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

[brunumb]

Scientists have historically balked at the idea of the universe having a beginning in time since it would support the Biblical account.

Is that just your opinion or do you have a verifiable source for that claim?

How Anti-Religious Bias Prevented Scientists from Accepting the Big Bang

Today, the Big Bang model of cosmology is pretty much taken for Gospel, and for good reason. For more than fifty years, evidence gathered from all manner of sources has supported the notion that the Universe as we know it expanded from an infinitely dense singularity.

But things didn't always look so certain for the Big Bang. In its most nascent form, the idea was known as the hypothesis of the primeval atom, and it originated from an engineer turned soldier turned mathematician turned Catholic priest turned physicist by the name of Georges Lemaître. When Lemaître published his idea in the eminent journal Nature in 1931, a response to observational data suggesting that space was expanding, he ruffled a lot of feathers. As UC-San Diego professor of physics Brian Keating wrote in his recent book Losing the Nobel Prize, "Lemaître's model... upset the millennia-old orthodoxy of an eternal, unchanging cosmos. It clearly implied that everything had been smaller and denser in the past, and that the universe must itself have had a birth at a finite time in the past."

Besides questioning the status quo, Lemaître's primeval atom also had some glaring problems. For starters, there were hardly any means of testing it, a must for any would-be scientific theory. Moreover, it essentially suggested that all the matter in the Universe came from nothing, a flabbergasting claim. It also violated an accepted notion known as the perfect cosmological principle, which suggested that the Universe looks the same from any given point in space and time.

For these reasons, English astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle gathered with a few colleagues to formulate the Steady State theory of the cosmos. The idea kept the observable universe essentially the same in space and time, and it accounted for evidence suggesting that the universe is expanding by hypothesizing that matter is instead being created out of the fabric of space in between distant galaxies. Steady State didn't have the problems inherent to the notion of a primeval atom, and, as Keating wrote "it sure as hell didn't look like the creation narrative in Genesis 1:1."

As Keating continued, anti-religious sentiments provided underlying motivation to debunk Lemaître's theory.

Hoyle, however, did not. Over the decades, as more and more evidence lined up in favor of the Big Bang and against Steady State, the aging astronomer dug in his heels. Ironically, he behaved like the believing zealots he scorned, relentlessly defending his debunked theory until his death in 2001. Lemaître, on the other hand, remained humble and equivocal about the Big Bang throughout his life.

This scientific saga demonstrates that entrenched beliefs affect the nonreligious as well as the religious. In the end, bias should always bow to evidence.

https://www.space.com/40586-anti-religi ... -bang.html

It might just be me but I got the impression that the Big Bang model was rejected because it contradicted the religious view rather than supported it.

[Tcg]

The question I have though, is that if God did provide a direct revelation about these six days of creation, shouldn't we expect it to be scientifically accurate where it does touch on science or rather scientific concepts and knowledge?

Exactly! Apologists go to extreme lengths to deny the Bible describes a flat, domed Earth as the center of the universe.

I didn't really didn't have to go to much length to expose the fallacy of this charge. Especially since no evidence has been presented to support this except repeating this myth from others.

Wrong. You seized on one issue, the flat Earth aspect, re: THE CHURCH's issue, not the Bible's description of a flat Earth. You are ignoring the obvious geocentric description in the Bible and came up with a lame, esoteric, personal translation of the firmament. You never addressed the "waters above and the waters below." You never addressed the ascension of Jesus 'up' to Heaven which is a clear and plain reference to a flat Earth with a heaven above. You have failed to address Joshua "making the Sun stand still."

More importantly you have not dealt with the the time problem.

The Bible provides a reliable history of the universe and the events described in the Bible, particularly in the early chapters of Genesis, providing a framework through which we can interpret science and history.
Event Date
Creation 4004 BC
The Flood 2348 BC
Tower of Babel 2246 BC
Abraham 1996 BC
Joseph 1745 BC
Moses and the Exodus 1491 BC
David 1085 BC
Monarchy Divides 975 BC
Assyrian Destruction of Israel 722 BC
Babylonian Captivity of Judah 586 BC
Jesus 4 BC

https://answersingenesis.org/bible-timeline/
This is what the Bible teaches.

