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
• Start discussing philosophy / Summary argument on philosophy
• Start discussing creation of universe / Summary argument universe was created

[nobspeople]

[Replying to POI in post #140]

If such a God does exist, He expresses that 'homosexuality' is an abomination.

I'd say that it's the writers of the story making that claim on behalf of god, being as god never wrote the bible. Some even say the bible isn't without error. So it makes more sense to say some dead men said god said homosexuality(not the original term) is an abomination. Rather or not god agrees (or even cares) remains to be seen. It seems, to believe that god thinks homosexuality is an abomination, it taking on faith on what one's been told by others.

Aside from God hating homosexuality, why is homosexuality a sin?

Perhaps it's not - at least to god.

[TRANSPONDER]

So you tell us that you don't work from faith but from evidence. We shall see.

From this thread, where have I appealed to faith?

I said 'we shall see'. That means I'll point it out when it becomes clear. I can be sure that Faith is the basis of your apologetics because I have seen that it always is with theist apologetics.

So far (with the resurrection thread) I have seen a dismissal of evidence and argument that looks very faith -based to me. I can't recall a single thing you conceded from the dodgy sanhedrin charge, the dubious spear thrust and the odd behaviour of Arimathea to the dubious angelic message, the appearance to the women contradiction and the dodgy tomb -guard claim just to name a few.

I don't recall debating this recently. What thread are you referring to?

It was on the resurrection -thread, as I recall, It may have been someone else. Excuse me if it was not you. But that can happen when we get the 'where did I say that?' stuff.

Where is the flood level with everything from Trilobites to T rex and indeed sheep and horses in it?

I'll say at the onset that the flood theory is not able to answer for everything. But, neither can standard geology theories.

There we go again. Trying to pretend that serious objections to the Bible and its' apologetics with real reason to doubt their validity are on a par with validated science which will always throw up new questions to be answered. What is known reliably to be so about geology (that it was created over millions of years and not 7 days) and it does not show any real evidence for a Flood and in fact evidence against, cannot be dismissed because of some 'questions' that remain to be answered. It is not on a par with the flood scenario being contradicted by the supposed flood levels Not being a jumble of all Kinds (as it ought be if Genesis was true) and (attempts to play the 'precipitation leads to strata' and 'more able animals get higher in the flood levels' cards failing, we get your response; the 'there is some explanation, we just don't know what' apologetic. In other words, 'it's true, even if the evidence is against it'. That's a faith claim if you wanted one.

I have a certain amount of experience in apologetics but I'm no expert in geology or palaeontology

That makes two of us.

BTW, could you check your formatting of your posts? It's hard to decipher what is being quoted and what you are adding in your posts. In your last post, it makes it seem I wrote the entire thing.

The previous one of mine wasn't to you at all. I thought that was so obvious I didn't think it necessary to quote the post I was commenting on.

[Difflugia]

BTW, could you check your formatting of your posts? It's hard to decipher what is being quoted and what you are adding in your posts. In your last post, it makes it seem I wrote the entire thing.

The previous one of mine wasn't to you at all. I thought that was so obvious I didn't think it necessary to quote the post I was commenting on.

Hopefully this doesn't feel like a "piling on," but I've been trying to follow the thread (specifically including your input) and your quote-response formatting is difficult to follow. A number of your posts have had mismatched [quote] and [/quote] tags, making it unclear which words are yours.

[brunumb]

It's qualitatively different from any other book in human history in that:

• It's the most published book in the world
• It has influenced music
• It has impacted much of literature
• It has inspired artists throughout history
• Presidents swear into office with the Bible
• Witnesses sometimes still swear on Bibles in courts

These might not prove it's the "word of God", but undeniably the Bible is qualitatively different from any book in human history.

But it is not the book itself that accounts for your list, it is the result of the direct influence of Christians. Your list does not add any credibility to the contents of the book. Almost none of it is of any significance in a non-Christian society.

[TRANSPONDER]

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?

