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

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

Post #1

Post by otseng »

From the On the Bible being inerrant thread:
nobspeople wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:42 amHow 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?
otseng wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 7:08 am 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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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #641

Post by TRANSPONDER »

otseng wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 9:44 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 5:14 pm
If you're saying you always need physical evidence to believe in something, then there's a lot that cannot be believed. Many things are posited to exist through indirect evidence, which is what I'm arguing for with the tower of Babel. One example is we don't have any physical evidence of the Colossus of Rhodes. But that doesn't prove it did not exist.
No we don't. It IS required, but indirect evidence is also relevant.
Do you believe the Colossus of Rhodes did not exist?
I see no reason to disbelieve it. I believe there is historical evidence for it, but if the histories claimed that Apollo posed for the sculptor I wouldn't believe that. Would you? Look I don't deny Ziggurats or even that the Babel story referred to one, probably the one at Babylon, but I don't believe the story about one language being split up because God was bothered by it. Nor do I think it refers to a particularly large ziggurat predating the appearance of proper writing in Egypt or Mesopotamia, let alone the separate languages those writing systems expressed. You have NO real evidence other than claims, maybes and perhaps the evidence will turn up.
But I don't recall you ever addressing the debunk of your 'soft strata' hypothesis as being inadequate to explain the neat rollover of strata, nor that mountain building,
There's nothing to debunk. The soft strata rather explains how it's possible to have "neat" parallel layers in spite of deformations like mountain building.

If all the layers were original solid rock in flat parallel layers, how would it be possible to have "neat" deformations? Think of it this way, suppose we have lasagna noodles stacked up and neatly deformed so it's in the shape of a mountain. Would it be more reasonable the noodles were dry or wet when it was deformed?
I can recall addressing it twice at least. That' seems to be the 'ignoring' problem, The catastrophism of the hydroplate theory would surely jumble up soft strata onto a mess. The geological 'standard model' as you posted it argues that it was already solid strata that could keep the strata shape while being slowly tilted, inverted and even rolled over at geologically slow speeds as postulated for continental drift that pushes up mountains. Not to mention (again) that in the hydroplate theory, the Rockies are on the wrong side of the continent. You may deny the standard geology or dismiss it as 'ad hoc' which is what I call 'science denial', but is the science and your soft strata theory is not.
IF caused by the pressure of the flood waters when the flood burst through, should put the Rockies in the east not the west
It is not the pressure of the flood waters that caused the deformations (mountains). It is the crust hitting the underlaying basalt layer.
otseng wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 9:18 am As the hydroplate eventually hit the underlaying basalt layer when all the subterranean water was gone, it stopped the horizontal movement of the hydroplate. But, the sedimentary layers on top of the hydroplate kept moving due to momentum. It is at this point the sedimentary layers buckled and formed the mountains. Think of it as a pile of rocks on a rail car. The rail car is the hydroplate and the pile of rocks is the sedimentary layers. Then the rail car loses its wheels and grinds to a stop on the railroad tracks. But the rocks on top of the rail car would fly off the rail car.
A geological car - crash does not result in inverted strata still in place. In any case the strata above the Basalt is the planed off (by the Flood) strata of the anomaly, not the supposed 'Flood strata' above. You don't even seem to understand your own theory..
Of course, silence does imply assent.
No, silence does not imply assent. It can mean many other things, including we've already covered this.


It does imply assent in that there is no rebuttal. You can of course ignore and deny everything, but failure to rebut is tacit assent in a debate, or it is in my book.
And while one might argue about when Mesopotamian and Egyptian writing appeared and which was a proper writing -system rather than three dots and a picture of a corn -bale (which might or might not have a linguistic value) the point I made was that these did predate the ziggurats but not the (postulated) date of Babel that you referred to
Sure, I can accept symbols existed prior to the tower of Babel. I'm not arguing symbols came after the tower of Babel, but only written languages.
Only if you opt for a date for Babel ;) like maybe 3,500 or so. But you have no decent evidence for that. None. Whereas the evidence I have implies a spoken Egyptian language along with the culture before this proposed Babel - date and of course before the written language and ziggurats. Of course I can't prove they were talking Egyptian prior to 3,500 BC, but the evidence implies that they were, as part of a continued culture, and there is no evidence that everyone was located in 'Babel' speaking 'Mesopotamian' The diversity of cultures prior to the 4th mill. BC argues against the whole 'Babel' scenario.
However the point of my chronology was that putting it earlier than the Ziggurats still doesn't put it earlier than the Egyptian culture that produced tomb slabs (that led to the step pyramid) or (eventually) written Egyptian and thus the indirect evidence is that Egypt as a pyramid builder culture and Egyptian - speaking culture looks to have been in place long before any feasible 'Babel Tower' event.
Could be. Egyptian culture could have existed along side the tower of Babel. And symbols used in Egypt could have also co-existed. But as for a written language, the earliest evidence of Egyptian language is 2800 BC.