These are the facts:
Homo Sapiens appeared approximately 200,000 years ago.
Beautiful cave paintings were discovered in Altamira, Spain that date to 35,000 years ago, 30,000 years before 'Adam.' You might enjoy the movie:

By reanalysing human skull fragments discovered four decades ago in Greece, an international team of researchers now believe that an early modern human migration out of Africa may have reached Europe by at least 210,000 years ago.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/201 ... -than.html

BTW, one of my favorite lines from the movies comes up at about 13 minutes in: when Spencer Tracy asks "Was that Eastern Standard Time...?"
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieS ... ewind.html

There are obvious scientific flaws in the Genesis 1 story based on the order in which creation reportedly took place. Some consider the first day to be the beginning of the creation process, but it began before the first day. The initial activity involved the creation of "the heavens and the earth." The first day was the creation of light. Oddly, this supposedly happened before the creation of the sun. The creation of the sun didn't take place until the fourth day.

Based on current scientific understanding, the earth formed either at the same time as the sun or perhaps even after the sun formed. There was never a time when the earth existed, and the sun didn't and yet that's what Genesis 1, supposed direct revelation from God states.

Perhaps a less significant though still pertinent issue is that plant life was created before the sun. Of course, if the days are considered 24 hr. days, they could have held out for a day I suppose but it seems like rather poor planning if the source of this action were aware of photosynthesis.


Tcg

[JehovahsWitness]

Let me ask you this, do you think our Bible translations are inerrant or errant?

First define what you mean by inerrant.

First define what you mean by inerrant.

My position is the term is meaningless and it should not be used

Well if it means nothing it cannot be discussed. One cannot have an exchange on .... "sub_#/+fr63xism "... because its a meaningless word. Its not for me'to convince you that a word you believe has no meaning does.

Have a nice day, or as I sometimes say have a nice fryxqwasoiduvia,



JW

[William]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #1243]

Have a nice day, or as I sometimes say have a nice fryxqwasoiduvia,

And that can be shortened to "Have a nice Frysiod" [perhaps referring to "Friday".] and in this case said on a Thursday...so "Have a nice tomorrow"

[Humour.]

fryxqwasoiduvia = 214 [~] [The Undiscovered Self]

https://www.thewordfinder.com/anagram-solver/
"fryxqwasoiduvia"

[Tcg]

My position is the term is meaningless and it should not be used, so it's not my burden to define what I think it means.

So, to return my original question back to you, do you think our Bible translations are inerrant or errant?

Of course, whatever answer you give will be problematic. If you say it's inerrant, then it is against the definition since scholars define the term as only applying to the autographs. If you say it's errant, then you are admitting there are errors in the Bible.

My argument in dropping the term inerrancy is it leads to conundrums such as this.

I agree and find your objection reasonable. And as we have already discussed, if it applies only to the autographs as most if not all definitions do, how could anyone possibly support such a claim. We have none to examine. It'd be perhaps like claiming the holy grail was made of the purest gold known to humankind. Oh, do you possess the holy grail? No, but based on the replicas we have of it we know that is true.


Tcg

[otseng]

My position is the term is meaningless and it should not be used, so it's not my burden to define what I think it means.

So, to return my original question back to you, do you think our Bible translations are inerrant or errant?

Of course, whatever answer you give will be problematic. If you say it's inerrant, then it is against the definition since scholars define the term as only applying to the autographs. If you say it's errant, then you are admitting there are errors in the Bible.

My argument in dropping the term inerrancy is it leads to conundrums such as this.

I agree and find your objection reasonable. And as we have already discussed, if it applies only to the autographs as most if not all definitions do, how could anyone possibly support such a claim. We have none to examine. It'd be perhaps like claiming the holy grail was made of the purest gold known to humankind. Oh, do you possess the holy grail? No, but based on the replicas we have of it we know that is true.

At the root of what people are trying to convey is the Bible (autographs, copies, translations) is reliable, authoritative, and trustworthy. I affirm all of this. And I even believe many of the accounts in the Bible to be literal (unlike others who label themselves as an inerrantist).

I've been thinking why do so many people strongly hold to the position of inerrancy. I even know people who are scholars who won't admit they are not an inerrantist. It's the same dilemma of asking if translations are inerrant or errant. They do not want to admit they are not an inerrantist because it would imply they are an errantist.

The battle over inerrancy or errancy is a false dichotomy. Neither is a correct view of the Bible. And it takes all sorts of twisting, manipulation, and imagination to uphold (as well as attack) either of them. And at the root, it's because the words are meaningless (not sure this is the right term, but can't think of any other way to describe the word).

