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

[otseng]

To recap the white hole model so far. We assume the entire universe started in a small volume. By definition, this would be a white/black hole. During the expansion of the universe, the event horizon would collapse as matter/energy moves apart. This would cause gravitational red-shifting. The isotropic nature of the redshifting is due to us being at/near the center of the universe.

In addition to the collapse of the event horizon causing gravitational red-shifting, there is another phenomenon it introduces - gravitational time dilation.

As most are aware, time is not absolute between all observers, but time is relative. Schools teach about the relativistic nature of time when observers are moving, but time is also relative due to gravity.

Gravitational time dilation is a form of time dilation, an actual difference of elapsed time between two events as measured by observers situated at varying distances from a gravitating mass. The lower the gravitational potential (the closer the clock is to the source of gravitation), the slower time passes, speeding up as the gravitational potential increases (the clock getting away from the source of gravitation). Albert Einstein originally predicted this effect in his theory of relativity and it has since been confirmed by tests of general relativity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitati ... e_dilation

The effects of gravitational redshifting and gravitational time dilation can also be seen when falling into a black hole.

As you get closer to the black hole, the signals you’re sending are undergoing increased gravitational redshift as the photons climb out of the gravitational well.

The gravity of the black hole warps spacetime itself. In our case we’re interested in a process known as time dilation, another relativistic effect.

https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/wh ... black-hole

As one moves closer and closer to a black hole, the passing of time will also slow down more and more. So, does time therefore stop as one falls into a black hole?

Time does stop at the event horizon of a black hole, but only as seen by someone outside the black hole. This is because any physical signal will get infinitely redshifted at the event horizon, thus never reaching the outside observer. Someone falling into a black hole, however, would not see time stop.

https://profoundphysics.com/why-time-sl ... lack-hole/

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to otseng in post #1595]

In addition to the collapse of the event horizon causing gravitational red-shifting, there is another phenomenon it introduces - gravitational time dilation.

If observed redshifting were caused by gravitational effects, I'd think that would eliminate any chance of it being isotropic, or having redshifts increase with distance so uniformly. Wouldn't you need more distant galaxies to be more massive in a very uniform way for this to work, so that there is a greater gravitational redshift the more distant the galaxy? Since there is mostly nothing but empty space between many galaxies and ours, we see the light from distant galaxies (in the absence of gravitational lensing) coming to us in a straight line so the redshift would have to happen at the source (if spacetime expansion is not the reason). Or is the argument that gravitational redshifting is working together with event horizon collapse in some way that nets out to the smooth dependence of redshift on distance?

We measure the CMBR bathing Earth continuously and see it as the net result of redshifting of the initial ~3000C radiation over 13.7 billion years. That light supposedly was emitted about 380,000 years after the Big Bang (surface of last scattering) when the universe went from opaque to transparent as it cooled beyond a threshold for H atom formation. We can only see (observable universe) about 20 billion light years in all directions from Earth, and don't know how much further the universe might extend past this distance. If a person on a planet in the Andromeda galaxy measured the CMBR, they'd see the same thing we do even though they are 2.5 million light years away from us (as that is still negligible compared to the scale of the observable universe). So they would also be "near the center" of the universe by that measurement alone. I'd think a person would need to be a very large distance from Earth (many hundreds of millions of light years) to measure any effects which could show they are not near the center. When you say "near" the center, what is "near" in, say, light years?

Articles like these:

https://www.space.com/white-holes.html
(The Ultimate White Hole section near the end)

https://www.desy.de/user/projects/Physi ... verse.html

suggest that there is still a lot of theoretical uncertainty surrounding a white hole model of the Big Bang, or white holes in general. They seem even more mysterious than black holes.

[otseng]

Wouldn't you need more distant galaxies to be more massive in a very uniform way for this to work, so that there is a greater gravitational redshift the more distant the galaxy?