"The use of hieroglyphic writing arose from proto-literate symbol systems in the Early Bronze Age, around the 32nd century BC (Naqada III),[2] with the first decipherable sentence written in the Egyptian language dating to the Second Dynasty (28th century BC)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs

But, "Egyptian language" was more likely influenced by the Sumerian region.

"Geoffrey Sampson stated that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and, probably, [were] invented under the influence of the latter",[23] and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs
Quite a few have proposed Sumerian influence on Egypt, (1) just as others (as you pointed out) suggested the ziggurat influencing the step pyramid. But the idea doesn't help you at all. Just as the step pyramid (with or without the idea of ziggural) was a development of the tombs that already existed and were tombs, not temples, the Babel model has written Egyptian a different language anyway, so 'influence' is neither here nor there. You point to Genesis and say they all went their different ways and then harp on 'influences' one had on the other after the supposed Babel -event.

But I can harp on the continued culture in Egypt that continued so it seems from long before 3,500 BC to long after when the language was written as Egyptian, owing nothing to Mesopotamia which it wouldn't if Babel was true. Don't you see that you have nothing and your attempt to prod science into supporting the Bible just turns around and bites it in the botty?
That together with no real evidence for any such Tower of Babel makes for a better hypothesis than Babel which has nothing as evidence but Genesis.
Before modern archaeology, there was no "real evidence" for many claims of the Bible. Yet, we have constantly been uncovering more things to confirm the historical reliability of the Bible. This is probably what we should go into next after debating the tower of Babel.

And with indirect evidence of the worldwide phenomenon of ziggurats, it's more easily explained by the Biblical account than just a series of coincidences.[/quote]

Which I already debunked. The step pyramid is on all evidence NOT confirmation of the Bible nor are the Temples of the Maya or various mounts and structures. It's coming to something where you point to a pile of earth like a pyramid and say it's evidence of copying ziggurats. You have absolutely nothing. This is what I mean by ignoring. I debunk you and you blandly carry on as though you have proved your point. You have Nothing but some hopes that evidence might turn up one day.
I agree there's no direct evidence, but there's indirect evidence, which I've provided through worldwide replication of ziggurats since ancient times.
The indirect evidence is all against you. The evidence is that languages developed separately before any feasible 'Babel event, the Step pyramid and the Maya temples are nothing to do with ziggurats other than taking inspiration After the supposed Babel event anyway. You have nothing and your 'evidence' debunks your own theory anyway.
As I said, that's irrelevant and a red herring. Whether there was a single original source or different languages arose after humans split up (and nobody knows which it is) the point is that Egyptian predating any feasible Babel event undermines the Babel hypothesis for diversification of human languages.
See above.
Yes, indeed, see my debunk above.
That is, that the Chinese invented their writing and the Sumerians invented theirs
OK, please provide evidence then that the Chinese and Sumerians independently invented their written languages.
Indirect evidence. Same as the Egyptian. The culture is distinct and continuous and of course nowhere near Mesopotamia. So just as with Egypt on the evidence of spoken Egyptian before 3,500 BC, what (indirect) evidence there is suggests that the Language they spoke in China before the supposed Babel event (and nowhere near it) was the Chinese that was later given written form. All the indirect evidence is against a Babel event and you have Nothing for it. I know you can't see it because of Faith in the Bible, and you think your possibles and perhapses and hopes for evidence later, never mind ignoring all the rebuttals allows you to think that you have a case, but you have nothing. Especially when you try to play the 'Do you believe the colossus' card. Desperation.
Diogenes wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:45 pm "Not conclusive?" It's not evidence at all, of anything except men like to build stuff and build something taller than their neighbors' achievement.
You might not believe it's valid evidence or relevant evidence, but it's evidence.
:D A theist on my former board became a laughing -stock for protesting that bad evidence was still "Evidence".
What is strange or illogical that many if not all cultures built tall structures or towers?
I'm not arguing people built tall structure/towers. I'm arguing they all built ziggurats.
[/quote]

They are not ziggurats. They are structures of the kind that man builds and physics dictates the architecture. Good heavens man, you try to argue that Nigerian piles of dirt and Mayan Temples are all 'ziggurats'. You are striving to make vague resemblances into cultural influences. And why, as I said, would these diversified people after Babel go on doing the same thing in written language and architecture when the whole point of the Babel disaster was to put an end to Man's unity? And if you try to make it anything else - then the Bible is not Reliable.

(1) though you are really straining in trying to make ideas that other cultures possibly picked up from Mesopotamia into Egyptians all speaking Sumerian. In any case post Babel, Egyptian and Sumerian would be different anyway, so attempts to argue that they were the same debunks your own Belief - theory.

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

Post #642

Post by Diogenes »

TRANSPONDER wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 6:58 pmA theist on my former board became a laughing -stock for protesting that bad evidence was still "Evidence".
:) Exactly! I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that 'bad evidence,' "evidence" that is not relevant or has no nexus to the proposition being advanced is excluded from consideration. In other words, it is ruled to not be 'evidence' at all.