How? Out of perceived necessity. It's obviously not inerrant, as anyone who's read it without prior indoctrination can see; as I understand it that notion was a relatively recent invention in reaction to modernism, liberalism and progress in the sciences and literary criticism. Ancient religious folk who were literate and reasonably intelligent could obviously see various problems with the traditional Writings of their culture, but there's also a bit of a problem with believing in a God who offers no revelation or guidance whatsoever! The rationalization offered in Deuteronomy 18 is that if God spoke to the people directly they would surely die, so therefore his message had to come through human intermediaries. One of the qualifications offered is that if the message was not true it couldn't be from Yahweh, but obviously that little detail got swept under rug sometime before the canonization of (perhaps the most brazen example of obviously false prophecy in the Tanakh) Ezekiel.

In a different but even more problematic vein, the earliest Christians started to insist that now, finally, they were all being filled with the Holy Spirit and therefore God could and would speak to them all directly as promised regarding the 'new covenant' of Jeremiah 34. But evidently and in the end obviously, that hasn't turned out to be the case and Christians soon found that despite Paul's insistence that "we serve in the new way of the Spirit not in the old way of the written code" and "the letter kills but the Spirit gives life," they actually still did need the Writings to make sure that at least some of them were at least vaguely on the same page theologically. The Spirit just wasn't doing the job. And that's okay; if their religion was helping them get through their lives as decent people, and the bible was the best they had to help them out with that, more power to them. If they'd paid a little more attention to it, maybe we never would have got the Roman Catholic Church

So basically the attitude would be that "God must be guiding us, and this is the best we've got - contradictions, false prophecies and all - so we've got to treat it as God's guidance and make the most of it." And at times that could directly or indirectly be a very productive attitude: The proverbial tendency within rabbinic Judaism of analyzing, reinterpreting and endlessly debating the Tanakh and Talmud has surely been one of if not the major contributors to a cultural climate which has produced an astonishingly disproportionate number of Nobel laureates. In a slightly different vein the Protestant emphasis on the bible and personal religious accountability may have been a major cause behind about half of the spread of democracy around the world: "A brief version of Woodberry’s theoretical argument goes as follows: conversionary Protestants wanted ordinary people to be i) able to read the Bible and ii) actively involved in their church. Yet in their attempts to spread their faith, conversionary Protestants were in effect facilitating the spread of mass education, mass printing, and civil society. These byproducts of religious activism in turn led to the emergence of actors and conditions favorable to democracy: civic associations, political parties, religious liberties, and mass political participation. Hence, according to Woodberry, democracy was not the autonomous triumph of modern forms of political organization and activity – like political parties, labor movements, and mass education. Rather, these modern political actors were the byproduct of a very traditional activity, namely, religious conversion and competition."

The big issue over the last couple of centuries, to my mind, is that while it may once have been a plausible competitor for the title, the bible is not the best we've got any more, not by any stretch of the imagination. It provides little factual information about our world (the challenges of geological and biological sciences to a bible-based worldview were one of if not the biggest causes for the rise of reactionary fundamentalism and inerrancy doctrines); its social models and general morality of genocides and slavery (in both the 'old' and 'new' testaments) are woefully outdated to the point of being pretty much the most evil things in human history; its existential proposals of an ultimate eternal reward versus eternal punishment are pretty much the most evil thing we can even imagine and the cause of untold psychological suffering for many. One aspect of the morality preached by Jesus - a conception of love requiring that if you can help someone you must, to the point of literally giving everything more or less down to your daily bread and the clothes on your back as long as anyone else remains unclothed or unfed - may well be unsurpassed (and was a major inspiration for the likes of Tolstoy and Gandhi), but is so lofty that virtually no-one actually follows it seriously, least of all Christians!

There's certainly some value in poring over the myths and legends of ancient cultures, their occasional intersections with history, their social theories and radically different notions of morality, and the theologies they found useful for overcoming their existential fears. But while the grounds for considering an obviously-errant collection of Writings to be 'authoritative' and 'inspired' (that "God must be guiding us, and this is the best we've got, so we've got to treat it as God's guidance and make the most of it") may have made some sense a few centuries ago and may even have produced more good in the world than bad, they quite simply and obviously don't stand up to even cursory scrutiny any more.

Maybe now is the time for Christians to have another try at asking the Spirit for guidance instead? To look more into their own hearts and minds for what is right and good, rather than to the written code?