There is more gravitational redshift for distant objects because they would have experience more gravitational force from the collapse of the event horizon. Two things are happening simultaneously - matter is expanding outward from the initial singularity and the collapse of the event horizon. As the event horizon is collapsing, the gravitational effect at the horizon is decreasing because the amount of mass within the horizon is also decreasing as matter is expanding outward. With the earth at the center, the objects farthest from earth would experience the the collapse of the event horizon first. Light emitted from these objects would experience the greatest gravitational effect and would have the most redshifting. So, the difference in redshift is not a function of the mass of the objects emitting the light, but when it first encounters the collapse of the event horizon.

If a person on a planet in the Andromeda galaxy measured the CMBR, they'd see the same thing we do even though they are 2.5 million light years away from us (as that is still negligible compared to the scale of the observable universe).

In order for this to be true, there needs to be the assumption that the unobservable universe is much larger than the observable universe. And the main reason this assumption is held is the assumption that we cannot be in a privileged position in the universe.

center. When you say "near" the center, what is "near" in, say, light years?

I say "near" because I don't want to claim with any precision of our exact location. I'm only going by the argument of the uniformity of the CMBR that we're near the center.

[otseng]

We've spent a considerable amount of time on cosmology (over 66 pages). And like other topics in the past (geology, archaeology, etc), we could go forever, but I'm going to wrap up this topic.

Going by the evidence that we're near the center of the universe and without the need to introduce multiple ad hoc explanations (inflation, stretching of spacetime, dark energy), the white hole model of the early universe explains the phenomenon of extreme redshifting of distant objects.

Though some things can be explained in a scientific manner, there are things that are beyond science. Science cannot explain the singularity (where math breaks down), the origin of the singularity (a violation of conservation of mass/energy), the decrease in entropy (a violation of laws of thermodynamics), why there would be an explosion and the mechanism for it, etc.

We see in Genesis 1 a story that presents it in a way that anyone can understand the creation of the world. Is it all scientifically true? No, but it doesn't need to be entirely scientifically true because not even science can scientifically explain the origin of the universe. And as I've argued, it has already breached into the realm of the extranatural to explain things.

However I do believe there is an underlying basis for the Genesis account that is supported by science. And my current view of the origin of the universe is a literal 6 day reading of Genesis coupled with the white hole model.

The white hole model gives a central position to earth in the universe, which Genesis presents in a literary way. Even in a metaphorical sense, we are a privileged planet since there is no indication that life exists elsewhere and there are many barriers for life to exist on other planets.

Because of gravitational time dilation and time is relative, it is reasonable that earth time would be different than time experienced outside of earth. This accounts for why it would take starlight billions of years to reach earth, but yet earth would have existed for far less than that.

So, I believe it is entirely reasonable to accept a literalistic reading of the origin account in Genesis which has grounding in science.

As astronomer Robert Jastrow has said:
"Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact."

Next, we're going to go into the most important topic to debate on. So far, everything we've debated are actually not critically important to Christianity. Someone can not take the flood, Exodus account, Genesis creation account as all literal events and still be considered a conservative Christian. They can still be saved even if they take all these as entirely allegorical stories. But the next topic must be accepted to be a Christian.

[otseng]

One of the most important doctrines in Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus and is one of the beliefs necessary for salvation.

Romans 10:9
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Also, if Jesus was not resurrected, then all of Christianity is undermined. If the resurrection of Jesus is falsified, then Christianity is falsified.

1 Corinthians 15:17
And if Christ be not raised, your faith [is] vain; ye are yet in your sins.

If he was not resurrected from the dead, he would be no different than any other person, including any other prophet or saint in any religion. But, if he was resurrected from the dead, then he would be quite unique and set him apart from all else.

The resurrection of Jesus is claimed to be a historical event and is not a make believe event that we should accept by blind faith. And if it is a historical event, then it should be able to be validated like any other historical event.