I HEREBY MOVE that Osteng's entire series of Ziggurat posts be stricken from the record and not be considered as 'evidence' for his unsupported claim that... that... that the Earth is flat or whatever it was he was trying to prove. ;)
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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #643

Post by TRANSPONDER »

otseng wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 9:44 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 5:14 pm
If you're saying you always need physical evidence to believe in something, then there's a lot that cannot be believed. Many things are posited to exist through indirect evidence, which is what I'm arguing for with the tower of Babel. One example is we don't have any physical evidence of the Colossus of Rhodes. But that doesn't prove it did not exist.
No we don't. It IS required, but indirect evidence is also relevant.
Do you believe the Colossus of Rhodes did not exist?
I see no reason to disbelieve it. I believe there is historical evidence for it, but if the histories claimed that Apollo posed for the sculptor I wouldn't believe that. Would you? Look I don't deny Ziggurats or even that the Babel story referred to one, probably the one at Babylon, but I don't believe the story about one language being split up because God was bothered by it. Nor do I think it refers to a particularly large ziggurat predating the appearance of proper writing in Egypt or Mesopotamia, let alone the separate languages those writing systems expressed. You have NO real evidence other than claims, maybes and perhaps the evidence will turn up.
But I don't recall you ever addressing the debunk of your 'soft strata' hypothesis as being inadequate to explain the neat rollover of strata, nor that mountain building,
There's nothing to debunk. The soft strata rather explains how it's possible to have "neat" parallel layers in spite of deformations like mountain building.

If all the layers were original solid rock in flat parallel layers, how would it be possible to have "neat" deformations? Think of it this way, suppose we have lasagna noodles stacked up and neatly deformed so it's in the shape of a mountain. Would it be more reasonable the noodles were dry or wet when it was deformed?
I can recall addressing it twice at least. That' seems to be the 'ignoring' problem, The catastrophism of the hydroplate theory would surely jumble up soft strata onto a mess. The geological 'standard model' as you posted it argues that it was already solid strata that could keep the strata shape while being slowly tilted, inverted and even rolled over at geologically slow speeds as postulated for continental drift that pushes up mountains. Not to mention (again) that in the hydroplate theory, the Rockies are on the wrong side of the continent. You may deny the standard geology or dismiss it as 'ad hoc' which is what I call 'science denial', but is the science and your soft strata theory is not.
IF caused by the pressure of the flood waters when the flood burst through, should put the Rockies in the east not the west
It is not the pressure of the flood waters that caused the deformations (mountains). It is the crust hitting the underlaying basalt layer.[/quote]

I recall that it was thje pressure of the waters pushed up the mountains, but ok, we'll go with your explanation.
otseng wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 9:18 am As the hydroplate eventually hit the underlaying basalt layer when all the subterranean water was gone, it stopped the horizontal movement of the hydroplate. But, the sedimentary layers on top of the hydroplate kept moving due to momentum. It is at this point the sedimentary layers buckled and formed the mountains. Think of it as a pile of rocks on a rail car. The rail car is the hydroplate and the pile of rocks is the sedimentary layers. Then the rail car loses its wheels and grinds to a stop on the railroad tracks. But the rocks on top of the rail car would fly off the rail car.
A geological car - crash does not result in inverted strata still in place. In any case the strata above the Basalt is the planed off (by the Flood) strata of the anomaly, not the supposed 'Flood strata' above. You don't even seem to understand your own theory.. no sorry, I get it.... that the hydroplate (Continent of America we are talking about here) when the hydroplate water was 'gone' (surely up in the air not fallen in a flood ..I'll get back to that) the reservoir roof slammed into the reservoir floor causing the Soft strata to rise up as the Rockies (on the West) with the strata neatly rolling over. Sure. But Otseng mate, where had that strata come from? People were supposedly living on this car -crash continent and the flood water was still to come crashing down scouring off the 'great anomaly' and flooding the already split 'Pangea' continents and drowing everything but Noah who has survived all this. And the mountains have already appeared before the Flood. So you have to revert to flood waters going down, not Mountains appearing.
Of course, silence does imply assent.
No, silence does not imply assent. It can mean many other things, including we've already covered this.