Very good indeed. The way it is is, the Bible is (on evidence) incorrect or at least dubious. That means that there is no reason to take any of it on Faith and it is open to doubt and question, like any other book. This is of course why Bible apologists protest that it is not a history book or book of history. So what? I long wondered what that was supposed to prove but I reckon now the idea is to somehow excuse it from any critical examination and insist that it be taken on Faith. And of course all questions and doubts ignored.

In any country that is not a theocracy, that is not going to work, and shouldn't. So what do people do when it is shown to very errant and in fact wrong? They may stop believing in it. Job done.

They may carry on believing in it and either deny everything or excuse everything (metaphor, they wrote differently back then, God had to go along with the customs) which doesn't stand up to Real questions, and they may either opt for denial or, see below (a flowchart would be appreciated ) opt for a bit of cherrypicking :-

"God put the knowledge into their heads but the writers made some mistakes" or the often equivocated evasion: "They wrote as fallacious men (historians) and made some mistakes, but God inspired them" or as Otseng, I recall argued, God may not have inspired them and they made many mistakes, but it is still believable.

It isn't hard to see that NONE of those arguments, apologetic or frankly, excuses, will work, as the Bible is very much open to doubt and serious question. My particular argument (so I don't apologise for banging away at it) is that redaction criticism of the Gospels (which are still generally accepted as a credible record of events, even in skeptical Authority circles) show that they are not only not credible but are demonstrably fictitious and moreover written by Greek (or Greekified) Paulinist Christians. It is my work and mission to put this understanding out there before I cash my chips in. Because, we know (or should if we have our eyes open) that Religion knows that it has lost the evidence - debate and it's only hope is to control what people are told. We have to ensure it's both sides, not just the Religious side.

[otseng]

If we accept the bible has errors, omissions, contradictions... how are we to determine which items are 'correct' and which are 'in error'?

Same as with any source of authority. There is no authority that is inerrant - government, teachers, professors, police, managers, doctors, politicians, preachers, or even the pope. Though authorities have weight in what they say, not everything they say will be correct. But, that doesn't mean everything they say is incorrect. So, we need to put on our thinking caps and do some research to find out the truth. It's similar with the Bible. We need to dig a bit deeper and discern what is the truth.

Problems undermining the perceived main purpose/s of the bible - These are the issues which are really serious, to my mind. Is the bible meant to teach us to love one another? It endorses and in cases actively commands genocide, slavery, eternal torture and the like, in numerous different sections! Is the bible meant to promote a relationship with God?

I would agree with the thrust of your argument. The strongest arugments against my case would be fundamental flaws in the core teachings and doctrines of the Bible.

It's also worth noting that as a religion Christianity not only doesn't need biblical inerrancy or biblical authority; strictly speaking it doesn't even need a resurrection or a heaven or even a God. Presumably most Christians get plenty of value out of their church community, the cultural trappings of literature, music etc., the moral framework and existential values to be found in their stories...

Lol... yes, I'd even agree with this, with the caveat that this would be cultural Christianity (which arguably is probably the dominant expression of Christianity).

But, this is not what I'm arguing for. I'm arguing for Christianity that takes the Bible as authoritative in their lives.

I'd hazard a guess that in most cases Christians who refuse to acknowledge factual errors or logical contradictions aren't at their core doing so out of dishonesty.

There are probably several reasons for this. One is they haven't really thought through it or seriously studied the Bible (which probably is most of the Christian population). Another possibility is having confirmation bias as Diagoras referred to. Or if they have really thought through it, they don't want to be considered a heretic and lose their job or position by challenging the doctrine of inerrancy. Probably in most cases, they then become liberal Christians and deny the authority of the entire Bible or an atheist and reject any authority of the Bible.

In my case, I do reject inerrancy, but believe in the authority of the entire Bible and accept many of the fundamentalist/conservative interpretations of the Bible (literal 6 days of creation, literal Adam/Even, global flood, virgin birth, miracles of Jesus, bodily resurrection, etc).

Very good. I'd only remark that I DO consider the resurrection fundamental to Christianity. If that is not true, or there is real cogent reason to see it as an invented claim, then the foundation of Christianity collapses more surely than any edifice built on sand and only Faith -based denial will keep Belief going.