For any historical event, there are two main methods to demonstrate its historicity - artifacts and written records. We had talked about the account in the Bible of Sennacherib attacking Jerusalem. Without any artifacts or written records, there would be no corroborating evidence to support the Biblical claim. Then in 1830, Colonel Taylor discovered Sennacherib's Prism which is a written account that remarkably matches the Biblical account from the Assyrian perspective. So, there is no now doubt among historians that the Jerusalem siege actually occurred.

Like all arguments I've made in this thread, I'm not out to prove Jesus was resurrected, but I will attempt to show there are evidence to support it and that it is a reasonable position to hold.

[otseng]

An artifact that is purportedly from the burial of Jesus is the Shroud of Turin.

The Shroud of Turin is a centuries old linen cloth that bears the image of a crucified man. A man that millions believe to be Jesus of Nazareth.

https://www.shroud.com/

Shroud of Turin, also called Holy Shroud, Italian Santa Sindone, a length of linen that for centuries was purported to be the burial garment of Jesus Christ. It has been preserved since 1578 in the royal chapel of the cathedral of San Giovanni Battista in Turin, Italy. Measuring 4.3 metres (14 feet 3 inches) long and 1.1 metres (3 feet 7 inches) wide, it seems to portray two faint brownish images, those of the back and front of a gaunt, sunken-eyed, 5-foot 7-inch man—as if a body had been laid lengthwise along one half of the shroud while the other half had been doubled over the head to cover the whole front of the body from face to feet. The images contain markings that allegedly correspond to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus, including thorn marks on the head, lacerations (as if from flogging) on the back, bruises on the shoulders, and various stains of what is presumed to be blood

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shroud-of-Turin

This name is primarily given to a relic now preserved at Turin, for which the claim is made that it is the actual "clean linen cloth" in which Joseph of Arimathea wrapped the body of Jesus Christ (Matthew 27:59).

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13762a.htm

Shroud of Turin, also called Holy Shroud, Italian Santa Sindone, a length of linen that for centuries was purported to be the burial garment of Jesus Christ. It has been preserved since 1578 in the royal chapel of the cathedral of San Giovanni Battista in Turin, Italy.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shroud-of-Turin

The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot linen cloth bearing an image of a crucified man that has become a popular Catholic icon. For some, it is the authentic burial shroud of Jesus Christ. For others, it is a religious icon reflecting the story of the Christ, not necessarily the original shroud.

More than 600 years after it first appeared in historical records, the Shroud of Turin remains an important religious symbol for Christians around the world.

https://www.history.com/news/shroud-turin-facts

"Perhaps no religious relic has received more scientific scrutiny than the Shroud."
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sc ... al-forgers

"Modern science has completed hundreds of thousands of hours of detailed study and intense research on the Shroud. It is, in fact, the single most studied artifact in human history, and we know more about it today than we ever have before."
https://shroud.com/

"It is either the most awesome and instructive relic of Jesus Christ in existence or it is the most ingenious, unbelievably clever, product of the human mind and hand on record. It is one or the other. There is no middle ground."
Author, John Walsh

[otseng]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shroudofturin.jpg

The shroud is rectangular, measuring approximately 4.4 by 1.1 metres (14 ft 5 in × 3 ft 7 in). The cloth is woven in a three-to-one herringbone twill composed of flax fibrils. Its most distinctive characteristic is the faint, brownish image of a front and back view of a naked man with his hands folded across his groin. The two views are aligned along the midplane of the body and point in opposite directions. The front and back views of the head nearly meet at the middle of the cloth.

The image in faint straw-yellow colour on the crown of the cloth fibres appears to be of a man with a beard, moustache, and shoulder-length hair parted in the middle. He is muscular and tall (various experts have measured him as from 1.70 to 1.88 m or 5 ft 7 in to 6 ft 2 in). Reddish-brown stains are found on the cloth, correlating, according to proponents, with the wounds in the Biblical description of the crucifixion of Jesus.