It does imply assent in that there is no rebuttal. You can of course ignore and deny everything, but failure to rebut is tacit assent in a debate, or it is in my book.
And while one might argue about when Mesopotamian and Egyptian writing appeared and which was a proper writing -system rather than three dots and a picture of a corn -bale (which might or might not have a linguistic value) the point I made was that these did predate the ziggurats but not the (postulated) date of Babel that you referred to
Sure, I can accept symbols existed prior to the tower of Babel. I'm not arguing symbols came after the tower of Babel, but only written languages.
Only if you opt for a date for Babel ;) like maybe 3,500 or so. But you have no decent evidence for that. None. Whereas the evidence I have implies a spoken Egyptian language along with the culture before this proposed Babel - date and of course before the written language and ziggurats. Of course I can't prove they were talking Egyptian prior to 3,500 BC, but the evidence implies that they were, as part of a continued culture, and there is no evidence that everyone was located in 'Babel' speaking 'Mesopotamian' The diversity of cultures prior to the 4th mill. BC argues against the whole 'Babel' scenario.
However the point of my chronology was that putting it earlier than the Ziggurats still doesn't put it earlier than the Egyptian culture that produced tomb slabs (that led to the step pyramid) or (eventually) written Egyptian and thus the indirect evidence is that Egypt as a pyramid builder culture and Egyptian - speaking culture looks to have been in place long before any feasible 'Babel Tower' event.
Could be. Egyptian culture could have existed along side the tower of Babel. And symbols used in Egypt could have also co-existed. But as for a written language, the earliest evidence of Egyptian language is 2800 BC.

"The use of hieroglyphic writing arose from proto-literate symbol systems in the Early Bronze Age, around the 32nd century BC (Naqada III),[2] with the first decipherable sentence written in the Egyptian language dating to the Second Dynasty (28th century BC)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs

But, "Egyptian language" was more likely influenced by the Sumerian region.

"Geoffrey Sampson stated that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and, probably, [were] invented under the influence of the latter",[23] and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs
Quite a few have proposed Sumerian influence on Egypt, (1) just as others (as you pointed out) suggested the ziggurat influencing the step pyramid. But the idea doesn't help you at all. Just as the step pyramid (with or without the idea of ziggural) was a development of the tombs that already existed and were tombs, not temples, the Babel model has written Egyptian a different language anyway, so 'influence' is neither here nor there. You point to Genesis and say they all went their different ways and then harp on 'influences' one had on the other after the supposed Babel -event.

But I can harp on the continued culture in Egypt that continued so it seems from long before 3,500 BC to long after when the language was written as Egyptian, owing nothing to Mesopotamia which it wouldn't if Babel was true. Don't you see that you have nothing and your attempt to prod science into supporting the Bible just turns around and bites it in the botty?
That together with no real evidence for any such Tower of Babel makes for a better hypothesis than Babel which has nothing as evidence but Genesis.
[/quote]Before modern archaeology, there was no "real evidence" for many claims of the Bible. Yet, we have constantly been uncovering more things to confirm the historical reliability of the Bible. This is probably what we should go into next after debating the tower of Babel.

And with indirect evidence of the worldwide phenomenon of ziggurats, it's more easily explained by the Biblical account than just a series of coincidences.[/quote]

Which I already debunked. The step pyramid is on all evidence NOT confirmation of the Bible nor are the Temples of the Maya or various mounts and structures. It's coming to something where you point to a pile of earth like a pyramid and say it's evidence of copying ziggurats. You have absolutely nothing. This is what I mean by ignoring. I debunk you and you blandly carry on as though you have proved your point. You have Nothing but some hopes that evidence might turn up one day.
I agree there's no direct evidence, but there's indirect evidence, which I've provided through worldwide replication of ziggurats since ancient times.
The indirect evidence is all against you. The evidence is that languages developed separately before any feasible 'Babel event, the Step pyramid and the Maya temples are nothing to do with ziggurats other than taking inspiration After the supposed Babel event anyway. You have nothing and your 'evidence' debunks your own theory anyway.
As I said, that's irrelevant and a red herring. Whether there was a single original source or different languages arose after humans split up (and nobody knows which it is) the point is that Egyptian predating any feasible Babel event undermines the Babel hypothesis for diversification of human languages.
See above.
Yes, indeed, see my debunk above.
That is, that the Chinese invented their writing and the Sumerians invented theirs
OK, please provide evidence then that the Chinese and Sumerians independently invented their written languages.
Indirect evidence. Same as the Egyptian. The culture is distinct and continuous and of course nowhere near Mesopotamia. So just as with Egypt on the evidence of spoken Egyptian before 3,500 BC, what (indirect) evidence there is suggests that the Language they spoke in China before the supposed Babel event (and nowhere near it) was the Chinese that was later given written form. All the indirect evidence is against a Babel event and you have Nothing for it. I know you can't see it because of Faith in the Bible, and you think your possibles and perhapses and hopes for evidence later, never mind ignoring all the rebuttals allows you to think that you have a case, but you have nothing. Especially when you try to play the 'Do you believe the colossus' card. Desperation.
Diogenes wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:45 pm "Not conclusive?" It's not evidence at all, of anything except men like to build stuff and build something taller than their neighbors' achievement.
You might not believe it's valid evidence or relevant evidence, but it's evidence.
:D A theist on my former board became a laughing -stock for protesting that bad evidence was still "Evidence".
What is strange or illogical that many if not all cultures built tall structures or towers?
I'm not arguing people built tall structure/towers. I'm arguing they all built ziggurats.
[/quote]

They are not ziggurats. They are structures of the kind that man builds and physics dictates the architecture. Good heavens man, you try to argue that Nigerian piles of dirt and Mayan Temples are all 'ziggurats'. You are striving to make vague resemblances into cultural influences. And why, as I said, would these diversified people after Babel go on doing the same thing in written language and architecture when the whole point of the Babel disaster was to put an end to Man's unity? And if you try to make it anything else - then the Bible is not Reliable.