I agree with this. Christianity can be falsified by showing Jesus did not resurrect from the dead.

[otseng]

Your list does not add any credibility to the contents of the book. Almost none of it is of any significance in a non-Christian society.

Yes, I realize that. My answer was to simply the question how is the Bible qualitatively different than any other human literature. As for the credibility of the contents, we'll have to explore that more. But, it seems like one major credibility problem is a global flood, which looks like I'll have to get into here in this thread.

My particular argument (so I don't apologise for banging away at it) is that redaction criticism of the Gospels (which are still generally accepted as a credible record of events, even in skeptical Authority circles) show that they are not only not credible but are demonstrably fictitious and moreover written by Greek (or Greekified) Paulinist Christians. It is my work and mission to put this understanding out there before I cash my chips in. Because, we know (or should if we have our eyes open) that Religion knows that it has lost the evidence - debate and it's only hope is to control what people are told. We have to ensure it's both sides, not just the Religious side.

Interesting position. Could you proceed with elaborating on your case?

[bluegreenearth]

I agree with this. Christianity can be falsified by showing Jesus did not resurrect from the dead.

In the 21st century, the only reasonable way I'm aware of to demonstrate that Jesus did not resurrect from the dead would be to discover 1) the bones of Jesus and 2) a mechanism by which to conclusively identify those bones are the remains of Jesus. For the bones of Jesus to have remained accessible and identifiable after ~2000 years would almost be a miracle in and of itself. If the bones of Jesus existed at some point in time but have since decomposed into an unrecognizable form as is the case for most skeletal remains, then it is neither reasonable to expect his bones will still exist to be discoverable for them to serve as disconfirming evidence nor to conclude that the unavailability of his identifiable bones functions as supporting evidence of a resurrection. Furthermore, if someone claimed to have discovered the bones of Jesus, not even a DNA analysis will serve to conclusively identify those bones as the remains of Jesus unless there were a known sample of Jesus's DNA available from which to compare. So, if archeologists were fortunate enough to uncover the bones of a 1st century Jewish man named "Yeshua ben Yosef" (i.e. Jesus son of Joseph) who had been crucified, there is no way they could conclusively demonstrate this individual was the same Jesus described in the NT texts. Therefore, it is neither reasonable to expect the bones of the NT Jesus to be identifiable upon their discovery nor to conclude that the inability to confirm the identity of the individual whose bones were discovered functions as supporting evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Consequently, Christianity would remain unfalsified and unfalsifiable.

[Diagoras]

I believe everything I've presented so far is based on objective evidence and rational argumentation.

My position on this is direct communication between God and man is possible. I'm not so sure it's "optimal", because we have instances of people directly hearing from God and didn't result in any change in belief.

Optimal doesn’t have to mean perfect though – those unchanging people might just be never going to change.

And accepting the testimony of a single person who has claimed to have heard from God is definitely not optimal.

Agreed. Which is why I’ve consistently raised the point that direct communication with multiple people would be clearer, more authoritative and immediately verifiable.

Never claimed there was only a single example. As I mentioned, the book contains multiple examples, not just one. I guess I could go through the book and present more from it if necessary.

This was in relation to Chinese characters and the Flood. No need to provide more examples if that one was already the most compelling one to you.

How are they not examples of God directly speaking to disparate cultures? Now, you might not accept these claims, but it is an example of the Chinese and Muslim cultures knowing about God independently from the Bible.

People reporting dreams of Jesus, but claiming to have never heard of him before? Here’s a quick test: complete the following sentence – “Accepting the testimony of a single person who has claimed to have heard from God is definitely not <________>.

To be clear, I'm not arguing the books selected to be in the Bible are authoritative because they were selected to be in the Bible. All I'm saying is there was popular opinion at work in what books was selected as top tier.

Popular opinion, and very likely political expediency. And I’ll note that opinion is still divided today.

The ancient Chinese and modern Muslims are just two examples I've brought up. And I'm sure if I bring up more it'll just be chalked up to coincidences.

If I were uncharitable, I’d think you were doing something akin to ‘poisoning the well’ with that remark. Do you have an example of God directly communicating with more than a single person?