The shroud was damaged in a fire in 1532 in the chapel in Chambery, France. There are some burn holes and scorched areas down both sides of the linen, caused by contact with molten silver during the fire that burned through it in places while it was folded. Fourteen large triangular patches and eight smaller ones were sewn onto the cloth by Poor Clare nuns to repair the damage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin

Measuring 4.3 metres (14 feet 3 inches) long and 1.1 metres (3 feet 7 inches) wide, it seems to portray two faint brownish images, those of the back and front of a gaunt, sunken-eyed, 5-foot 7-inch man—as if a body had been laid lengthwise along one half of the shroud while the other half had been doubled over the head to cover the whole front of the body from face to feet. The images contain markings that allegedly correspond to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus, including thorn marks on the head, lacerations (as if from flogging) on the back, bruises on the shoulders, and various stains of what is presumed to be blood.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shroud-of-Turin

Image on the shroud reveals:
- Blood on head from crown of thorns.
- Abrasions and bruises on face.
- Wound in the side.
- Over 120 scourge (whip) marks.
- Blood on the arms.
- Nail wound in the wrists.
- Nail wound in the feet.
- Legs not broken.
- Post mortem blood flow from side wound and on the back.
- Legs are pulled up due to rigor mortis.
- Blood is from actual wounds and show evidence of gravity from a vertical position.
- No stains of body decomposition.
https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/02138b ... 580066.pdf

The long and narrow shroud has images of both a man's front side and backside which are amazingly clear. The man has long hair and beard and six (sic) hands are crossed over his crotch. No one knows how the image was made and scientists have been unable to reproduce it.

The man’s faces appears swollen from blows. Up and down both sides of the man's legs and torso are scourge marks from whip lashings. At the end of the marks there appears to be contusions consist with wounds made by a Roman whip called a flagrum. There is even dried blood around the image's head, wrists, legs and left side which match up with the crown of thorns, crucifixion nails and lance wound that Christ sustained as he walked to Cavalry.

The image shows markings of a Roman crucifixion (the nails were in the wrists not the hands). Some scholars have said that over the eyebrows are impressions of coins with the name Tiberius Ceasar, dating from A.D. 30-31. Other scholars have suggested the image could have been made been with oils used to anoint Jesus's body and the intense heat created during resurrection (but images left behind by heated oils are different than those on the shroud).

https://factsanddetails.com/world/cat55 ... -6435.html

[otseng]

A commonly held view of the Shroud of Turin is that is is a medieval forgery that originated around 1390 AD.

"Today, the bulk of evidence indicates that the Shroud originated sometime around the Middle Ages, and was created by human hands."
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sc ... al-forgers

"The History of the Shroud of Turin begins in the year 1390 AD, when Bishop Pierre d'Arcis wrote a memorandum where he charged that the Shroud was a forgery."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... d_of_Turin

"we can be virtually certain that the Shroud of Turin is a hoax that was originally created in France in around the 1350s AD by an artist trained in the Gothic figurative style as part of a faith-healing scam."
https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/ ... ly-a-hoax/

The primary evidence for a medieval origin is C-14 dating which 3 labs date it in the 13th - 14th century.

"In 1988, scientists carbon-dated the shroud's origins to between A.D. 1260 and 1390, supporting claims that it is merely a hoax."
https://www.livescience.com/63093-shrou ... tains.html

Later, I'll go into detail about the C-14 dating. But, first I want to argue why it's highly unlikely to be created from a medieval forger then challenge the C-14 dating.

[otseng]

One argument the shroud is not a medieval forgery is the totally unique style of the image.

We can take a sampling of medieval depictions of Jesus and view their styles:

Holy Trinity (Botticelli)

The Holy Trinity or Pala delle Convertite is an altarpiece by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, dating to c. 1491–1493. It is housed at Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Trinity_(Botticelli)

Map Psalter

The Map Psalter takes its name from its full-page illustration of a map of the world (on f. 9r), whose design shares close parallels with the famous mappa mundi, now housed at Hereford Cathedral. The image shows Christ holding the orb of the world, flanked by two angels. The map itself is highly detailed. Jerusalem is marked in the centre, with Rome appearing slightly below it.