(1) though you are really straining in trying to make ideas that other cultures possibly picked up from Mesopotamia into Egyptians all speaking Sumerian. In any case post Babel, Egyptian and Sumerian would be different anyway, so attempts to argue that they were the same debunks your own Belief - theory.

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

Post #644

Post by Diogenes »

Speaking of ziggurats and myths I've always found it hilariously ironic that Bible literalists take the Tower of Babel myth seriously... that God came down and gave everyone instantly a different language because the god got threatened by their increasing power.

I didn't believe this malarkey even when I was a kid in Sunday school. Besides the obvious point that God couldn't possibly feel threatened by a bunch of little brick masons building a 'tower' maybe 1000 feet tall ["...then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." Genesis 11:6], the main point is that this is like so many other myths, a simple picture story used to explain why we have different languages. That this story could be taken seriously as an actual event in history is laughable.

This is typical of myths around the world, a transparent and simplified 'explanation' of how something came to be. One can make them up, Fer example:
"Raven flew over the Earth and saw that it was dry. Raven spat upon the Earth and that became the first lake."

"Goombah the Generous saw that the people had no food. He was sad and his tears fell. Wherever a tear fell, an orchard grew. And that is why to this very day we have apples to cheer the heart of man."

"One day Baltar the Blazing was flying too close to the Sun. His great red cape caught fire and fell Earth. Men gathered pieces of the burning cape and ever since man has had fire to make his soup."
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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #645

Post by otseng »

Diogenes wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 5:07 pm A ziggurat is merely a type of tower, a rectangular stepped tower with a temple on it sometimes. You are writing as if it is VERY special. It isn't. This type of tower construction is simply a consequence of limited building materials and knowledge. It's like a child playing with blocks. He starts with a broad base, then builds a second level, slightly narrower and so on. No special skills are required.
Not saying it's VERY special, but, I'm not so sure that it's as simple to build as you portray it either. And it's especially not as simple as the toy illustration that you portrayed.
You have failed to provide a nexus between the examples you cite and a meaningful relationship that supports your attempt to use ziggurats to somehow prove your larger point that this indicates the Bible proves something supernatural is going on.
Where have I claimed anything that is supernatural? The only thing I've claimed is:
otseng wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 8:29 pm Here is what I assert which the Bible claims - all languages of the world come from a single source that originated from the Mesopotamian region on the order of thousands of years ago.
We keep getting back to Occam's razor. When we hear thunder here is no need to jump to the absurd conclusion that there must be a god named Thor swinging a celestial hammer when we have a much simpler theory at hand; to wit, that lightning causes a sudden heading of air which explodes outward. Of course, primitive man, understandably, might consider "God did it," but today we do not have that excuse.
Not sure how your illustration applies. But, I would say Occam's razor would favor a single source as more "coincidences" between cultures are presented, rather than multiple instances of similarities which arose independently.
Diogenes wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 5:14 pm "Science: Similar flood tales are told in many cultures, but there never was a global deluge. For one, there’s just not enough water in the Earth system to cover all the land.
As for enough water to flood the entire world, it's accounted for in the FM.

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

Post #646

Post by otseng »

TRANSPONDER wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 6:58 pm but I don't believe the story about one language being split up because God was bothered by it.
Though the Bible does attribute God to "babelizing" the languages, I'm not claiming that. I'm not claiming anything about how it happened. All I'm claiming is the result of what happened, which is all languages arising from a single language.
The catastrophism of the hydroplate theory would surely jumble up soft strata onto a mess.
Why is that?
while being slowly tilted, inverted and even rolled over at geologically slow speeds as postulated for continental drift that pushes up mountains.
If the plates have always been slowly moving, why has mountain formation only occurred after all layers have been horizontally deposited?
Not to mention (again) that in the hydroplate theory, the Rockies are on the wrong side of the continent.
I've already explained it in my previous post.
A geological car - crash does not result in inverted strata still in place.
What inverted strata are you referring to?
In any case the strata above the Basalt is the planed off (by the Flood) strata of the anomaly, not the supposed 'Flood strata' above. You don't even seem to understand your own theory.
I understand my theory, but not sure what you are stating here. What anomaly are you referring to? Are you referring to the Great Unconformity?
You can of course ignore and deny everything, but failure to rebut is tacit assent in a debate, or it is in my book.
You do seem to always want to have the last word, so that explains why. It's not necessary to always reply to everything, esp if it's already been discussed before. We've discussed the flood at length, so there's no need to constantly claim things again, as if claiming something you believe without any further response from an opponent means by default it wins. It doesn't mean that.
Quite a few have proposed Sumerian influence on Egypt, (1) just as others (as you pointed out) suggested the ziggurat influencing the step pyramid. But the idea doesn't help you at all.
I've presented evidence which is consistent with my claim. So, of course it helps my case. Simply claiming it doesn't help my case doesn't make it so.
But I can harp on the continued culture in Egypt that continued so it seems from long before 3,500 BC to long after when the language was written as Egyptian, owing nothing to Mesopotamia which it wouldn't if Babel was true.
I don't see how a "continued" culture would have any relevance.

