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

[TRANSPONDER]

Another interesting artifact that is found common around the world is the Acheulean biface (or hand axe). I had posted this in Quora...

A very interesting object is the oldest surviving shaped tool used by man, the Acheulean biface (or hand axe). Dates for its use varies but generally spans from 2.6 million years ago to around 20,000 years ago, thus making it the longest used tool used by humans. It can be found in Africa, Europe, Asia, North America, South America, and Australia. So, it is also one of the most commonly used tools by ancient man.

It is a stone shaped with a pointed end and a round base. It varies in size and is typically 8 to 15 cm in length.



Even though it is the longest-used and a commonly used tool by ancient man, there is no consensus as to its purpose. Though it is typically called a hand axe, there is no agreement that it was used as an axe. It could've been used for throwing, digging, crushing, hammering, tearing, chopping, piercing, scraping, and cutting. Since there is no agreement for its use, it has been described as a Acheulean "Swiss Army knife".

"Although everpresent in stone age culture, the exact purpose and use of this tool remains a mystery."
http://world-history-education-resource ... -hand.html

"There is a tool that has been around for over million years, that archaeologists keep finding in caves, ditches, wells, and prehistoric settlements. They’re older and more ubiquitous than wheels, than pottery, than pretty much anything else. They’re everywhere, but nobody can agree what they’re for."
https://jon-farrow.com/2017/02/20/a-mil ... d-mystery/

"No academic consensus describes their use."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_axe

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-fas ... er-Tseng-1

Would you care to explain the relevance of this in relation to validating the Bible? The chipped flint is the most basic tool of mankind. The use dictates the shape and the consensus (so far as I know) is that it was held at the rounded end and used to hack at stuff. Later the thing was fixed into a wooden handle so that tells us the use. This is just another evolutionary process of human culture and technology and more likely to have been invented separately than the design handed on to various human tribes, from a single origin, though I suppose a look at Olduvai tools will tell us that.

Is the idea to pry to prove a basic human origin that diversified all over? But if so, doesn't that refute the Babel event as (just as I suggested), the diversification globally was going on long before anyone began building ziggurats?

Surely not even you could be suggesting that Hand axes were being made in Sumer and the type spread all over world after the Babel collapse, when they all started speaking different languages but carried on making types of ziggurats and hand axes...along with bronze weapons.

It would be back to the drawing -board on that one, I think. Along with a vague 'science can't explain this!' science denial, which I'll give you credit for beige better than.

Again, what actual point is here to support Bible credibility? It seems that you're clutching at flint -chippings.

[TRANSPONDER]

A p.s . It's quite interesting to look at the very basic stone tools associated with Australopithecus, and also to compare them with stone 'tools' Used by primates, both prehistoric and today. The evidence of stone tools supports evolution, not the Bible.

[otseng]

Would you care to explain the relevance of this in relation to validating the Bible? The chipped flint is the most basic tool of mankind.

I have a theory floating in the back of my mind, but before I reveal that, we need to reiterate the facts about the Acheulean biface:

- it is ubiquitous and found all over the world
- there is no consensus as to its purpose
- we cannot readily discern its function as a tool

I find these facts quite striking. It's claimed to be used by ancient primitive man all over the world, yet we modern man have no idea what they were used for.

I think we have no idea what it's used for because people have the wrong assumptions about it.

I bring up the Acheulean biface because I believe it is further evidence of commonality that can be traced to the tower of Babel. If that is not true, then what is the alternate explanation? Primitive man all over the world somehow able to communicate with each other and copy a design that even they probably had no idea what its used for? If they knew what it was used for, why don't we know when we are supposedly so much smarter than primitive man?

[otseng]

I argue they are not tools, but more likely something that has symbolic value (like an art or religious relic). Though many Acheulean biface are modest in appearance, there is a percentage that are quite artistic, even to modern standards.



"They are a potent manifestation of an early and continuous human interest in perfection of form, and aesthetics in general, as demonstrated by their makers' efforts to endow them with symmetrical faces and edges, well beyond practical requirements. The largest bifaces in this group are so substantial that they would have been of little to no use as tools. Although their specific functions remain a matter of speculation, it is clear that they must have been prized for their appearance rather than utility."

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/754048



"“Such is the perfection of the carving on some hand axes that they give the impression that the artist took great pleasure in them...we are unable to pronounce from this...whether it was art or the utility of the hand axe that was being sought by making them so well. Although in our heart of hearts we are sure that they were searching for beauty, aesthetics, as they could have achieved the same efficiency with cruder pieces.”
http://antiquatedantiquarian.blogspot.c ... ology.html



"But what is interesting to me is that, whether talking about prehistoric humans or us moderns, the criteria for something to be called artistic had an eerily modern ring to it. This is because the idea that the aesthetic is constituted by what in the object exceeds absolute need dates to the eighteenth century."
https://athenaeumreview.org/review/aest ... f-the-axe/



"A small proportion of them are highly symmetrical, finely finished and polished, much beyond what you would expect for purely practical purposes. The beauty of such extreme hand axes has made some people muse whether they could be considered as artworks. For instance, the philosopher of art Gregory Currie describes a British hand axe as follows: " a piece of worked stone, shaped as an elongated tear drop, roughly symmetrical in two dimensions, with a twist to the symmetry which has retained an embedded fossil. In size and shape it would not have been a useful butchery implement, and is worked on to a degree out of proportion to any likely use. While it may be too much to call it an “early work of art,” it is at least suggestive of an aesthetic sensibility (Currie, 2009, 1). "
https://www.newappsblog.com/2012/11/are ... f-art.html

[otseng]

We have examples now of objects found worldwide that have varying forms, from modest to highly artistic, that purely have symbolic value.

