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

[The Nice Centurion]

And let me repeat the question:

If you were an observer of the heavens before the invention of the telescope and space ships, how would you prove heliocentrism is true?

If you were today an observer of the heavens, when we have the invention of the telescope and space ships, how would you today prove heliocentrism is true?

Answer my question first and then I'll answer yours.

I would rather not go first. Thank you.

Still, back then; Do I live in context with an omniscient bible god who can just tell my tribe about geocentrism, or am I stuck in a godless world with only earthly means to discover about geocentrism?

[otseng]

I would rather not go first. Thank you.

Of course, I already know the answer to my question. So, this exercise is not for me, but for all of you. And if this question is not so simple to answer for modern people, why should it be obvious for ancient people?

[The Nice Centurion]

Even the importand and famous scholar Hugh Nibley attested to the fact that the Book of Mormon was formed by numerous Prophets from 600 BC to AD 421 and therefore reflects shifting patterns of religious belief; consequently, its cosmology and is reflective of the Jaredith, Mulekite and Nephite culture in the americas.

But most people who give such credit to the bible fail to do the same to the Book of Mormon.

I ask myself why.

Because the Book of Mormon is a joke, a fraud made up by Joseph Smith

Than that would make the known honorable and thrustworthy signed affidavits from the 3 witnesses, later 8 witnesses, further David Whitmers Mother who also saw the Golden Plates and also the inofficial frogman who guarded the Golden Plates at Cumorah all Jesters I suppose?
And what then does that make of the 17 million LDS, not counted other mormon denominations?
And how could have James Strang in front of many people unearthed the Bronce Plates if there were no Golden Places at the first place?

How many signed affidavits have we for anything in the bible?

And we do have sufficient archeological evidence for the Book of Mormon!

The unearthed bones of the Lamanite chieftain warrior Zelph for example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelph

[The Nice Centurion]

I would rather not go first. Thank you.

Of course, I already know the answer to my question. So, this exercise is not for me, but for all of you. And if this question is not so simple to answer for modern people, why should it be obvious for ancient people?

If you already know the answer, then you do know more than all of us.
For the question is unanswerable as long as you do not tell the context in which we are to answer:

Still, back then; Do I live in context with an omniscient bible god who can just tell my tribe about geocentrism, or am I stuck in a godless world with only earthly means to discover about geocentrism?

[Diogenes]

And let me repeat the question:

If you were an observer of the heavens before the invention of the telescope and space ships, how would you prove heliocentrism is true?

That is not the point because if GOD were the author of Genesis, HE would have gotten it right. Genesis is wrong because it was written by men. In any event, it is possible to do it, but it takes very careful observation.

Johannes Kepler actually disproved geocentrism only a few years before the telescope was invented. He used Tycho Brahe's surprisingly precise naked eye observations of Mars' and the Sun's relative positions on the sky. He first proved that Ptolemy's, Copernicus' and Brahe's Solar system models were all mathematically identical, they just chose different frames of reference. Then he painstakingly founded astrophysics and proved genuine heliocentrism.

https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/que ... telescopes

[Tcg]

Even the importand and famous scholar Hugh Nibley attested to the fact that the Book of Mormon was formed by numerous Prophets from 600 BC to AD 421 and therefore reflects shifting patterns of religious belief; consequently, its cosmology and is reflective of the Jaredith, Mulekite and Nephite culture in the americas.

But most people who give such credit to the bible fail to do the same to the Book of Mormon.

I ask myself why.

Because the Book of Mormon is a joke, a fraud made up by Joseph Smith

Than that would make the known honorable and thrustworthy signed affidavits from the 3 witnesses, later 8 witnesses, further David Whitmers Mother who also saw the Golden Plates and also the inofficial frogman who guarded the Golden Plates at Cumorah all Jesters I suppose?
And what then does that make of the 17 million LDS, not counted other mormon denominations?
And how could have James Strang in front of many people unearthed the Bronce Plates if there were no Golden Places at the first place?

How many signed affidavits have we for anything in the bible?