As far as I can tell, Egypt as a civilization started from c. 3150 BC – c. 2686 BC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Dyn ... od_(Egypt)

So, when you refer to Egypt as a society, the earliest dating would be 3150 BC.
You have absolutely nothing. This is what I mean by ignoring. I debunk you and you blandly carry on as though you have proved your point. You have Nothing but some hopes that evidence might turn up one day.
Your constant repetition of this actually indicates the opposite. If I did have nothing, it should be obvious to all without the need for you to repeatedly claim this. What is more important is the evidence and the arguments, which is what I've been providing. Stating that the evidence is "absolutely nothing" does not affect my arguments.
They are not ziggurats.
Sure, you can call them anything you want, but they all look similar and have similar functions.

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

Post #647

Post by TRANSPONDER »

otseng wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 1:03 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 6:58 pm but I don't believe the story about one language being split up because God was bothered by it.
Though the Bible does attribute God to "babelizing" the languages, I'm not claiming that. I'm not claiming anything about how it happened. All I'm claiming is the result of what happened, which is all languages arising from a single language.
The catastrophism of the hydroplate theory would surely jumble up soft strata onto a mess.
Why is that?
while being slowly tilted, inverted and even rolled over at geologically slow speeds as postulated for continental drift that pushes up mountains.
If the plates have always been slowly moving, why has mountain formation only occurred after all layers have been horizontally deposited?
Not to mention (again) that in the hydroplate theory, the Rockies are on the wrong side of the continent.
I've already explained it in my previous post.
A geological car - crash does not result in inverted strata still in place.
What inverted strata are you referring to?
In any case the strata above the Basalt is the planed off (by the Flood) strata of the anomaly, not the supposed 'Flood strata' above. You don't even seem to understand your own theory.
I understand my theory, but not sure what you are stating here. What anomaly are you referring to? Are you referring to the Great Unconformity?
You can of course ignore and deny everything, but failure to rebut is tacit assent in a debate, or it is in my book.
You do seem to always want to have the last word, so that explains why. It's not necessary to always reply to everything, esp if it's already been discussed before. We've discussed the flood at length, so there's no need to constantly claim things again, as if claiming something you believe without any further response from an opponent means by default it wins. It doesn't mean that.
Quite a few have proposed Sumerian influence on Egypt, (1) just as others (as you pointed out) suggested the ziggurat influencing the step pyramid. But the idea doesn't help you at all.
I've presented evidence which is consistent with my claim. So, of course it helps my case. Simply claiming it doesn't help my case doesn't make it so.
But I can harp on the continued culture in Egypt that continued so it seems from long before 3,500 BC to long after when the language was written as Egyptian, owing nothing to Mesopotamia which it wouldn't if Babel was true.
I don't see how a "continued" culture would have any relevance.

As far as I can tell, Egypt as a civilization started from c. 3150 BC – c. 2686 BC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Dyn ... od_(Egypt)

So, when you refer to Egypt as a society, the earliest dating would be 3150 BC.
You have absolutely nothing. This is what I mean by ignoring. I debunk you and you blandly carry on as though you have proved your point. You have Nothing but some hopes that evidence might turn up one day.
Your constant repetition of this actually indicates the opposite. If I did have nothing, it should be obvious to all without the need for you to repeatedly claim this. What is more important is the evidence and the arguments, which is what I've been providing. Stating that the evidence is "absolutely nothing" does not affect my arguments.
They are not ziggurats.
Sure, you can call them anything you want, but they all look similar and have similar functions.
Not necessarily. Some are tombs, some temples. And you might equally claim that people building houses and then palaces, or inventing farming or herding in various parts of the world means that they all got the idea from Adam. As with the ziggurats, even if one does claim a single origin for houses, Language, farming or temples (after all iron -working perhaps and possibly chariots, originated in one place), ziggurats that we know of would adequately explain that 'evidence' and it still is no evidence whatsoever for a tower of Babel. You still have nothing, as I keep having to point out.

Perhaps all languages did derive from a single one or perhaps not. Nobody knows. That is - as I have said - irrelevant. What is relevant is that the Biblical account does not look credible as an explanation of the diversity of languages. Also as I said the evolution of languages is a thing that can be seen to happen. e.g from Latin through to various European languages. Indirect evidence. That explains diversity and 'Babel' really doesn't align with the 'indirect' evidence.