A great example of this is the cross.













The cross is ubiquitous and is the most commonly found artifact in the world. We see this also in the Acheulean biface.

The cross comes in all shapes and sizes and levels of artistry, like the biface.

The function of the cross is purely a symbolic representaton of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. It is used for self-identification, worship, jewelry, art, and even for protection.

[Diogenes]

[Replying to otseng in post #684]

Not tools?! That is just silly. Of course they are tools. The fact that man prizes his tools so much he adds an aesthetic component does not detract from the fact they are practical tools, designed to cut. That men and women also have an aesthetic sense and take pride in their work, hardly means they are "not tools at all."

[Diogenes]

[Replying to otseng in post #685]

Yes, the 'cross' in the examples you picture is purely symbolic. A beautifully crafted knife is a tool, even though it can be more than that.

Does an automobile lose its status as a vehicle, because it is made with the beauty and craftsmanship of a Ferrari?

[TRANSPONDER]

Would you care to explain the relevance of this in relation to validating the Bible? The chipped flint is the most basic tool of mankind.

I have a theory floating in the back of my mind, but before I reveal that, we need to reiterate the facts about the Acheulean biface:

- it is ubiquitous and found all over the world
- there is no consensus as to its purpose
- we cannot readily discern its function as a tool

I find these facts quite striking. It's claimed to be used by ancient primitive man all over the world, yet we modern man have no idea what they were used for.

I think we have no idea what it's used for because people have the wrong assumptions about it.

I bring up the Acheulean biface because I believe it is further evidence of commonality that can be traced to the tower of Babel. If that is not true, then what is the alternate explanation? Primitive man all over the world somehow able to communicate with each other and copy a design that even they probably had no idea what its used for? If they knew what it was used for, why don't we know when we are supposedly so much smarter than primitive man?

Well. given that we are only able to interpret evidence, the evidence is that very primitive stone tools were used to do basic stuff like breaking nuts just as Chimpanzees do today. Stone tools were developed all over the world and though the basics are going to be the same, dictated by method of manufacture and the use, there are regional differences just as in other areas of human invention, like art, architecture and writing.

Stone tools indicate their use by shape (arrowheads, axes and scrapers) and also indirect evidence like cuts on bone, or the cut marks on ancient wood found in water deposits. Also stone axes have been found tied onto handles in Alaskan ice patches thousands of years old and only revealed by recent melting. I believe also some stone arrowheads have been found stuck in bone, but I'd have to check that.

That said, flint axes were traded and could have been the equivalent of currency, and some stone 'axes' do appear to have had ceremonial significance as they were too large for any actual use. But basically tools were first and foremost what they were.

All that said, what in you hypothesis is the relevance to the Bible?

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to otseng in post #684]

Not tools?! That is just silly. Of course they are tools. The fact that man prizes his tools so much he adds an aesthetic component does not detract from the fact they are practical tools, designed to cut. That men and women also have an aesthetic sense and take pride in their work, hardly means they are "not tools at all."

Yes, there is pretty convincing evidence that they were tools though (like bronze) some seemed to take on a ceremonial significance. But for the stone age people, their object of worship seems to have been a kind of fertility goddess. There are quite a number of apparently religious statuettes of those. It's hypothesised that, before the part that men played in reproduction, the female principle was reverenced and up to the bronze age religion would rather matriarchal.

There's no evidence for stone tools in themselves having a ritual significance, though there were rituals associated with stone tool manufacture, such as ritual demosits of flint chippings and nodules of flint in earth circles suggesting that these were natural products that the users were taking from nature and recognition had to be given for that. But there's no evidence for worshipping stone tools like crosses and all the evidence for functional uses.

[otseng]

Not tools?! That is just silly. Of course they are tools.

If it's a tool, then what was it designed for? Yes, we know that an automobile, arrowheads, axes and scrapers have functions. We know what is their purpose. But, the Acheulean biface remains a mystery.

As for it being a tool, I can even argue a cross can be used as a tool as well. You can dig a hole with it or use it as a hammer. But, it's clear a cross was not designed for such tasks.

Does an automobile lose its status as a vehicle, because it is made with the beauty and craftsmanship of a Ferrari?

You can still drive a Ferrari. However, "the largest bifaces in this group are so substantial that they would have been of little to no use as tools."

Stone tools indicate their use by shape (arrowheads, axes and scrapers) and also indirect evidence like cuts on bone, or the cut marks on ancient wood found in water deposits. Also stone axes have been found tied onto handles in Alaskan ice patches thousands of years old and only revealed by recent melting. I believe also some stone arrowheads have been found stuck in bone, but I'd have to check that.

Even if it was a tool, why was it so ubiquitous? Since its function is not apparent even to us, why would it spread universally? It is even more commonly found than ancient wheels and pottery...

"There is a tool that has been around for over million years, that archaeologists keep finding in caves, ditches, wells, and prehistoric settlements. They’re older and more ubiquitous than wheels, than pottery, than pretty much anything else. They’re everywhere, but nobody can agree what they’re for."
https://jon-farrow.com/2017/02/20/a-mil ... d-mystery/

All that said, what in you hypothesis is the relevance to the Bible?

I realize this is speculative, but since there's no viable explanation by others, mine is no worse than anybody else's. Here's my current theory on the Acheulean biface...

Of course, I reject deep time, so the biface was not made by some prehistoric caveman. They were made by humans thousands of years ago and they were made not as a tool, but as a symbol.

The cross is universal because it is a powerful symbol rooted in a major historical event. Likewise, I theorize the biface was universal because it was a powerful symbol rooted in a major historical event - either the tower of Babel or the global flood, or even both.