Though the term is meaningless, it is still very possible to defend what the word is trying to convey. And in this thread, I show that it's possible to defend the Bible as being authoritative, reliable, and trustworthy without holding to inerrancy.

[otseng]

Regarding geocentrism, I argued it is perfectly reasonable (and even scientific) for people in the past to accept geocentrism and not accept heliocentrism. It was only in 1838 when stellar parallax was measured to prove that the earth moved around the sun. But, even if the earth moves around the sun, it is still possible we are still at the center of the universe. So, question for people that believe we are not at the center of the universe, what argument and evidence proves that to be the case?

[William]

Regarding geocentrism, I argued it is perfectly reasonable (and even scientific) for people in the past to accept geocentrism and not accept heliocentrism. It was only in 1838 when stellar parallax was measured to prove that the earth moved around the sun. But, even if the earth moves around the sun, it is still possible we are still at the center of the universe. So, question for people that believe we are not at the center of the universe, what argument and evidence proves that to be the case?

It seems to me to be a question from the subjective nature of consciousness and knowledge of what it is to be the center of anything we are experiencing.

Everything moves inward or outward from that point.

Given that, whatever position consciousness is situated in the universe, it would be seen as 'the center' because of the subjective nature of consciousness in relation to the objective nature of the Universe.

[Diogenes]

Regarding geocentrism, I argued it is perfectly reasonable (and even scientific) for people in the past to accept geocentrism and not accept heliocentrism. It was only in 1838 when stellar parallax was measured to prove that the earth moved around the sun. But, even if the earth moves around the sun, it is still possible we are still at the center of the universe. So, question for people that believe we are not at the center of the universe, what argument and evidence proves that to be the case?

Yes, ignorant humans believed in a geocentric universe like the Bible describes, but you ignore the fact a creator 'God' would have known better. Not only is the solar system not geocentric, the universe is obviously not. The Earth is the 'center of the universe' only in the sense that any point in the universe, any point could be taken subjectively as the 'center' from the POV of a local observer. The 'God' that supposedly created the entire universe is not a local observer. He created (supposedly) the whole shebang.

Your continued insistence that the Earth could be considered the center of the universe is as silly as the the notion it could be the center of the solar system, or that the Earth is flat as the Bible describes, for example in 1 Samuel 2:8 For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set the world.

Your post only shows the extent to which the apologist will twist words, history, and any semblance of rationality to defend the indefensible: the rationality and accuracy of an ancient man made cosmological myth.

[William]

[Replying to Diogenes in post #1249]

Yes, ignorant humans believed in a geocentric universe like the Bible describes, but you ignore the fact a creator 'God' would have known better. Not only is the solar system not geocentric, the universe is obviously not. The Earth is the 'center of the universe' only in the sense that any point in the universe, any point could be taken subjectively as the 'center' from the POV of a local observer. The 'God' that supposedly created the entire universe is not a local observer. He created (supposedly) the whole shebang.

Looking up at a clear night sky, you see stars in every direction. It almost feels as if you're at the center of the cosmos. But are you? And if not, where is the center of the universe?

The universe, in fact, has no center. Ever since the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, the universe has been expanding. But despite its name, the Big Bang wasn't an explosion that burst outward from a central point of detonation. The universe started out extremely compact and tiny. Then every point in the universe expanded equally, and that continues today. And so, without any point of origin, the universe has no center.

One way to think about this is to imagine a two-dimensional ant that lives on the surface of a perfectly spherical balloon. From the ant's point of view, everywhere on the surface looks the same. There is no center on the sphere's surface, nor is there an edge. {SOURCE}

The only center one could identify re the Universe is the center of a perfectly spherical expansion - the center point would exist therein, but could never be seen by those surfing the expansion of it.

It is strange to read "The universe, in fact, has no center" whilst at the same time be asked by the same claimant to "imagine a two-dimensional ant that lives on the surface of a perfectly spherical balloon."

Odd...perhaps the claimant is saying that without us having access to observing any point of origin, there isn't any...

However, whether we can observe it or not, the "out extremely compact and tiny" point of origin would be the central point or home point or beginning point.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that whatever the Universe is expanding into, has no center point of origin...or dump all the 'imagine a balloon' explanations and start from scratch.