking tomatoes (or snakes or donkeys) require more than just an old book because we know how the world works.

I agree with require as in, I don't know such a thing even can happen, so it is reasonable for me not to believe it. It could still have happened and thousands of things not in our libraries of possible happen every day.

I agree about ten billion percent with your point in your next post about how God said to serve even unjust masters. Either a donkey is set above a Christian in the scheme of things as a creature that ought not be mistreated, or this is just the type of semi-inconsistency you come up against when you don't universalize your morals and expect some people to make all the sacrifice. It's not genuinely inconsistent, but it's bound to seem so and to create confusion because these are stories to learn from, and if the reader is supposed to just take infinite abuse, I don't see how he's supposed to be cognizant of the fact that Balaam was wrong to abuse his donkey.

If the reader is just supposed to absorb all the abuse and say, "Thank you sir may I have another?!" then whatever moral the story had is going to be lost if I empathise with the wrong character. If I have to figure out whether I'm supposed to be Balaam or the donkey (It's obviously Balaam in this example) to get the moral right, then that's one more obstacle to divining the correct moral. And if it doesn't matter, then that's twice the lessons I can glean.

Certainly the story may be read as one person's argument (presented as a fable) about the treatment of animals or indeed other persons. The 'Good things in the Bible' apologetic only makes the Bible no more or no less than any other book and is open to human question and assessment like any other book.

Putting the rest into a less funnelled and more holistic view, there are many possibilities,unrecorded occurrences and claims of things that don't normally happen. Today we wouldn't accept a claim about a talking donkey or snake (more than the usual animal body language) without proof verified to the limit. There is no valid reason to accept it because it is in an old book and we can't check it. Especially as the story itself makes no sense in the context of what a god might reasonably do, and the book is false of what looks like wrong information.

It seems to be hardly a problem to reject it as a fable, but religions make people buy into all sorts of stuff simply because it is presented as religious scripture.

[Adonai Yahweh]

Refer to my post 13 snakes were meant to have limbs according to science