The manuscript was made in London during the latter half of the 13th century but after 1262, as the Psalter’s calendar commemorates on 3rd April the feast day of St Richard of Chichester (d. 1253) who was canonised in 1262.

https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/psalter-world-map

The Queen Mary Psalter

The Psalter is named, as you might imagine, for Queen Mary Tudor (1516 - 1558), daughter of King Henry VIII, but the manuscript was not made for her - in fact, it was produced nearly 200 years before Mary's birth. The Psalter was created in England, probably in London or East Anglia, between 1310 and 1320.

https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscript ... alter.html

The Crucifixion
ca. 1420–23

This early work by Fra Angelico accentuates the drama of the Crucifixion by showing the Virgin collapsed in grief with the lamenting Maries and emphasizing the varied attitudes of the Roman soldiers and their horses.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437007

Just a visual comparison of medieval depictions of Jesus show their dissimilarity with the image on the shroud.

If the shroud was created by an artist, he was definitely not making a work of art like what we see above, but attempting to make an artifact that shows exactly what the shroud would've looked like if Jesus was buried with the cloth. Why would he want to do that? With his skills, he could've produced incredible works of art using the contemporary styles and been very famous. Yet, this mystery artist from the Middle ages only produced this one artifact which for most of history was relatively unknown.

[otseng]

The first photographic method was the daguerreotype which was introduced in 1839.

Daguerreotype (daguerréotype) was the first publicly available photographic process; it was widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process.

Invented by Louis Daguerre and introduced worldwide in 1839, the daguerreotype was almost completely superseded by 1860 with new, less expensive processes, such as ambrotype (collodion process), that yield more readily viewable images. There has been a revival of the daguerreotype since the late 20th century by a small number of photographers interested in making artistic use of early photographic processes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype

In the late 1800s, photography became popularly available.

In 1884 George Eastman, of Rochester, New York, developed dry gel on paper, or film, to replace the photographic plate so that a photographer no longer needed to carry boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around. In July 1888 Eastman's Kodak camera went on the market with the slogan "You press the button, we do the rest". Now anyone could take a photograph and leave the complex parts of the process to others, and photography became available for the mass-market in 1901 with the introduction of the Kodak Brownie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography

In 1898, Secondo Pia takes the first photograph of the shroud.

Secondo Pia (9 September 1855 – 7 September 1941) was an Italian lawyer and amateur photographer. He is best known for taking the first photographs of the Shroud of Turin on 28 May 1898 and, when he was developing them, noticing that the photographic negatives showed a positive image of the man in the shroud in addition to a clearer rendition of the image.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondo_Pia

To take the photo, another recent invention, the light bulb, was used in order to illuminate the shroud.

While developing the plate, he discovered the image is more clearly recognizable as a negative.

Pia later said that he almost dropped and broke the photographic plate in the darkroom from the shock of what appeared on it: the reverse plate showed the positive image of a man and a face in a detail that could not be seen with the naked eye.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondo_Pia

Here is what Pia saw:


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... plasch.jpg

So, the image on the cloth is actually a negative image. And when we reverse that, then we see the positive image, which is what our eyes normally are used to seeing. Further, the actual image on the cloth is quite faint, but the negative makes it much clearer.

"No one knew yet that the clearer reverse image existed on the shroud, for the faint face image on the shroud cannot be clearly observed or recognized with the naked eye."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondo_Pia

How could a medieval forger know about a technology that did not exist until hundreds of years later? And even if he did somehow know about it, why would he use that technique when nobody else at that time would even know about it?

At the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, there is a full size replica of the shroud. We went there earlier this year and it was fun to be able to use my iPhone and use a negative filter to see it for myself.