Ok. The hydroplate theory I read where the water -pressure pushed up the mountains isn't the version you use, which has a kind of continental collision - which is the actual reason I explained why pushing over soft strata would not result in a neat rollover of strata. Imagine layers of coloured sand in a heap and bulldozing them. The result would not be neat. But tectonic plate movement which is something measurable today, does explain it It does not only happen when strata has been deposited. Some (heavily eroded) mountains are basalt. But the fact is that, after millions of years, strata gets laid down, so newer mountains will have strata. Including examples where it is tilted (as in the Great Unconformity which I miscalled Anomaly) vertical or inverted (1). That is a problem with the Hydroplate theory - strata below the great unconformity and also above, but only having a couple of years for all this geological activity. It's the old problem with Genesis -literalism; it ends up having to pack millions of years of cosmological, geological and biological activity into a matter of years or less.

I reply to what I need to, O:) particularly your claims and 'evidence' and sometimes I have to repeat the rebuttals. It would no doubt suit you if I didn't, but I shall continue to do so, all the time you repeat debunked claims and make irrelevant points (like languages perhaps had an origin) which is the crummiest effort to pretend you won the Babel argument that I have heard in a long while. And you have presented evidence which is consistent with nothing other than Genesis - literalist fiddling of the evidence to try to make it fit the Bible. I keep pointing out that actually you have no good evidence because you don't seem to understand this.

As much as you don't understand (or so you say - pretending that only the date of writing makes it a culture) that a continued culture dated from before a language was written (so we know what language it is) implies (indirect evidence) that the language was that spoken before it was written. Thus the Sumerians spoke Sumerian before they wrote it, The Chinese spoke Chinese before they wrote it and the Egyptians (building flat tombs long before they did ONE example of piling them up before turning them into pyramids) presumably spoke Egyptian before they wrote it (2), which is long before the proposed date of Babel or indeed any feasible one. So again, that is the theory that best fits the facts and the Babel claim isn't, quite apart from the date of the actual writing being after the postulated date of Babel. It still isn't evidence that supports the Bible.
side

Yes, the Great Unconformity as seen in the Grand Canyon. Tilted strata, planed off (by flood water in your theory presumably when the fountain descended, killing everything and depositing it in strata - with the dead things neatly arranged by evolutionary chronology), and then rolled up in mountain formation by the continent colliding with the floor (or walls) of the reservoir. But you can see that the splitting up happened when the fountain happened and pushed the continents apart before the Flood waters came down. So the pushed -up mountains were there (not to mention the walls of the reservoir which would be even higher) already, and so the flood 'going down' because the 'mountains rose' won't work. Not to mention the continents have split up before the flood even came down, so the splitting up of Pangaea is sunk as an explanation of animal diversity.

:D You sure keep me busy. Have a good weekend, folks! Now I'm going to Pipe Up while I preview check...

(1) Creationists know this as they have used an apologetic that strata are sometimes the opposite of what 'scientists' claim. That is, it can become inverted.

(2) the predynastic Egyptian culture is reckoned from the time they first appeared in the Nile area and have even been traced to the interior of Africa before that. There is every reason to suppose that it was some precursor of Egyptian they spoke, but no reason whatsoever to think it was 'Mesopotamian'' (there is no such language as 'Mesopotamian') or that they had anything to do with a tower of Babel.

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

Post #648

Post by Diogenes »

otseng wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 11:35 pm
Where have I claimed anything that is supernatural? The only thing I've claimed is:
otseng wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 8:29 pm Here is what I assert which the Bible claims - all languages of the world come from a single source that originated from the Mesopotamian region on the order of thousands of years ago.
We keep getting back to Occam's razor. When we hear thunder here is no need to jump to the absurd conclusion that there must be a god named Thor swinging a celestial hammer when we have a much simpler theory at hand; to wit, that lightning causes a sudden heading of air which explodes outward. Of course, primitive man, understandably, might consider "God did it," but today we do not have that excuse.
Not sure how your illustration applies. But, I would say Occam's razor would favor a single source as more "coincidences" between cultures are presented, rather than multiple instances of similarities which arose independently.
Here again we see that relying on one's interpretation of the Bible provides poor guidance.
Taking Genesis 11 as our text we have, '"Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth.'

This passage suggests the opposite of your premise, "...the Bible claims - all languages of the world come from a single source."
The biblical claim is that God suddenly confused their language so they could not understand each other. Thus according to Genesis, He made each language distinct so each man could not understand anyone else and had to cease work. For good measure, the Lord then scattered them. This would tend to argue for unrelated languages, rather than a single source, since that single alleged source was corrupted completely, obliterated in a moment by supernatural force.

One could argue this biblical fable either way, ADDING to the scripture that God took their single language and altered that language hundreds of different ways, yet somehow keeping some core elements of the original. But that is not what the text says. In other words the Bible is no help at all. Taking the simplest approach, without adding to scripture, each language should be distinct rather than have common elements, since God's purpose was solely to confuse so the work would stop. Why would he keep common elements? Anyway the text does not say He did.