And we do have sufficient archeological evidence for the Book of Mormon!

The unearthed bones of the Lamanite chieftain warrior Zelph for example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelph

Moderator Comment

As you have already been advised, the subject of this thread is the inerrancy of the Bible. If you want to discuss the Book of Mormon, please create a new topic.

Please review the Rules.





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[otseng]

If you already know the answer, then you do know more than all of us.

The point is if us "advanced" people don't know the answer, why should the ancients know it?

That is not the point because if GOD were the author of Genesis, HE would have gotten it right. Genesis is wrong because it was written by men. In any event, it is possible to do it, but it takes very careful observation.

Who said anything about God being the author? As as matter of fact, I've consistently said God is not the author of the Bible in this thread.

The Bible was not written by an omnipotent God, rather the Bible is a book written by humans, with all their limitations. It did not fall out of the sky and authors were not in a trance and dictated what they heard from heaven when they wrote.

Johannes Kepler actually disproved geocentrism only a few years before the telescope was invented. He used Tycho Brahe's surprisingly precise naked eye observations of Mars' and the Sun's relative positions on the sky. He first proved that Ptolemy's, Copernicus' and Brahe's Solar system models were all mathematically identical, they just chose different frames of reference. Then he painstakingly founded astrophysics and proved genuine heliocentrism.

https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/que ... telescopes

A few points regarding this. Even if this is correct, your average person would not have the astronomical and mathematical skills to come up with the similar conclusion of Kepler. But I highly doubt Kepler "disproved" it because the standard answer to the proof of heliocentrism is through high precision measurements of stellar parallax. And it was only in 1838 that stellar parallax was first measured.

Using a heliometer designed by German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer, German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel was the first to measure stellar parallax in 1838. Choosing 61 Cygni, a star barely visible to the naked eye and known to possess a relatively high velocity in the plane of the sky, Bessel showed in 1838 that, after correcting for velocity, the star apparently moved in an ellipse every year. This back-and-forth motion was the annual parallax. Astronomers had known for centuries that such an effect must occur, but Bessel was the first to demonstrate it accurately.

https://www.britannica.com/science/para ... r-parallax

No one in Galileo's time or for 150 years after his death was able to demonstrate this necessary effect of earth's motion around the sun. Stellar parallax was finally observed in 1838 by Friedrich Bessel, a German scientist. But it is not Bessel that is credited with finally proving that the earth moved around the earth. In 1729, James Bradley, while searching for the elusive stellar parallax, detected motion of the stars over the course of the year which did not fit the pattern of stellar parallax. He had discovered stellar aberration, which is also related to the motion of the earth. Regardless, proof of the earth's motion was not available in the seventeenth century and those arguing for it's motion had no answer for why stellar parallax could not be observed. It is a huge problem when a consequence of a theory is expected and it cannot be observed. It is enough to keep a hypothesis from being accepted as a proven theory, regardless of the number of positive arguments in its favor.

http://www.scientus.org/Copernicus-Stel ... allax.html

Even Brahe knew about stellar parallax. And it was because of his measurements and no observance of stellar parallax that he based his model on geocentrism rather than heliocentrism.

He made the best measurements that had yet been made in the search for stellar parallax. Upon finding no parallax for the stars, he (correctly) concluded that either:
- the earth was motionless at the center of the Universe, or
- the stars were so far away that their parallax was too small to measure.
Not for the only time in human thought, a great thinker formulated a pivotal question correctly, but then made the wrong choice of possible answers: Brahe did not believe that the stars could possibly be so far away and so concluded that the Earth was the center of the Universe and that Copernicus was wrong.

http://homework.uoregon.edu/pub/emj/121 ... ho121.html

The geocentric model is no more crazy than saying that a tennis ball is made of protons, neutrons and electrons. Sure, we all (most of us) believe there are these particles like electrons - but how do normal humans know this? In fact, the evidence in our everyday lives doesn't make it obvious that there are protons and electrons (yes, you could argue the mere fact of things like computers says these have to exist). The same is true for the heliocentric model.