But if God does exist, how can we know any of his qualities? I think there are two ways. One is for God to directly communicate with humans (God speaking audibly) and another is to reveal himself to humans (God incarnating himself to man). And these have been recorded for us in the Bible. In the Old Testament, it's primarily a record of the former. In the New Testament (the gospels in particular), it's a record of the latter of Jesus's life and teachings.

<bolding mine>

Of the two ways you mention, neither has been observed except indirectly through copies and translations of ancient writings. Is this optimal?

The Bible is a book about God written by regular people. And it is subject to the same limitations, flaws, imperfections like all other books.

How trustworthy do you now consider a general science textbook of, say, the 1920’s?

Yes, there are unresolved issues with a global flood. But, I still maintain it is the best explanation so far that we got to explain many geological features (and that includes secular theories).

Taken with your quote directly above this one, I really do struggle with the concept that someone would trust a book written by ‘regular people’ thousands of years ago to be the best modern explanation for any geological feature.

Tell you what – as a very simple exercise, please rank the following three sources in decreasing value for likeliness in being ‘trustworthy and accurate’ for providing an explanation of geologic strata, and provide reasons for your ranking:

1) An 1833 copy of Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell
2) The Bible (KJV)
3) Quantitative Plate Tectonics: Physics of the Earth - Plate Kinematics – Geodynamics 2015 Edition

But, as for the flood actually occurring or not, I do consider that as an impediment for the acceptance of the Bible as authoritative for myself.

So if the evidence points you to a global flood as wholly unlikely, you’d consider the Bible to be untrustworthy?

Suppose we did throw out the Bible, how would you know what God is like? Is he omnipotent or not? Is he omniscient or not? We could rely on the testimony of people who hear directly from God who post on this forum, but would that be an acceptable source?

Well, yes - for those fortunate individuals, but no for the rest of us.

Unless God spoke to multiple people at once, of course. Presumably he could even send an angel to appear in front of the White House during a large public event witnessed by tens of thousands of people directly, plus all the world’s media.

If you happen to have a copy of So Long and Thanks For All the Fish handy, turn to Chapter 36, which starts:

The flying saucer in which Ford Prefect had stowed away had stunned the world. Finally there was no doubt, no possibility of mistake, no hallucinations, no mysterious CIA agents found floating in reservoirs. This time it was real, it was definite. It was quite definitively definite.

We wouldn’t have to rely on a single person’s testimony if an angelic messenger appeared like that, would we?

[TRANSPONDER]

Your list does not add any credibility to the contents of the book. Almost none of it is of any significance in a non-Christian society.

Yes, I realize that. My answer was to simply the question how is the Bible qualitatively different than any other human literature. As for the credibility of the contents, we'll have to explore that more. But, it seems like one major credibility problem is a global flood, which looks like I'll have to get into here in this thread.

My particular argument (so I don't apologise for banging away at it) is that redaction criticism of the Gospels (which are still generally accepted as a credible record of events, even in skeptical Authority circles) show that they are not only not credible but are demonstrably fictitious and moreover written by Greek (or Greekified) Paulinist Christians. It is my work and mission to put this understanding out there before I cash my chips in. Because, we know (or should if we have our eyes open) that Religion knows that it has lost the evidence - debate and it's only hope is to control what people are told. We have to ensure it's both sides, not just the Religious side.

Interesting position. Could you proceed with elaborating on your case?

Certainly. Though this isn't really the thread for it, and I've commented on it elsewhere.
(1) the Gospel is made up. Based on a real person, perhaps, but made up material overlaid. The contradictions (I argue) demonstrate that.

(b) There are clues as to the people who did this. Matthew (the most apparently Jewish of the evangelists) shows (in misread prophecy) that he doesn't understand the OT but even had to read it in Greek. That indicates a Greek Christian, and that even without the Jew -hate.

(c) it is evident that their views then are from Paul - the dismissal of the Law, the verbal attacks on Pharisees and Sadducees. But they go even further than Paul's man -Messiah, of which we get a glimpse in Mark, through an evolution the spirit that descended on the man Jesus to where it was there from conception and in John the man is a mere human container for God in person.

That sums it up and I'll be arguing the evidence for it as I go on.