The truth is we don't know exactly how language developed. A single source seems about as likely as the claim that homo sapiens suddenly sprang up as a single family in a single location, the Adam & Eve. claim. Language developed probably about 150,000 years ago, but we have written records that barely go back 6000 years, so it's difficult to trace. We do know that some languages are related, and others appear distinct, perhaps unique. Some, like Pirahã, don't even have basic sentence structure.
https://www.asta-usa.com/piraha-most-un ... age-world/
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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #649

Post by Diogenes »

otseng wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 11:35 pm
Where have I claimed anything that is supernatural? The only thing I've claimed is:
otseng wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 8:29 pm Here is what I assert which the Bible claims - all languages of the world come from a single source that originated from the Mesopotamian region on the order of thousands of years ago.
We keep getting back to Occam's razor. When we hear thunder here is no need to jump to the absurd conclusion that there must be a god named Thor swinging a celestial hammer when we have a much simpler theory at hand; to wit, that lightning causes a sudden heading of air which explodes outward. Of course, primitive man, understandably, might consider "God did it," but today we do not have that excuse.
Not sure how your illustration applies. But, I would say Occam's razor would favor a single source as more "coincidences" between cultures are presented, rather than multiple instances of similarities which arose independently.
Here again we see that relying on one's interpretation of the Bible provides poor guidance.
Taking Genesis 11 as our text we have, '"Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth.'

This passage suggests the opposite of your premise, "...the Bible claims - all languages of the world come from a single source."
The biblical claim is that God suddenly confused their language so they could not understand each other. Thus according to Genesis, He made each language distinct so each man could not understand anyone else and had to cease work. For good measure, the Lord then scattered them. This would tend to argue for unrelated languages, rather than a single source, since that single alleged source was corrupted completely, obliterated in a moment by supernatural force.

One could argue this biblical fable either way, ADDING to the scripture that God took their single language and altered that language hundreds of different ways, yet somehow keeping some core elements of the original. But that is not what the text says. In other words the Bible is no help at all. Taking the simplest approach, without adding to scripture, each language should be distinct rather than have common elements, since God's purpose was solely to confuse so the work would stop. Why would he keep common elements? Anyway the text does not say He did.

The truth is we don't know exactly how language developed. A single source seems about as likely as the claim that homo sapiens suddenly sprang up as a single family in a single location, the Adam & Eve. claim. Language developed probably about 150,000 years ago, but we have written records that barely go back 6000 years, so it's difficult to trace. We do know that some languages are related, and others appear distinct, perhaps unique. Some, like Pirahã, don't even have basic sentence structure.
https://www.asta-usa.com/piraha-most-un ... age-world/

The idea that there was a single language source in the Mesopotamian region also seems unlikely since scholars think Africa is the cradle of homo sapiens. Would various African tribes go for thousands of years without language until one of them wandered North, developed language, than spread that language around the world, including back to Africa where, according to the Bible theory, they still were without language?
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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #650

Post by TRANSPONDER »

Diogenes wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:06 pm
TRANSPONDER wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 6:58 pmA theist on my former board became a laughing -stock for protesting that bad evidence was still "Evidence".
:) Exactly! I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that 'bad evidence,' "evidence" that is not relevant or has no nexus to the proposition being advanced is excluded from consideration. In other words, it is ruled to not be 'evidence' at all.

I HEREBY MOVE that Osteng's entire series of Ziggurat posts be stricken from the record and not be considered as 'evidence' for his unsupported claim that... that... that the Earth is flat or whatever it was he was trying to prove. ;)
Another Theist...actually became quite an online pal of mine..long story... also became the butt of an In joke when he argued that Koala bears could have been kept alive on the Ark for a year or more by feeding them freeze- dried Eucalyptus leaves. However, otseng is presenting evidence. It does often come down to interpretation, such as the interpretation of inverted strata. I'm neither an engineer nor a geologist but just one example of rollover strata on itself shows what happened, and I'm sorta relying on a mind experiment to argue that the geologically slow creep of rocks through tectonic -plate movement is a better mechanism (as well as being the accepted science) than a continental freight -train slamming into a city and turning the Eastern side upside down over the western half like a lake reflection instead of creating a bloody mess.

I am a bit more of a savant on Archaeology and history, so I know that the Badari culture of the Faiyum delta looks like it is pre dynastic Egyptian culture going back long before the time of the Ziggurats, which is putting pressure on the feasibility of a particularly large ziggurat that somehow collapsed, and would not be the reasonable cause of language diversity as the more credible hypothesis is that they were speaking the Language that would eventually become written as Egyptian. And even a breakup of Mesopotamian culture connected with the collapse of a large ziggurat dated before 3,000 BC (being shown in some archaeology for which there is not yet a single mud brick or pottery fragment in support) that might indicate Sumerian gods being annoyed as much as Biblegod.

In short it it truly a case of assuming the Bible story as a given and then presenting the evidence to support that case. I don't think it does which is why I say 'no (valid) evidence, but invalid evidence is can be claimed to be.

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