Find a human that has never looked at a science book and doesn't know anything about the solar system. Now ask this human if the Earth moves around the Sun or the Sun moves around the Earth. I would bet most of these isolated humans would pick the geocentric model. It just doesn't feel like the Earth is moving.

There is another very convincing argument for the geocentric model - stellar parallax (or lack of).

The ancient Greeks claimed that if the Earth is moving around the Sun then the stars should shift their positions due to this orbital motion (called stellar parallax). Guess what? The stars don't shift. Well, they don't shift enough for you to notice, but they do indeed shift. This is essentially the same reason the moon appears to follow you around when you drive - it's too far away for any apparent shift due to your motion.

https://www.wired.com/2014/04/how-do-we ... s-the-sun/

[otseng]

If you were an observer of the heavens before the invention of the telescope and space ships, how would you prove heliocentrism is true?

So, to answer my question, to prove heliocentrism is true would require observing stellar parallax. The ancient scholars knew this, but they did not detect it. So, geocentrism was commonly accepted for almost two millennia because that is what the observational evidence supported. And it was only in 1838 that heliocentrism was proven to be true. Before then, there was no proof, only evidence to suggest it could be true.

Now, it's doubtful the regular ancient people knew about stellar parallax. Even most modern people don't know about it. Observationally it appears the heavenly bodies orbit around us. There is no reason to think otherwise, even for those whose profession was to observe the stars. So, it is chronological snobbery to look down on people in the past for accepting geocentrism.

[Diogenes]

[from #1177] "A few points regarding this. Even if this is correct, your average person would not have the astronomical and mathematical skills to come up with the similar conclusion of Kepler. But I highly doubt Kepler "disproved" it because the standard answer to the proof of heliocentrism is through high precision measurements of stellar parallax. And it was only in 1838 that stellar parallax was first measured."
.... [from #1178
So, to answer my question, to prove heliocentrism is true would require observing stellar parallax. The ancient scholars knew this, but they did not detect it. So, geocentrism was commonly accepted for almost two millennia because that is what the observational evidence supported. And it was only in 1838 that heliocentrism was proven to be true. Before then, there was no proof, only evidence to suggest it could be true.

Yes. You've mentioned this twice and it remains irrelevant. Your contention all along is that the Bible was written by God (working thru men perhaps) and therefore can be trusted. Are you saying God needed a telescope? ... a space ship? Is God not as clever and knowledgeable as Kepler?

God is supposed to exist and be the creator of the universe. Surely such a creator would have known billions of years ago, not to mention when Genesis was written, that the Sun was and is the center of the solar system, that with its massive gravity the Earth and the rest of the planets revolved around the Sun. Still, 'He' got it wrong.

This leaves the apologist with the lame explanation that God 'dumbed it down' for the understanding of the common people. But we know this cannot be true.
God does not lie and all through the Bible God is pictured as having absolute knowledge such that apologists have repeatedly told us that when the Bible asserts something we don't understand, we are cautioned to accept it anyway as a 'mystery,' that we don't have the understanding of God and should humble ourselves and accept that his word is truth.

How wondrous it would have been for the apologist today, to be able to point to Genesis revealing God's ultimate wisdom that had fooled men for thousands of years when they proudly clung to geocentrism.

[The Nice Centurion]

Yes. You've mentioned this twice and it remains irrelevant. Your contention all along is that the Bible was written by God (working thru men perhaps) and therefore can be trusted. Are you saying God needed a telescope? ... a space ship? Is God not as clever and knowledgeable as Kepler?

God is supposed to exist and be the creator of the universe. Surely such a creator would have known billions of years ago, not to mention when Genesis was written, that the Sun was and is the center of the solar system, that with its massive gravity the Earth and the rest of the planets revolved around the Sun. Still, 'He' got it wrong.

What if back then things were different?
Flat earth with sun evolving around it?
This could also explain sun standing still!
For mark; it isnt written that it looked like sun standing still.
It is written that sun indeed stood still!

And as you yourself said; Bible god is not supposed to lie.